just keep me where the light is
I slept for ten hours and I am so, so tired. The thing about trying to be an anchor for someone is that is leaves you feeling heavy. My brain's been sick lately - I've been drifting in a fog. Well, I'm grounded now, and dragging, but at least people can take hold of me. Without my eye in the sky, I can see only what is around me, just ahead, just behind.
A thing has happened. And for those of us who are not Time Lords, all points in time are fixed points in time. The only way through it is through it.
"Don't dwell on what has passed away / Or what is yet to be."
I should clarify. A bad thing has happened. In the middle of so many good things, a truly terrible thing, like the one absolutely-rotten-to-the-core peach in the bottom of the crate that makes you look suspiciously at all the rest. It just contaminates everything. Like how Mondays poison Sundays with their looming anxiety of work or school. Maybe not literal Mondays and Sundays. But you know those days.
"Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack, a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in."
But you can't hold out for the perfect crate of peaches, or you'll be waiting a long time. And Saturdays don't quite feel the same without the Monday-Friday. I'm not saying the bad makes the good better; it doesn't, always. It's a crack. But sometimes, if we're lucky, it lets in the light. And, god...a sliver of light in the darkness is like a miracle, isn't it?
An anchor's only useful if it's tied to something. I think, for now, I'm on my own. The people who might need me are huddled together on their own lifeboat, and they can't just stay in one spot because there are things to be done. So here I wait, in the sand, in the silt, at the bottom of this lake which isn't so deep, feeling the waves, but barely being moved by them. I will be here, if people need to ground themselves, and I will be here when the storm passes, and I will be here when someday, sometime, I am pulled up into the lifeboat, into the light.
"Keep yourselves where the light is."
31 August 2016
Thanks to Leonard Cohen for this piece of poetry. And John Mayer for this one.