Sink holes

 

August 6, 2012

 

You don’t breathe in and out on days like this. You just suck the humid air in and hope you don’t drown.

I climbed out of my shoulder this morning, groping for the towel and wondered where I was less wet in the shower or out.

Life might be a sink whole out of which there is not escape, but it’s a curious sink hole filled with curious motivations, and I’m one of those people who likes to take rides even at the risk of not surviving.

This is what I am thinking when I stare in the mirror to shave. My face is evidence to yet one more mad cap adventure, especially around the eyes which look hurt, sometimes when they aren’t, but always probe things they shouldn’t.

I’ve never been able to mind my own business about anything. I’m too curious a cat for that, a cat who has used up his nine lives so often I have to believe in reincarnation since I am living proof.

I keep digging into things, those interconnections that perpetually get me into the most trouble, as if I am living in the midst of some Sherlock Holmes novel, doing my best to be Sherlock rather than his inept partner, Dr. Watson.

Sometimes this isn’t even personal – no emotional tie except to see what happens next, though in most cases, I’m up to my neck in it and debating at which point I go under for the last time.

Somehow I never do. Somehow I find some ledge to grip on and hoist myself out, but I always leave a little bit of myself behind, pathetic souvenirs I can never get back, and the hotel clerk puts into a box marked lost and found.

My mark is less like Z for Zorro than the fading footprints of a man walking a perpetually vacant beach, falling into sink hole after sink hole until one swallows me up.