I can scarcely see if anything I do is worthwhile anymore. The same passion and rigor is there, but doubts have always been growing, and keeping the details of a brimming world from overwhelming my meager means has never been a simple matter.

There are only so many waking hours. Days rush past so precipitously. I can only do so much.

I dream of flat tires and being late to the theatre and getting lost in an airport. I dream of ticket stubs and tire patches and invalid boarding passes. Since when have dreams been enlisted as implements of mediocrity? I worry that I'm becoming that which I most fear: boring.

I push through these slow mornings in hope of an accomplished and brimming life, differing from what I have by way of emphasis, texture and means. I must look at things with a slanting eye, as it were, and force my pupils to dilate and focus, to take these bits in and push those others away, and thereby see what I need to see, changing the emphasis to see what I hope to see.

But it is a dangerous and even a cruel thing, to live in hope. It can be as bitter and rending as it can be lovely and inspiring. We should all be so lucky.

best,

paulmonsterpensive