February 19

This limbo the worst of it, I think. Something I have known before, & known to be deleterious, to prove capable of a slow self-crumbling. My challenge right now to capture & frame these fugitive hours in positive light, to mine them for what constructive potential they offer. Each day I sleep longer, the patina on the world dulls until I catch it in its waning & cast myself into it again. All too easy to embrace distraction, to run for a tape at the end of each day rather than keeping the long view. This will not be done for me. In spite of a shameful history of procrastination & dubious will, against the grain of what indolence I’ve always carried in me, I am now as ever sole accountable, alone responsible for how each day will unfurl. Short time stings in vagaries. Though I’ve worked, I’ve not worked enough. Though I’ve progressed with Alaskan plans, I’ve not progressed enough. Is it the fear in me? Or is it, as I suspect, the familiar dependence on Stef, the way I waver at every decision without her input. A sentence & not a question. God, what will is there in me that it hurries so from my grasp? I must remember the dead beneath my every step, the worms tending the black soil, the chorale that comes to me with each dawn, the bold illusions of future & past & the steadfast truth that I am the only force singularly at play in my coming & going. What will fade & what will come to be. & here I am, paralyzed at the feet of the ordinary. Carve, then, rend & weave. Body of instruments, gestalt of tools, apply, & fare forward.