Stay Alive, Stay Vulnerable

Dammit, still can’t get Carol out of my system. Sitting in the train with my daughter, tagging along an a shopping trip for clothes, her fingers busy sending texts to her friends. Looking out the window, my insides like a dishtowel twisted tight to wring it out, all I can do is think of Carol and her vibrancy and her smile and her twinkling intelligence.

The train stopping. The door swishing open. Passengers leaving, passengers joining, the door swishing shut. Life continuing.

Thinking, Carol, beautiful times together, every moment. Meeting, tentative steps closer, joining up, making love. The moments becoming even more painfully beautiful as they recede into the past.

But more than that, their beauty, they lay partly in the promise of things to come. A promise now snatched away. The wrench still bearing its cargo of pain. Now, on a trip with my daughter, stomach still wringing.

My daughter looking at me, patting my hand, you okay daddy? Sure, sweetheart, just thinking about things. A brief shared smile, then her attention distracted, phone bleeping, a text from a friend.

The train rattling on. Thinking again. Carol. Moments together, purest when taken for what they are, mere evanescent flickers. Yet their residue enduring, the grasping mind refusing to let them go, precious memories forming. Inescapable, the hope and expectation of more.

So you slide into old stratagems, secure the future together. A weird alchemy taking over. The passing moment dislodged from its primacy, crowded out by plans and schemes and dreams of what’s to be. And thus by stealth vitality leaks away and sclerotic staleness starts its slow ascent.

My daughter patting my hand again, texting duties done. So what are you thinking about, daddy? Oh, just about life and the crazy world we live in, sweetheart.

Well, another eternal human conundrum. Stay in the moment, disallow the past, refuse to build a future, stay alive, stay vulnerable. Or retreat into security, feel safe, succumb to staleness. To hell with it, my life’s had enough of staleness’s suffocations, the moment with all its cruel pangs, that’s my choice.

So, come on then, pull out of this mood, spend the moment now, with my daughter.