There is such a busy-ness to the world that I can no longer relate to.
Businesses, children and families, careers; all the churn and tumble of life.
Once the biological imperatives are expressed,
we seem to continue just to continue.
We form into groups and think of things to do to use the time.
We save to ensure we will have 'enough' in the mythical 'then'.
We exercise to ensure we will be healthy 'then'.
But I find myself wondering what 'then' is for.
I used to speak of having the courage to love and to risk.
I've been on the right side and the wrong side of both of those acts now
and nothing is changed.
Embrace the illusion of purpose
or recoil from the emptiness of what's left.
I've always been drawn to seek the edge and to sometimes, like now,
to tumble across it.
If it was too quiet in my life,
I'd pull the knife and begin to press it in.
And if it got too bloody,
I'd seek a lover's warm breast to rest my head against.
'Restlessness', it's been called by some, and courage by others
and insanity by yet others.
I just know that at 64, I'm sitting in a small town in remote New Zealand
turning my playing cards and I'm not sure I like what I see.
Before me lies the possibilities of relationship, crime, travel
and an endless opportunity to embrace illusion and to not look behind it
least I see that the flame I am preserving ...
the flame I am preserving ... is for ...?
Ah, the question has found me again.
For what is all of this? And why am I drawn to look so closely?
gallagher
Takaka, Golden Bay, New Zealand
2nd of February, 2012
— Copyright 1965-2013 by Dennis Gallagher —