Equilibrium

Sat, Apr 27, 2002 05:53PM -0600

Too far out and you spread yourself too thin, the world, the universe, becomes a vacuous, empty place and it seems that every road runs to nowhere, and you're moving but it seems you're still in the same place no matter how fast you run, how hard you punch the accelerator. There is a deadening sameness to everything that happens, and you wonder what the point of it is all, why you should even bother.

Too close in and you may very well implode. Every single moment becomes a decision of tantamount importance, every act becomes a battle between life and death. This is when a single look can kill you, a moment of neglect can suck all the life out of you, a misspoken word can send you reeling, heart stopped, vision blurring. The most minor mistake is like setting off a grenade, a nuclear bomb, and the fear of meltdown and fallout looms like a suffocating cloud obscuring the sun. You know that there's no way to keep going on like this, and yet it doesn't seem like it'll ever end.

So what is the middle ground? I can't just keep bouncing back and forth between these two extremes, continuously looking over the edge of those bleak, black chasms, like a ping-pong ball smacked hither-and-tither by the careless paddles of Fate.

The Crash is the only thing that will end all of this, and despite all my ranting and ravings, all my saber-rattling and brinksmanship, deep down inside, I don't think I really want the Crash to happen. Despite my cynicism and pessimism, I really do want to live. Yes, deep down inside, I even want to live happily ever after, if that's at all possible, but I'm certainly not holding my breath. At this juncture, maybe even fifteen minutes of pure unadulterated joy would be more than enough, more than I might ever hope for, maybe even more than I deserve. Shit, I might not even want anything more than a feeling of content resignation, at the least.

But yeah, I don't know if I can take these rumbles for too much longer. Every time certain thoughts erupt in my brain, I feel like I have to run for cover, cower under my desk, or at least cling to the door frame and try to stay balanced. It's like any moment now the roof could just come falling in, the windows might just shatter inward.

I don't know. What else is there to say? God give me strength. And yet I feel like if all I do is survive, without learning a damn thing, then I might as well not survive.

e-mail: aswang@earthlink.net

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