An oscillation. An orbit. Something comes to—and then something else. Here I have landed. The brink is as cold in the winter as you might expect, and no less in the light of a good morning’s cold winter shower. Now I remember—I was confounded.
Where have I gone? Had I given myself to somebody and failed to ask for it back? Did I leave myself in the country, on the farm in the mud, or along the highway from that quiet home to the corner store? Did I drop myself in the city’s sordid lane one of those many sordid times? Have I neglected my own self such that now I am simply and inexplicably just—gone?
I have been so careless for so long that, looking back, I have given myself nowhere to belong. I have come too close too many times, broken too many promises. There are people, old friends and lovers, minds in possession of truths concerning myself the details of which would be forever beyond me but for their sundry graces, these people and their estranged and solitary tributes. I was once great, they said.
Time will deliver me something, somewhere. I have surely lost myself but where—that is the matter of the issue itself. When oneself is the thing which is lost, where to begin looking is a matter of instinct. Everything I say might as well have a question point afterhand. I have of course learned much of the ways in which wise men conduct themselves. Perhaps I will discover some cunning in this wreckage.
I have forgotten my years, my triumphs however humble, my small treasures. I might have even forgotten most of my failures had they not taken me so apparently far from myself. There is something heroic underneath this disorientation, something that will ride out the thrashing. I haven’t finished reconciling the nature of my loss. I was left behind to reincarnate. I am permanently behind schedule.
So the hero will search for himself. Perhaps I am the one he seeks. I cannot say my name. I have called into the darkness. I am a spider caught in her own web. I have embodied and now fully personified the final fingertrap, the straitjacket. How twisted am I such that I don’t recognize my earthly reference? That faculty whichever with my bearings were once found has itself been misplaced. Behind me or before me, there is no difference.
I believe I was told to find the north star and stay true. Now and again I stir only at night. What unreckonable grief god was concealing when he fastened me to these cumbersome hours! The tales I would untell if only I knew my own secret! And this pantheon would do away with the many guarantees given to me regarding the exchange rate on my very soul if only I knew their mercy. As if I could just taste the salvation!
And as if the world were nothing to me I have the pleasure and continuous torment of loving each moment for its genius, its stark and magic occurrence. I am always in receipt of something wholly astounding. I am at once utterly exhausted of containing anything anymore. May the light that god claims to have reserved for me be kept in perpetuity thus for my king’s sake.