The Pursuit

322.

Several theories, all conspiratorial, swirl around the vortex of my hypothalamus. The one I am preoccupied with is her transparency in dosing me with an elixir designed to ease my electrified and still buzzing nerve fibbers, coaxing them towards a state of rest. Her therapy suggesting that a magnesium sulfate and gabapentin nightcap is the remedy I accept with complete trust, and partial fear. The trust from my experience in judging character - she gets my highest rating - and the fear from not trusting myself to respond as required. This is due to the second of my concerns, and the random access memory used in its processing, which centers around my reluctance to commit to the challenge, that one she tossed my way like a cheap salad, asking for nothing less than my absolute best. I remain critical of my capabilities at this stage of the game. As the old dog about to learn a new trick, I can't shake the feeling that taking another long nap in the sun might be more satisfying than yet another, and most likely painful, personal challenge. The cocktail's active ingredients and these heady issues meet in the dark ally of my imagination ready to rumble, neither of them foolish enough to bring knives to the fire-fight.

I do find it amusing that I am entertaining these negative reactions to her challenge. It is a first. Under the normal circumstances that, for the sake of this exercise we'll call 'my entire life up to meeting this person' I have never shied away from the difficult, the challenging, the exceptional or, plainly put, the hard. Perhaps because I have always sensed that should I want it bad enough, the time to achieve would be available. But now? I am not so sure. Even Gladwell put limiters on his 1,000 hours to do become anything theory. If the hard stuff was easy, the easy would be worthless. There is a degree of time involved. As I focus in on the paradox of this, I sense a strengthening of my total being, as if simply by the mere consideration of its potential, my body, mind and spirit cross swords in Muskateer-like fashion pledging the fealty of oneness. It isn't about the finish. The goal is a falsehood. That pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is a discounted currency and adjusted for inflation by centuries of hype. We have been gaslit again, always looking for the win that never quite jibes with our understanding of victory. I am in free-fall. Time. Lack thereof. Futures. Stock market optimism. White collar crime. Inflation. Commerce. Greed. The enormous societal pressure to succeed. Fucking Republican hypocrisy. Racism. Religion. Midnight. Daylight Savings Time. Addiction. Fear. Pain, suffering and ignorance. Time. Emotional sand in the hour glass. Purpose. Meaning. Hope. Love. Tomorrow.

I wake in a cold sweat wondering where fate and karma have brought me this time. I find little solace in the recognition of the tight-knot oak boards of my bedroom ceiling. My heart is approaching tachycardia red-line but my lips are parched shut. How long have I been out?

I re-thread the tapes of my reel-to-reel memory and hear the echos of my last string of Dylan-esque lyrical questioning, variations on the theme of time. A single drop of sweat falls from my nose and lands with a thousand pound payload.

Time is an illusion. There is only now. Always and forever. The eternal diegesis.

"Make the pursuit the priority."