I've fucked up, somehow. I wondered what it might be like to do nothing. I found out. I may as well be working. There is little difference in my life between working and not working, which saddens me though I'm not quite sure why. The loss must be purely imaginary. It seems to be a combination between me either liking my job or me kidding myself about having other interests to pursue. Or, perhaps this paralysis has nothing at all to do with me.
A recognition of how much time is spent being a dad: all of it. You can only ever be relieved from the most immediate needs. The people who love being a parent are narcissists of the very worst kind. It is neither giving nor loving to enjoy being needed.
Freedom is an odd notion and a difficult claim. You must be free from something, some force that would otherwise hold you. Little matter that the captivator may be captivating. Loving a child does not require your entirety, but somehow that's what's given. Maybe I've only lost the ability to wander, to meander aimlessly without regard to time. Never knowing when I will be needed is nearly indistinguishable from always being needed.
Yesterday, after waking up tired from the drive home, I lounged on the couch reading for most of the day. Time vanished around me, minutes evaporated, forming the hours of clouds above which then never rained. Each of them moved slowly from my living room, silent as disinterested ghosts, one at a time though as if in unison, leaving the plain ceiling as open white sky, and me falling far beneath it.
Many must wish to live a life of consequence, of meaning. When given some small license to pursue an interest I chose mostly to hide from time, to take cover from the passing hand of the clock, the shadow of its wings as a swooping sundial of the sky. The distant screeching of yet another sunset.
Seconds and hours, firsts and fits, ticking maledictions, a disintegrating series of curses, each moment receding as it arrives, untouched or misunderstood, discarded or lost. It requires some imagination to avoid the immediate, to bridge the imaginary brook between what was and a when that might only one day be. Concentration is needed to avoid the present moment, to waste it in the past's senseless recurring and the future's recurring apprehensions. It helps to be alone.
Time teaches you to be alone, how to and why. Always by its own schedule, which it expects you to practice without warning. No wonder that people meditate. It's a way of memorizing the sensation of time. All so that it can later be recognized or ignored at will. You commit silence to each single second's passing.
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