In truth this feeling, this

weight, is hard to describe,

to articulate, like many

complex feelings that defy

the confinements of language.

 

But language is all I have in

this space of wrangling words,

so I shall describe that which I

am feeling, as others have also felt.

 

The feeling is, at once, the strange

mix of wanting this life so badly

but also wanting to walk away as

if it doesn’t matter, when it matters

all too much, but then all too little.

 

This is my odd little paradox

that may not make sense to you,

but maybe it does after all.

 

I dream of giving away this desire

for significance and living a

simple life like a Buddhist monk

tucked away in a Tibetan monastery

and devoted to a cause well

beyond the individual self of desire.

 

Or maybe seeking some mystical

seachange to another way of being

in the world that strikes the ringing

gong of authenticity and connection

with the substance of nature and being.

 

And yet, despite this wish for being

something else, or someone else,

I return to my work, to the goal

of being what I have often said

I really want to be after so long.

 

This is my troubling doubleness

that is a weird intimate companion,

a friend and foe who never leaves,

on this journey whose end has not yet

been determined but I feel its weight.

 

25/11/2022