There are two roads into my wilderness: one by words, the other by a channel of electricity that follows my breath. When I follow the first road, I am worried and exhausted. When I remember to take the second one, I am relieved and filled with silent joy. I’m not holy and I’m not wise, but I’m not a complete knucklehead and I sometimes remember to avoid what hurts in favor of what heals.
In much younger days of aspiration, the world of words stretched forward in endless possibility and danger. In those days I fell or was wrenched from the words-world by some wondrous defect in my destiny. I slipped onto that little known second road and have straddled the two ever since. Being nothing but a regular guy, the standard-issue anxieties climbed on my back and yet I had moments of access to some other brand of life support.
After decades of repetition, wearing and tearing down the curtain, the words reveal their hollow points. They don’t last; there is nothing solid to them. The dog gets old, the house needs paint, a neighbor moves away. Ambushed lately by fear of losing my job, and all the trouble that might ensue, I stumbled onto a reminder: that misery was a coin toss away from peace; just a different way of inhaling, incompatible with the parade of words.