I feel like I barely managed to bust out of the last cage with my sanity intact. These are enclosures manufactured by circumstance. The job you had to take in order to pay the bills. The routines you develop while stuck in between the gears. Some of these jail cells develop over the course of years. Other traps can snap around you at a moment's notice. Take this pandemic for example. Five months ago on the Ides of March, schools shut down and the rest of society followed suit. Like stadium lights clicking off one by one after a big game. Summer's almost over now and it feels like things will never be the same.
I think its just one of the great big lower gears shifting, if you ask me. As if the universe were a colossal bicycle with an infinite amount of cogwheels. One of the gigantic lower pinions has shifted as cosmological elements transfer and synchronize into a new cyclic configuration. It's a reminder that everything's moving. Time and motion, the moon and the tides, old day breaks and new night falls. The whispering urgency of the wind. I'm reminded to get a move on. But I'm not going anywhere. Bought a house three years ago. Raising a family with my wife and my son. So it's time to change something in my routine.
Sick of the same old bus ride to work every day. Like I'm stuck in a big old broken clock. Keep this up too much longer and my auto-hypnotism will be complete. I will have gradually transformed into one of the city's many commuter zombies. So I dusted off my old bicycle and filled the tires with air. Grabbed my Viking helmet and backpack and rode into the funereal city before the Sun rose over the mountain line. Pedaled up the interstate bridge and over the railroad tracks. Surveyed the passing landscape with darkened clouds burgeoning over the horizon. Feeling the blood flow as I began once again exercising my claim to adventure.
I don't think freedom should necessarily be a privilege or power trip or anyone's right. For me, freedom appears to be movement across a shifting landscape. It's about the unrestrained ability to escape our own self imposed limits. Its the free rein to avoid getting stuck in a rut of our own accord. It's about seizing opportunities that anyone can afford. By staying alert and keeping adroit on our feet we may develop an immunity to redundancy and thus earn a license to act with impunity. In this life there are no refunds, you see. You get what you're given, so run with it. Find the incentive to be driven and have fun with it. Otherwise all your misgivings may get the best of you.
I can't just be worried about repercussions while the dawning realization breaks into my head that I myself am a consequence of the universe. With my face shielding my identity I confront the aftermath of the pathway of totality lying in wait before me. I've known my whole life that remaining rootless was the key to unlocking the mystery I call me. This goes beyond poetry to strike the foundation of my actuality. Born into an ever spinning assembly of cosmological gears beyond our comprehension, it's taken me years to apply these lessons in a long drawn out life to a position where I can finally begin understanding.
My life long dream has been executing a series of nested escapes. I can't afford to let my daily habits cement themselves into a treadmill. I don't want to allow wasting away to become my downfall. That's a fate best left to the rest of the crowd. Let the magnetism of the machine swallow them into their corrals. That's their own business and who am I to criticize the elegance and efficiency of their systematic incarceration. There's no telling how many degrees of reprieve they may be achieving. It's not up to me to even deduce whether they're in free fall or on the upswing. That's the nature of freedom.
Time and motion are on my side. Breathless and restless, I evolve to circumvent the next set of apprehensive characteristics. I've chosen my own collection of cells in which to relax within the hive. I'm going to breathe in nice and deep and exercise my right to remain wide awake and alive. Here and now may be the one castle keep from which I can never escape until that final day arrives when it becomes necessary to close my eyes for the last time. Until then I've cleared my mind of all possibilities so I can fully blossom in my dwelling here at the very center of the beating heart of time itself.
