Nice Day

And I saw building up all around me an undeniable crust. A thickness to people and anything outside myself, and even some things therein. I excused it as a protectant, allowed its presence, classified it as benign. Very little could get out, and even less of it in. Unless it was those days where very little could get in, and even less could find its way out.

I sat down to make a list, a clarifying activity. A way of simplifying, of bringing things to a boil. I took a pen and piece of paper and sat down. I came up with nothing. Hours of unknown hours manifested nothing beyond a series of tapped ink specks scattered in no discernible order.

"There are going to be days," Mother would tell me, "where you feel like giving up. I am here to tell you that, after all these years in this life, what I have found is this: Giving up is OK." It is a profound thing to say to a seven-year-old, although I did not know it at the time.

The world is spinning out of order it seems. Not out of control, but out of order. Whether it has to do with the moon, a gravitational pull, some sort of axis, the weather, Buddha, things are not as they should be. And I suppose that of all the people in all the world, most are like me. They have recognized the glitch in the system but are too dumbfounded to say anything other than "Nice day." Perhaps we are all of us ignorant. And if I recognize the ignorance in myself does that make me better off or worse?

People would try. Family, friends, women and girls, they would try to crack it away. "There is something there," they'd say, "there is something underneath." Everyone wanted to be the one, as everyone wants to. But there are very few who can be. And I worry that of all the people in all the world, the only one who can break through to myself is me. And, as we have all of us seen, I am nowhere near a place where I would begin to think to try to try.