I turn and walk away
Then I come round again
Looks as though tomorrow
I'll do pretty much the same
He awoke one morning only to discover that the funk he’d been feeling for the past couple of days was starting to get progressively worse. It had started out slowly enough, something akin to that first sneeze that signals the onset of a winter cold or that little pimple on the skin that soon blossoms into a full-blown outbreak of pus bearing sores. He’s not sure how to shake it or cure it and he’s worried about it becoming contagious should it be allowed to run it’s course.
He’s afraid to examine to what’s going inside his head, much like peeling away the layers of an onion, he’s afraid of the tears it might bring. These days, it seems as if routine is his enemy and that the enemy seems to be growing stronger with each passing day. He knows that most people each have their own cross to bear but, for the time being, takes no comfort or solace in the plight of others. For the time being, he must come first, for if he doesn’t, nobody else ever will.
The routine he suffers through, while monotonous ,is not out of the ordinary. As a matter of fact, most people, if asked, would call it a blessing. He knows this is true but this realization does nothing to raise him from the height of his doldrums nor does it help mask the passage of time. In the cosmos of his own mind, he is truly a dunce.
There was a time he took a sort of refuge in the safety of the routine. He compared himself to an actor in a well rehearsed play, reading the same lines to the same audience night after night. He felt inspired and took on an air of confidence knowing that there would be no surprises and no changes to the script. Unlike the real world actor though, he cannot quit his part or change his role and his confidence has begun to ebb.
The pressures of the real world have also begun to take their toll He has assumed what seems a lifetime of debt that at times seems insurmountable and his sleep is broken and fretful. He no longer smiles at the simple things and has become jaded towards those of who love him.
I must turn down your offer
But I'd like to ask a break
You know I'm ready to give anything
For anything I take
He longs for the days when the spell will be broken, when he can once again enjoy the simple pleasures that life had once afforded him. In the back of his mind, he knows the day will come, he just doesn’t know when it might grace his doorstep. He knows that the best magic comes in the simplest of forms and that the magic doesn’t require the skill of the magician and that all it takes is the belief of the audience. We are after all, each and every one of us, magicians in one form or another.
He’ll go home tonight, secure in the knowledge that the blessings bestowed upon him far outweigh any self imposed curse. He hopes to hide his current displeasure with life from those he holds so near and dear so as not to poison them with his problems. He knows it won’t be easy but, for the sake of those same people, he knows it must be done.
He will wear the smile, he will do the job, he will open his arms, his mind and his heart and hope that by doing so, the demons that have taken up temporary residence of his mind will be vanquished, never to return.
He is, after all, only human and that is the best he can hope for.
(The words that partition this w/u are excerpted from the Grateful Dead’s Mission in The Rain – words by Robert Hunter, music by Jerry Garcia. It’s a song that somehow speaks to me)