Not Making It

Against progress.

Sometimes I arrive but not now. Sometimes now is mostly reckoning. Often, I do neither. The machine takes more. I want to hear music. I can’t hear it over these droning gears, the constant engine, the alarms. An announcement loops, Look! We are getting somewhere now! I don’t want to look at whatever it is highlighting for display. I miss song, and safety. Yesterday I read a word denoting longing for a state never experienced, useless and vivid. I did not write it down. I could not stop to write the word for the longing to be away from the machine. I know machine learning makes it possible to look up the words we forget. I could do this now. But what I want is not to use the machine to find what I have lost. I want instead to be returned to a state––not of wholeness (I am not entirely unreasonable), but less rapid losing, less accumulated loss. I am wholly aware of the uselessness of such longing. It is mine.

Author: Stacey C. Johnson

I keep watch and listen, mostly in dark places.

5 thoughts on “Not Making It”

  1. michael raven – Twin Cities, MN, USA – Nontraditional scribbler of words; occasionally coherent. Mostly harmless. Author of "galdr: thought + memory".
    michael raven says:

    I can relate on many levels.

      1. michael raven – Twin Cities, MN, USA – Nontraditional scribbler of words; occasionally coherent. Mostly harmless. Author of "galdr: thought + memory".
        michael raven says:

        As are you. Thank you very much for saying so. 🙂

  2. I know this longing … it used to be my best friend. It shows up now and again and I invite it to hang around in any way it likes. It’s funny how knowing what this is doesn’t stop the longing. I wonder if it is the desire to be bodyless, to return to the infinite invisible.

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