mmmmdclxxviii

The Rigors of Mortality

Seems like forever I’ve been anxious
to rid myself of anxiety. I remember
clearly realizing that it was the root
of so many of my problems. I also
can’t forget the first time I was
successfully able to eradicate it
so wholly for a duration of time.

It turns out that after somewhere
near a decade of an extraordinary
amount of stress, I’ve reached a
sort of stasis, am more steadily
relaxed, less worried, and I
can’t exactly account for why
this is, but I imagine it has
something to do with the
fact I have been living for
such a long time, ten years
or so, feeling that no matter 

how or what I try, no matter
how much effort I expend,
I have been unable to 

manage to reach
a singular goal.

Should I say a life goal? I have
managed to eat. I have always
found a place to sleep. That
place did not always include
a roof, but it was a place
where I slept. There were
numerous places. The only
routine that I managed to
keep that I’d had before,
besides things like breathing
and sleeping, etc., I suppose,
was that I wrote. I wrote 

through it all, the entirety of it;
sure, some months more than 

others, but I always wrote.

And as I read through what I
have written, as I’ve been doing,
even recording each of these
pieces, the poems—how
hard is that to say?—I do it
every day, these days.  I do
hold some significant app

reciation of having something

knowable, something showable,
that is an accomplishment,
it is a thing I can puff myself up 

a bit about, but up until the
past couple of months,
that had been about it.

Now, after all of that, 

I’ve reached two very

happy goals.  These 

are things I’ve worked
for years apiece to 

achieve. These are
perhaps tiny, relative 

to other durations in this
life, a life for about which 

I’m somehow still grateful.
But it has only dawned
on me, just in the past
couple of days, how
huge passing the 

threshold and

reaching these

goals has been.

Anyway, so I write. But
there’s this bit of tension,
some concern, not exactly
stress, about what it is I
should write now. But I
suppose it doesn’t matter,
as I know I will nevertheless
continue to write. It’ll be
something. It doesn’t have
to point me in any new
directions, give me any
bold ideas, but it’s my
through-line, and has
been a tremendous
help, not just therapy;
creativity, opening my
eyes to see things.  There
fore, I’ll then keep going,
and I keep thinking daily 

can be dull, so when or 

if it’s dull, I motivate, I 

move, I try to make 

the best of anything,
improving, or
just moving.

(A dull boom.)