Feint

I live in sunny days doomed to fade. I chisel not my name upon the Mountains of History, nor mine their depths for buried brilliance. I paint with water; I craft with sand. I write on recycled paper I one day recycle. Immortality is the breath each word breathes; I need not their mirage. I write to unveil humanity, this fickle play without plot. I write to understand myself, this actor who forgot if there ever were lines to be forgotten. I write hope where worry dwells, compassion where complacency broods, laughter where silence reigns. I write because I need to, and I resent it.

Why can I not drift in silence unanchored? Why destination need I to chart a course? Why purpose need I to chart a life? Why grief suffer I?--and what grief be this but a lingering shadow from an old dream, hidden beneath the cacophony of thought? Can I love what is? Can I love what is not? Have I the courage to emerge from this swarm of self-pity as the chick from the egg? Have I the insight to know this is not me but my challenge?

Yes. I am the eternal I. All else is but the game. I was lost within it, but I did not lose.

The Sadness compresses me, crushing, squeezing from me my air, cheating from me my time, blurring my vision, whipping my thoughts to a flurry to a storm, choking my love. The Sadness enlists, enlivens, provokes my innate fear of the All and of the None, of the Unknown and of the Unveiled. The Sadness is so tangible I can almost taste it, souring my breath, repelling others, sickening my lungs and my stomach.

The Sadness is, of course, not real. It is just another mirage, a feint played well by the opposition, but perhaps too often. So like It to play such a clever ploy: undermining as it plows through, bamboozling, disarming as it stabs, distracting as it steals. So like that wily Death!

And I? you ask. I am Life; I learn, I adapt. Each mirage, as powerful as convincing as it may be, bears the same rankling whiff. While Death seeks to lead me from dream to sordid dream, I now know there is but one of matter; and though still I often stumble, my reactions quicken, my feet grow stable, my eyes sharpen, and my laugh and my silence make love.

For I am Awake. Your move, Death.