i can’t recall if this is my toothpaste.
i’m in the bathroom here at maurice’s place, where i’m staying on the couch and there’s a long bar across the ceiling, a curtain rod, with a curtain, and this is my space. it is simple and without drawers or containers, so my backpacks are around the edges in a semicircle. it’s a very comfortable couch! inside the border of the curtain is an AC unit. i have forgotten to turn it off twice, and so I owe maurice two drinks. i bought him one tonight. i am drinking its pair. otherwise the drink would be for another friend, but she’s far away dreaming a different dream.
i can’t recall if this is my toothpaste. there are three of us here, plus another when she comes through. there are four sets of toothpaste. one for each of us. three are definitely not mine. the fourth looks familiar, but similarly alien.
this is a manifestation of something that is becoming more clear, maybe even describable only today. how long have i been borrowing energy from the future? i was sitting on a flat marble chunk across from the train station entrance, smoking a cigarette in the wind and placing my thoughts in order. how long? and why, right?
i have, maybe not explicitly, been trying to reserve and preserve my energy in compact and measured doses. for maybe a long time. i can think back even to the early 2000s when i hit thresholds and said “i have to leave NOW”.
i might create a package of available presentable consciousness, right. let’s say from 8am until 10am – this time slot comes into play later with a real anecdote. I arrange my face. I arrange my body. I arrange my voice, my posture, the set of my forehead, the size of my retinas, the availability of my life force. when 10am hits, I fall apart like a man made out of dry noodles that have suddenly become boiled. i am frantic and thoughts no longer proceed in order. my language blurs, my heartbeat insensible. i turn in a circle and recognize nothing of my surroundings. all forms of comprehension have been washed away.
if survival is at stake, i borrow from the future. this is very uncomfortable and i am a poster on the wall of myself. but i can do it. i’ve been doing it for years. as long as memory serves.
this past week has been particularly challenging. i am surrounded by masters. literal masters in the world, of the art of tai chi. and expectations of me are swirly, like a whirlpool with sticks and an alligator in it.
i give myself some grace. if i were teaching these folks the piano, they would not be able to play what took me 20 years to learn after 6 months of teaching them, right? but tai chi isn’t playing the piano either. it’s playing the piano while blindfolded, with a moving chair and, of course, instructions largely in chinese. i give myself some grace. and yet after six months i try to follow the leader, and my locked hip joints and broken back muscles and unstructured knees bend like balloons and the looks are critical. i don’t imagine i will win the upcoming competition. i keep reminding people i am doing this for my health only, but hands are waved like white flags they volunteer for me, and i keep going, and i keep going. i can quit whenever, but instead i borrow energy from the future.
today i know i could make it through, day 4 in a row of waking up with the dawn to ride the trains to the park and insert myself into a dense culture, and my scheduled blocks of time are entirely fiction, borrowing and borrowing, and my skeleton collapses with the instruction “lower, but stop leaning, and push with your back leg, and all motions start and end at the same time.” this is a level of absurdity, but it’s for sure what i signed up for. the tales we tell.
and i can make it through this morning because i know what i’m borrowing from. tonight i’ll go see a friend and reset my battery. i can rely on this. i have pinned it to my calendar. one more squat. one more white crane. one more brush knee and press. one more whirl forearms. this is possible because i know that i’ll be getting this energy i’m borrowing back. the daydreams are keeping me present, rather than in a puddle on the ground, a disappointment to these teachers who are sharing their expertise with the lanky, wandering poet with the dusty black bucket hat.
somehow on july 14th i will be in fancy clothes in front of people operating 24 sequential moves that have been passed down through the generations. this is not my idea, but i’ll participate. you can’t just learn tai chi. i think i wrote this before. there is the socio-political aspect. this same manifestation of forgetfulness. where am i? what am i doing? have i written this before? is this my toothpaste? the tube seems mostly empty. and i remember it being mostly full. is someone else using my toothpaste?
i probably have never been clear, even to myself, about this borrowing of energy shenanigan. it’s a bad idea, in retrospect. in brazil, i would create a path of incredible difficulty for myself, to show that i cared, that i loved, and that all you had to do was show up. easy, right? just – show up. and the thousand units of power and time that i used on my appearance, on my time, on my attitude, on my transportation, would all be worth it for one unit of your power and time. just – show up. and you didn’t. and there i was in an expensive leather jacket, waiting on a street corner for hours, falling apart.
i repeated versions of this forever. all with slight wrinkles because i promised i wouldn’t do it again. but i did, kind of. oh it will work this time. but it didn’t. however, i can’t carry this forward – it doesn’t make sense. i must adjust my pattern. no more borrowing from the future.
in photos and in videos, and in the mirror lately, my eyes have changed color.
this is the strangest thing, and it can’t be real, and i don’t know when it happened. the blue has been overlaid with a thin layer of opaque white. my vision has been bleached, like fabric in the sun. i may have borrowed too much time.
it’s not anyone’s fault, also. who am i to judge what one unit of your power and time really is. i don’t know how difficult it is to show up. just because you don’t have to walk very far. because i am such a walker, this is a cosmic measurement for me. if anyone ever walked to me, right? the universe would split down the middle, crack like a seed, and a new galaxy would be born. but this can’t be true. i must be creating this dramatically. there’s no way that no one has ever put together something for me in my backyard – and all i have to do is show up. my brain is fried to even consider that.
i have to backfill my energy right now. i borrowed from something that didn’t exist. and now i am violating expectations because i am on the floor, grimacing, taking unidentified pills that the pharmacy said were pain killers, and drinking half a pair of drinks.
this is far beyond exhaustion. the meditations are supposed to help. 20 minutes of vedic meditation is worth 100 minutes of the deepest sleep. but i don’t know how long it will take me to catch up.
maybe i’ll know when my eyes are back to the color i remember.
