Stepping into the fray

Not all at once now, but after a month-long reprieve from the machinery of the everyday, I've started to slip my toes back into the sun. Our minds don't allow for complete dislocation--it seems almost impossible to snap the rope that tethers you to the life you live each day, mostly mindless, limbs in motion. But if my mind is clogged, frenetic, and always at unrest, there is the driven escape of reading a book--it can do for me what longing and willpower cannot. In the past month, I have read and read and read and in the thrilling safety of other minds found yes, the expected escape, the quiet of being out of my own head, but also the gentle, even frail reappearance of will, of the grit needed to go on. 

A Happy Birthday

This evening, I sat by an open window
and read till the light was gone and the book
was no more than a part of the darkness. 
I could easily have switched on a lamp, 
but I wanted to ride this day down into night,
to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page 
with the pale gray ghost of my hand.
 

- Ted Kooser 

"Fading Light" by mRio