September 05, 2010
Oh, but watch me miss you...And how I did not believe for an instant it would be this way.
But now I come across this place and I wait for you, watch for you. Without even meaning to, I place my laundry on the utility room table and find eyes immobile from the window which faces your property. A simple household task turned burdened with a suddened heightened sense of your proximity to me. Or I traverse the lawn and wait for my peripheral vision to capture the outline of your form disappearing into the garage. In convivial company I become silent when the reflection of our lakeview windows contain your uphill march from the water to your "front" door.
I remain frozen, hushed with my rapid heartbeat; I hold onto this as a silent tribute to what once was.
This sanctuary on the lake has taken on new meaning as even here I now have to repress the world I wish I belonged to. It is no longer my Shermerston, my perfection, my freedom from doubt or self-conciousness. Despite my bold attempts at remaining unaffected, I am yet affected. I am all too aware and alert, on edge and hardly at ease, figdety and fumbling.
For your voice echoes in my ears like the long lost memory of a childhood song. If only I could recall the words precisely or find as much joy as I did when once I sung the tune with confidence, perhaps it would not pull so harshly upon my attention. But as I cannot own as once I did in days gone by, I miss it dearly and only wish I could recall as sweetly as I did then.
Perhaps if I had paid more attention or hung on more tightly; if I were better able to distinguish the differing melody from the same old repeating refrain; if I could have only been a bit more ambitious and a little less lackadaisical. Perhaps then I would not be so reminiscent now.
But as it was I hung on loosley. Not wanting to overthink a good thing or push too quickly a question which required great consideration.
And so it seems I have done as I often do when I am uncertain. In order to avoid one resolution over another, I make none, and end up quite without resolve altogether. Not sure which is right, which is modest, which is wrong, which is selfless, I just fold before I know what it is I could have won.
I fold.
I'm too afraid to test the endurance of the limb that I dare not even put an ounce of weight upon it. If it will gently bend or if it will boldly break, I have not a clue, for these are both reprocussions which I fear to some extent. I fear it will last and I fear it might all come crashing down and all I am left with now is the wonder of what could have been. What I could have had or what I might have lost in the attempt.
Perhaps it is just better to know than to always wonder as I do. But perhaps, also, it is not for me to decide. It is not my limb to venture out upon. It is not mine to break or bend. It is not mine to contemplate at all. It is merely that I must admire its questionable placement from this distance -- for all intents and purposes, unscatched and unaffected by whatever outcome may be.
So I continue in this way, hoping to make as few alterations as possible to the way things simply are but hoping still to jostle the tree a little so as not to let it forget that I'm there; still watching, still waiting, still hoping there might be something more for me to do besides just watch the whole thing go down.
It is grand, I must admit, to sit tranquilly or expectantly and watch the world chaotically unfold before you.
But it is also grand, sometimes, to live it too.
And, right now, oh how much I miss the latter.