What Keeps
Me Sane
There is a
dream, a vague impossible dream. When I think of it I see many forms, many
fragments; the home, the house, my wife, my library, but who knows what form
those will take. What does not change is the means, leisure bought with my stories,
my fairy tales. To pay my way with words, with little things I pluck from the
world like pebbles in a riverbank. But that is a distant ambition. Right now I
live for freedom, for the brief times when I consign myself to a task of my
choosing, something I can dedicate myself to without reservation or thought of
completion.
But those
moments are still too far and too few. So I turn to my night of revelry, my
contained chaos. For one night I let go, and I am free. I drink those foul
fluids that civilized people revile, and let go. I don’t worry about work or
tasks not done, or future fears or past regrets. I know only the present, one
night of stupid indulgence, an evening of arrogant solitary selfishness. And tomorrow
comes, and I drag myself back, back to work. But another week will pass, and
then I’ll play.
