Brother Ass and the Blurring of Time

Dear Senior Burns,

As my age increases, my hierarchy of needs appears to decrease. The only exceptions to this being length of sleep and tasks for bodily maintenance: this old boat feels brittle at best, chipped and taking on water as the horizon rises evermore above my line of sight. But that's Brother Ass talking. 

The body -- its span resembling a singular natural rotation: sun-pulled orbit, lunar year, bloom to bake to bushel and back to barren beds -- rises and sets. We know this, cognitively, but each body shocks to the sensation of its own setting. Perhaps God graces us with contentment for less as our energy also lessens. 

Ironically, as my requirements of contentment decrease, curiosity grows. The great curse of youth is its lack of recognition -- youth cannot recognize itself. One can only appreciate certain lights as they fade. So it goes. So it ever shall. 

While walking my pugs tonight (a routine I take for granted), I counted the matters that give me the most pleasure. Where does time lose its demands and textures? If I can name those matters, I can choose to spend more time doing what blurs my awareness of time, more energy exploring the routes that reveal the most new ground. Apparently, such is the way of Wisdom.

I have no intentions of listing those matters here. But a few thoughts seem worth collecting in the moment.

I love words. I love their shape -- on paper, in my mouth, around my ears. And I love other people's words more than my own. That's why I'm here. That's why I'm giving shape to these words, Senior Burns. I love words everywhere except from my fingertips. And, in such, a remedy needs to root. So I type. 

The same goes for stories: I revere stories most that are not my own. Do we all? Is this the plague of familiarity with self -- that we easily become a dichotomous blend of narcissism and negligence? Again, that's why I'm here. The cancer. The south. The religious mania. The family. The infertility. The booze. The despair. The sobriety. The body hauling each to the final-dump in a wrecked chassis. So I type.

Somewhere curiosity replaced creativity for me, and I wonder if "curiosity" actually serves as a code-word for "consumption". I would like to replace the order of those terms -- re-crowning creativity over curiosity and redirecting energies so that creativity drives curiosity. I've lost sight of creativity, laid down like a mother-tongue in distracted travel the practice of it. Consumption feels much easier. Brother Ass, however, says there's too little time to embrace "easy". So I type.

I am tired tonight, Senior Burns. Too tired to type much more than self-gratifying reflections. Speaking of "easy" -- how about this over-emphasis on self-expression? How much easier is it, such as now, to reflect that to truly reveal one's self? I ask you this as Brother Ass sings his dirgeful caterwaul ode to sleep. And I am eager to be so lulled. But I have typed. I am still typing towards this end. And so I type again tomorrow. Perhaps even to you, my friend.

-- ks


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