I Pull At the Rest

I'm impatient. I exhibit all of the signs: I wait in lines, I stop often to think, I carry everything that I can fit in a bag at once, I don't sleep well, I don't wake up to alarms. It's some sort of impulse with me all the time.

Yesterday I came through to another side of the ring, though. All the time I've been afraid of hoops that are on fire. I've peered through and hated what I came to refer to as my opposite, my future reflections. I have so much trouble with the laws sometimes, with history and those that write it, with all the credit. But yesterday I became a future reflection I'd never seen before...I give myself credit for none of it. Some small piece of bread and a sprig of green fell from Oxford's cloud-cap, dropped in front of me in the street, and spoke a word to me about giving up on things. You musn't, he said, accent sharply cockney. You shouldn't. He cleared his throat. The sprig of green smiled. Whatever it is, you shouldn't.

And I haven't, as far as I know. I know only that on this side of the ring there are none of the visions I have had in the past. A trick I played on myself. I am still so impatient, and there are other rings lying on the ground and leaning against the wall in my bedroom right now, but i have put the sprig of green in my jacket pocket.

Music still eats me in gigantic bites. After even one year of listening to it, you'd think that some music would just turn to dust in your head, that the familiar progression in a song might seem too childish to believe. But I'm still taken with it. I would like nothing more than to be able to make it, compose it, carry it around on sheets of paper and hand it off to people. "Read this. Listen to it later, maybe. I made it. I made it all."

The sprig of green will grow, in my pocket, as I've taken some dirt from the window sill and laced the bottom of the pocket with it. I will take a picture of it when it is grown to a good height. I would like to take a picture of it now, but it has no roots, and a picture could kill the poor thing. Not that growing won't, as I've said a few times already.

I'm pulling at the rest of my evenings here, so far, to try to tie them together. I think perhaps it is about time my evenings should meet.