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Admit to me


I thought I . . .

It’s bad manners to talk so much about yourself! And yet, there they are . . two ‘I’s in one phrase, well, something that can barely be called a phrase.

The thing is, I assumed that I was eloquent and passionate, to boot. Passionate I very well might be, but I expected to be able to say what it was about. And yet, when I turn to type, I hear myself gurgling someone else’s lines, some poetry I’d read as a kid. And strangely enough, it’s comforting, to know that I have some beautiful thoughts to fall back on. Then it gets frustrating; that I cannot say enough, particularly when material is hardly lacking.

I want to be able to say what I feel, to put it into words. People who want to read between the lines, be sure to read me right. I’ve impulses, thoughts, plans. I am bewildered by the beauty around me, and feel inadequate if I can’t tell you how beautiful it all is.

I try too hard, I am too hard on myself and others, I need to take a break – heard these opinions far too many times. Sometimes I can hardly see what’s wrong with me – I think I am alright. Well, if I didn’t think that, I could hardly go on, could I? I have other theories for myself. I think I give up too easily. Or rather, that’s how I was. And then I decided to try the opposite and not give up. Until it got too damn hard to go on trying. And I didn’t even realize that I had been banging my head against stone, and that it was time to look about myself. Sometimes, when the familiar reeling overtakes, I look around. The world is beautiful. Full of promise. I’ve got arms and eyes. And before I know it, a million arrows are shaping up, pointing at motley things, and I am off again, barely keeping up with as fast as I can think.

My mind is screaming at me, telling me how much I’ve missed and how much faster I must go. I am too scared to pause. Never mind the banging, no time to look around, try this, try harder.

It’s not my conscience, it’s not my will. My standards are high, but not unrealistic. After all, I don’t want something superlative – I am looking for something that will make life pleasant. I am looking for a world that has music and laughter, cheese toast and a soft bed, a world where Father is able to smile, a nest egg with which I can buy all the shampoo and conditioner I want.

I want to hoard up, so I will never know want. A prairie on which puppies do not squeak in pain. A meadow with cliffs and clouds and ripples in the lake.

But there are dykes on either sides of a path into the grey. I am desperate for a kindly look, thirsty for a spring whispering the secrets of wisdom.

Oh I want to do right! It’s a plain, plodding, pathetic refrain. I want to dress conservatively, sit with my ankles primly tucked and have only as much fun as He permits. I want to bring smiles and give smiles in return. I want to be of some value…

I want to have answers. I want to spare pain. I want my babies to love their Mommy. I want you to be glad that you have me.

That’s it: I want to know and have it all . . . how silly! I want to fill up the lacunae. Probably, it all stems from my need to feel that I am complete. Whereas I am pretty sure I’m not. I’m secretly scared that I am a bunch of folly, poor for all that I know I don’t give.

I scarcely know how to plug that, for it’s vast. My professor has taught me how we do not know ourselves completely. How there is the ‘unknown’ in everybody and the far scarier two quadrants – the quadrant you think you know and you don’t and the quadrant that exists but you don’t know it does. You catch glimpses. Retreat or rummage as you will, they’re never completely revealed.

Yes, it’s getting beyond me, and before long, I am left in poverty again, knowing, this time, that the inadequacy, is indeed real.

When one joins a course, one realizes afresh how much one doesn’t know. Discovery of ignorance is exhilarating, according to thinkers and philosophers. It tells them that there’s much left yet to be done and they can help to accomplish it.

What about ownership, a sense of responsibility? Is it only a band of thought or ambition that I am supposed to fulfill? There’s more surely. That’s the eternal hope for life, the whole continuum.

If I have come from ‘I’ to ‘life’, I’ve made some light for myself, even if it only lasts me for a pulse of time.

There’s hope, that I can go on banging my head against the miscellany of Time, that some other pulse of time will tell me that I’ve gotten a good peek at reality.

{BEAUTIFUL IN Bradley Hand ITC}

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