March 07, 2010 - 7:00 p.m.
Shark Mentality
and not the predatory kind. the can't-stop-moving-in-my-mind
surrounded by guts and blood and doom kind.
I am the optimist worrier. I consider every gray lining in my own life, yet spend the energy, limitless, in myself, encouraging everyone around me.
I am paralyzed and terrified of the motion around me. I may stop breathing. I am moving too fast, too fast to trust that these parking tickets, $20 in my own lot, $60 in a lie, are not signs of greater fines for deeds left unpunished.
Such good intentions, so much pure desire to please;
need for approval balanced with desire to refute the need for anyone else
I cuddle up to the grater and push myself through palms first. Then I wonder, why am I bloodied?
the television tells me that there are chances for all, the opportunity to compete; and with the competitive edge - I should fear nothing but the cliched 'fear itself'.
But it is myself.
I fear.
My fledgling attempts to defy my own insecurity and the misplaced confidence sprung from a life of yes
have caused me to tread out of this nest, into a den where only the famous can survive the fall.
And I am flapping. We love to watch it. I pushed myself here, out on this edge. To prove to myself that I could survive it. And I have, save the way I torture myself with the what if; like the cat that terrorized the basement dwellers, pushing the mice to death. A slow, squeezing, squeeze-toy death, under a hand that looked so soft.
soft pads, mercilessly reminding their victim: you asked for it, you tempted fate.
Do not venture out of your holes, into the light, especially where night-vision and cat's eyes exist.
I will regret my mistep, because I will always know what is at stake and because I will always wonder if this tail will catch on something, as I run, carelessly into a future where kinks and bruises on parts, trapped in past lives, will follow me.
Multiplied by nine. Still in this life.
"God help you if you are a phoenix, and you dare to rise up from the ash. A thousand eyes will smoulder with jealously, while you are just flying past." (Difranco)
Even my small flight, known only to myself, is a test of the possibility of death. I know I am not invincible, in my "self-made cage" (Anne Carson). I wait to unhinge my mind.
Once you have flown, Clark, 'you will never be the same again' (Seagle).
