No Backsliding

Let your backbone slide, so the song goes, but I'm not about to cover up my newfound freedom with nostalgic groping after the past--not while I still have a desire for the Lord's rest, and a talent for stringing together lines of nonsense.

The year's first crop of dandelions were hovering their translucent geodesic seed above the green ocean of lawn, and gossamer spider-spun filaments laced the pasture like a delicate network of tightropes tread only by the weightless footsteps of sunlight. The trees had revived from winter slumber. The fortunate north eastern breeze was clear of noticeable industrial discharge.

I was so weary and so free, as if born forth in the original cradle of creation, much like my housemate's son who was nestled in a newly acquired, fancy stroller with oversized, smooth-rolling wheels. Was it I who walked down that familiar street, as if for the first time, past the soybean factory with its gaseous expectorations, past the empty harbour where great, steel cargo ships are wont to dock, a thousand tiny seagulls dusting its furthest reach? It was I, unchanged, created by a moment for a moment, to be simply myself. It was I, restored to my wanderings, delivered from the illusion of persistence that conceals Perpetual Wandering.

The frequency of shadow mixed with the frequency of sidewalk as I threw expectation out the window; as I embraced transience; embraced duration; embraced the prison cell of vocation, the decadence of calling. The diurnal rhythm of work and sleep bore me aloft on a tide of unemployment that I rode all the way to the beer store, where I made a fool of myself in a non-moment of extravagance, and, wrapping a can of pilsner in the folds of a white plastic bag, threw it in the stroller's carry-all to drink later, once the kitchen radio had eaten the dirty dishes.