I wake up hearing Tim talk to our son. I don't know what they're saying. the fan is on in our bedroom, making everything beyond it sound like a familiar rhythm, a song I know by heart. Lately, I've been thinking about how difficult it is to be steady, how steadiness is the most difficult necessity to order and to happiness and pleasure. and how this is because we live out our timelines under the halo of the end, knowing it's there, ahead of us, at some point that's always too close. and we want our pleasures, our tragedies, we want the absolutes to come at us quickly. again and again, we watch the same things unfolding and change nothing. the endlessness brings us nothing. I hate thinking about these things.
for the last seven days, I've tried to turn this part of myself off. for years, I've charted these habits in my behavior, and the best I've done is only feel this way twelve days a month. that was last month. that was with a lot of effort. I'm already in the hole six days this month, yesterday. I'm trying to change the voice, trying to pull it back, push it down a different hallway. one with a window, a door, one with that checkered summer tent where my son sleeps.
and then there's today. it's like falling through the mirror: all the strongholds behind have fallen away, and the steps I'm taking are appearing, spontaneously. it's a quiet Friday off, a day to spend with my son. no phones, no news, nothing. and he's asleep, taking a nap in the summer tent I make around his bed. and he sleeps for hours. and he looks calm, and he looks happy. and I hope he always knows what calm feels like, and I hope he remembers the feeling. I hope that he always knows how to get back there.
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