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Dear reader, dear listener,
Here’s a frustrating fact my bored, under-stimulated mind is having to deal with at the moment: each day, the list of things I need to get sorted out is full, turning out to be surprisingly incomplete the very next. In the context of confinement and forced unemployment, during these strangest of times when time is not an issue, you might suspect that I am overstating facts here or maybe even straight out lying.
But I am not talking about chores. The bed is made, the bills are paid and the dishes are done. The floors are clean and the toilet paper supply is at an acceptable level.
What I am talking about are mental trepidations: cobras, one after another, first hiding, then seamlessly slithering passed me, up the tree of life that I am trying to climb. None of them are attacking me just yet. They’re not even really lurking because I can sort of see them. But they are ahead of me, staring at me and looking down on me. As if waiting for me to confront them, grapple with them and then fail.
They are the things I still wish to accomplish but I am not fully aware of, or the ambitions I have but prefer not to admit to. They wear the skins I need to shed to rid me from any scars and present a better version of myself on every occasion I get. They are a metaphorical mess that echoes my state-of-mind, somehow truthfully. They may bite me in the ass if I try to slip by them or laugh at me if I fall, when the branch I’ve been leaning on is no longer willing to carry my wistful weight, and snaps. It is all possible.
No, it is all just me, aimlessly sitting through a global crisis I am not playing any role in. I am no hero, and I am not even clapping my hands. I am your every law-abiding citizen, trying to hold his head up, just moving on; another innocuous cobra aimlessly roaming the trees until this is all over.
JdR. Podcast 