Hark the Heralds

I wear a talisman. I wear one single talisman because were I to wear an additional one for every instance in which I upheld a moment of daily life-magic into the light I wouldn’t be able to move under the weight of them all. 

Look, there really is magic all around you. This isn’t some sort of Doug Henning, fucking transcendental levitation bullshit, either. There’s just forces at work. Trust me, they’re there. Their thereness is very, very there. Give them light and let them show you the way of the righteous. You are at your best when you take your place behind them and stop all your pathetic wrangling to try and beat that which functions to precede you. I am no genius, but I fucking know that that is a god damn waste of time. 

Have I made mistakes? Holy fuck, I’m the belle of the ball. I have tripped beneath the weight of my own fallibility so many times I’m like a walking testimony to the virtues of hubris. I build monuments so that I might worship at the altar of my own stupidity. I am crippled at the mere thought of some of the most basic human interactions. And the next day? The next day I light a torch and guide myself into uncharted terrain, fearless, without hesitation and fuck you for asking. 

that’s who I am. 

But tonight, last night, these many nights before that -- I am something else. 

Heralds have shouted the arrival of my ignorance before his court, have dropped scrolls to the marbled floors detailing my every indiscretion. He is not amused. Nor should he be. 

You can do a lot with a brain. 

Mine is like a running joke. Mine is like a gag reel, an eternal next and next and next and fuck you I’m so tired of this and I am so not sure of what this means and I am never the man I was before and will be tomorrow so don’t even think of calling me him. 

That’s who I am.  

I just want to forge something that I can look at from a distance, no matter how slight, and say, “I did that.” 

I have done that. I have done that with both of my children. I step back -- they are there, being stubborn or dancing hip-hop or eating a fruit snack, and what I am lucky enough to notice is -- I did that. But I am not done. 

Where did I go off the rails? Where did I leave the plot? Where did I take a short leap off a long pier and get swallowed in the maw? 

You know what, it doesn’t matter. 

Tomorrow hasn’t happened yet. And that is why I wear this talisman. Because no matter what has come before -- and oh, what a fuck before has been -- no matter what was before, what is next doesn’t exist. 

There’s still hope. Cash it.