Friday, November 18, 2005

when my fingers get cold, they feel as if the tips have turned into hardened lead. feeling leaves them and the only sense i have that they are even there is a cold sensation and this little voice emanating from halfway up my palm, telling me to move my hands... very... very... slowly, or the ends may shatter right off. i suppose it's years of cigarette abuse, as i feel it in my right hand and right index finger more than i do my other hand or fingers. still, maybe my right index finger is actually furthest from my heart, according to the road map of my arteries. maybe it's not actually freezing in my basement right now, but instead my heart has just been dealt with too carelessly in life and is slowly giving up the ghost. maybe this is a sign of things to come. life keeps going on around you after your heart leaves entirely. you can tell when it's been freshly beaten and is recovering, or when it's closest to utter defeat and hasn't quite pulled it's legs back under itself from the last fall. that's when you notice that people keep moving, the weather keeps falling, routines go unchanged, clocks tick by... all of the color has left objects and the corners of your vision may be blurry at times, but nevertheless movements continue and continue outside the window of your eyes.

life is more than the ebb and tide to and from matters of the heart. it is more than the falling, the picking back up, trying, succeeding, failing... it is more than what happens between shifts at work or nights of sleep. it is more than our foolish heads are able to understand or quantify. and it goes in little moments, moments at a time.