Fool’s Gold
Could it really be that NOW I’m thinking time should just stop.
Or pause.
Hold its breath. Then JUMP two, three, four — six! Dead, unexuberant, unnecessary moments in life and then stop. Again. Pause. Recalculate, breathe out and begin again.
No, no, no don’t rewind — don’t make me relive — make me alive!
I want to be awake and collecting moments, handfuls of them, armfuls. Enough to make a giant leaf-pile to leap into. Yes, the imagery comes easily into your spectacular imagination. Can you see the times I collected fly up into the air and sprinkle down around me? I can reach out my fingers and SNATCH
one in particular, turn it in the palm of my hand to watch it glitter as it catches the light and shove it into my mouth and swallow. It slides down my throat and then spreads like something precious and severely painful, shooting through my veins, agonizing around the endpoints of my brain, down my spine and breaking through my fingertips.
NOW.
Am I different? Is this life any different? Have I succeeded in finding — is my long weary journey winding down?
Absolutely
Not.
So I open my eyes, look about me, shake my finger at time — though its not your fault — and now breathe. Recollect. I close my eyes and force back the evil intentions of existence to keep them from finding a home in my thoughts.
Instead I plant a tiny, tiny seed of fool’s gold in my mind, carefully tricking myself to believe the thing that keeps me going. That out there, far away, is something better. And it could begin at any moment.
