Realizing

Lately I have been still, too still.  Too… here.  Which is fine- all of us wayfarers need to be still for a little while.  To let the dust settle, to let our world slow long enough to recover it's natural rotation. 

But settling dust runs the risk of becoming gathering dust.  And that just will not do. Gathering dust is what chokes the air, what makes me choke.  It makes me itch. Dust brings on the Longing and puts ideas in my head. Dust brings on soul-sneezing.  

Which inevitably makes me reach for a tissue called wandering. 

And originally this was going to be a post about traveling- but it's never really about that.  I reach for a tissue called wandering; I have a nomadic, distant soul.  I recently told someone that I systematically burn my world every six months or so.  And I do it because I can- but almost because I have to.  I keep burning and burning- and then running because ash is so very similar to dust.  

And I have to go. 

And because I do this so well, because I am so practiced at the burn-and-run… I keep everyone at arms length.  I keep distance- however fractionally measured. Inevitably I push people away, not because I don't love them, not because I don't feel so deeply and so profoundly.. but because I am bound to hurt them by burning, by running.  I am bound to hurt the people I know simply because I cannot be still, I cannot be wanted.  I go so often that I forget what it means to stay. 

Most days I am fractional, marginal, existing on the edge or fringes because I put myself there.  There is safety on the edge.  I jump and am gone. 

I jump and am gone.