At this point in time last year, I was juggling a dozen different responsibilities, and dark, dark nights. Fear drove me through books and material; I was endlessly moving from book to book, from book to class, from class to meeting, meeting to meeting, food, madness, and love. I had taken on too much, and I didn’t need hindsight to tell me that. At the end of the year, I collapsed, nearly insensate, weakly counting my blessings.
It is starting to feel almost the same, now. Hour after hour, grappling with abstract plans, blatantly leering glances at rows of books nearby, cabinet after cabinet of files, careful manoevering amongst responsibilities, obligations, new ways of doing things, everything a whirl of newness and unfamiliarity, every moment spent in momentary reflection a respite from the torrent.
This year, I am standing still, while all around me everyone stumbles along. Plans, dreams, hopes, fears, somehow or the other we are all swept along. I feel, guiltily, envy, at the plans of others laid out by chance or by design; I count my blessings and I cling all the tighter to all that makes me whole. Perhaps I have spent too long living through symbols, motifs. Doors, books, hearts that will forever remain unseen, substitutes and replacements for the act of living. Out there, there are 3 boxes of books, still on their way back from Hay-on-Wye, in the picture above, a place of escapism and alternatives, the aesthetic of which is not made any less by a repudiation of their permanence.
My dream of opening a bookshop has remained, however, from its distant beginnings when I had the freedom to roam and imagine myself in the shoes of others. Today it stands, a monument and blueprint, beckoning with its imperative stare that I find my way to its doorstep. Each day, every page I spend in a half-wakeful stupor, drinking, imbibing, in denial and mesmerised, a broken record and turntable, woefully clinging to the sensation of flight and ascension, I remember the dream.
The fine line between this unwholesome fear and the miniscule beyond; dare I hope to be able to pull us through? Dare I speak once more of thoughts and ideas, knowledge and information, meanings and consequences, instead of spinning, spinning, in a void made by my own hand? How shall I reassure, how shall I choose?
(I feel the quickening of a litany.)