Cowboy Problems

The neighbours don’t have dogs- they have teenagers. I’ve never feared for the cracks in my ceiling more than on certain school mornings. I’ve gotta hand it to them – they’re more effective than my alarm at doing what an alarm should do. Am I worried about anything right now? Is there a fear? I don’t know why I ask. Perhaps because the word ‘alarm’ came up and because I worry that I may be worried, presently, about something not present. It’s always like that – time a vessel for the arrival of our fears which we arrange in linear systems. Am I too late to be here? I get stuck in the contradiction, because time cannot wait; because there is no such thing as lateness in the now, and because my frustrations are ultimately hollow, like my body, like time. Yet both of us squirm and twist and charge into the next room like all we can be is elsewhere, further along in existence. What a strange thing to know without really knowing it. What now? What do I tell my hands? Most of the time, they don’t know their place. They fidget and they dance around me, up and down me, holding and pulling at things, contracting and expanding. They’re as confused about their independence as I am. I tug at this- what to do with my freedom? I want to write about hands and I want to write about her. Some feeling has dogged me (that is what) that I must figure out. I wrote something yesterday; I forgot what I meant by ‘I love you’. I feel childish and neurotic when I obsess about us. How many lifetimes have I spent charging towards her room? Now we spend our days keeping each other, and it needn’t ever end. But time barrels on, mocking us silly. I’m learning to hold, expand, fidget and wander –like my hands, who are really me. I’m learning to live for myself, free from myself, and to share most all of it with her. 

If there is a difference between giving and sharing, love is on the other side of it. 

If you know anything, you know I love you.