Automatic Emblems

The Playground:

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

The large playground stood tall in the back yard, shaded by an expansive oak tree.  It was for me whatever I desired.  It was at times a ship, and I the captain of the voyage. Or a clubhouse in which the operations and members were dictated by myself.  It was all but what it was intended to be.  In it I was far from the reality I knew.  I had responsibilities, but of a different kind, taking root in that of basic survival.  Just me and the land. My goals were clear and the means by which to complete them were as well.  In my shape shifting vessel, I could escape the clouded ambiguity of “ the daily grind”

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, … himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.

transformation is key……In body and mind.  A degeneration of sorts in body can mean epiphany of mind.  When you remove the human form, and such responsibilities expected of one in possession of this form, what is left?

change is not a handicap after all……..

Default Moods

He was always slow moving, calculated.  An admirable quality.  He made few mistakes, and when he made them, he would come up with a logical solution, but worry and anxiety found a way to flood into his thoughts because of the large discrepancy in the time it took him to put into action what he had been contemplating.

I kissed him and he gathered his thoughts.  I’d thrown his balance out of whack.  He had to understand his feelings for me.

He always had to understand, never impulsive.  We spoke on the phone and he searched, always searched for something to say.

One day I told him I loved him, I think I did, or maybe thought I did….he put so much on this phrase….I don’t know that I did.  To him it was a magical presence to thrust you from reality into perfection…perhaps it was, but he spent so long trying to measure what we had against this criteria.

A perfect moment to murmur the words, an unmistakable assurance of its presence, an absolute…….So long he waited for these things, and even if they came, they would never occur simultaneously.

He was a talented musician.  He would spend hours perfectly crafting his songs, the wrong note, wrong sound practically pained him.  he applied this logic to all.  Why couldn’t the depth of human emotion be as easily understood as the perfect combination of sounds to his musically inclined ears?

When finally he acknowledged his love for me, my love for him was already fading.  As much as I wanted it back, grasped for it, pleaded with myself to feel what I had felt for him.  I could not.

Life is short.  A phrase we have all heard at one point or another rings especially true for me. Illness brought me my greatest reminder of this, and I have been living by it in ever aspect of my life ever since. I am not condoning blind or reckless impulsiveness and I am not downplaying the tremendous benefits of logical and calculated behavior. I choose only to live by this phrase and exude it in my every action.


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