How to be.

Here is me being useless and surrendering to the futility of my ant-hill life. I guess we’re all going nowhere, busy in carpeted rooms that smell like popcorn, that sit against our souls in greenish despair — we’re all going nowhere, going to the copy room and running our fingers over hot pages of meaningless text that we’ll press into some other hands and later, come home to our lovers, and have nothing to show. Working up to, working on, and never leaving, spinning in the endless spiral of our old stories, and getting lost in the familiar grooves of our once-upon-a-times, and here we are, clacking away and muttering with sore throats, stapling and shaking hands and trading facts. The fact is that we are sitting very still in all this claustrophobic motion, hoping for a way out. Fuck.

There’s a chance of showers, dust storms, and a welling up in my chest that will make me cry small tears and open and close my hands, wordless with desire and nowhere to put it. I am not enough people, I am only me, bruised shins and freckles, and no idea how the fuck to be. I remember sitting in the temple and wondering if I was comfortable, even in my own head, reverberating with the music of gongs and the sigh and murmur of all the sad fucking people, so sad, so heavy, with the burden of our limited years, all the dying, every day, all the living, all the choosing. And it feels so hard, but it’s the only thing we’ve ever done.

Outside the parking lot is bright, and there’s my car, cracked windshield and cluttered seats, rattling speakers and streaked windows, and a few things that I carry around from here to there, and back, spending long hours sitting and letting the Californian landscape rush past on either side. What the fuck am I even waiting for? More time to elapse behind a window, with all my fears bunching up around my bones until they grow solid and unmovable, imaginary zeros to march away from my bank account, despite my lack of motivation? I am not supposed to be this petrified person with a life behind walls, with boxes and stale letters, am I?