Will of Blades – Part 2

It’s slightly alarming to reckon with all the damage I’ve done to my feet and legs over the last month.  I’ve done all I can to give my feet rest, and I stretch as often as I remember (usually every other day-ish).  Still, the reality is that they may hurt for some time to come.  Rather vociferously.  It makes me worry that I’ve done some long term damage in my quest for a paycheck.

All that stops next week, where I can once again plant my posterior in a chair and do office things.  So that’ll have to do for now.

Overall, I appear to be getting more traction on the blog than I had counted on.  That’s a wonderful thing, and many thanks to all of you who read along!  I always wanted this to be my own personal writers dojo, where I focus on the rather banal and necessary task of repetition and creation.  It’s not a clean process, by any stretch, but I’ve slowly gotten better over time.  And it’s thanks to all of you tuning in that I’ve found the strength to work out on days where I’d rather do anything else.

I know that writing this blog puts a lot of strain on my limited-ish writing time.  I know that there are other projects, and other places, where my efforts and talents would be better served.  Writing, as I have come to understand, is an effort of will and spirit.  While I have will in abundance, it is more often than not my spirit which waylays the party.  Writing this blog, writing so consistently, and forcing myself to be in the mindset of creation and adaptation buoys my spirit in a way that no logical rational could ever hope to duplicate. 

It’s not a perfect system.  But then, what is?

Onward, always and forever…

Will of Blades – Part 2

I sat, trembling, as every neuron in my mind warred against its neighbor. 

There is no way that just happened.  The soldiers of logic running into the fray.

I am a rational man, and I know what I felt and saw.  This became the warcry of the self-actualized part of me.  I had come more and more to rely on this part, so theirs was the bigger army.

Forget about this and get going or you’ll be late.  This was the boring, adult-me which always sounded like my father.  Theirs was the voice of reason, attempting to split the combatants and focus on reuniting the civil war which had once been a well functioning brain.

Then, out of the darkest and stillest parts of my mind where dreams of power and revenge lurked, came a silken voice which quelled the cacophony within. 

Can you do it again?

This voice caressed me with promises of power and fortune.  It whispered in my ear all the things which I had lost, all the things my marriage and divorce had cost me.  The last three years of my life spent pinching every penny, scrapping for every dollar, and living in what amounted to a single room flat at a time when I should be basking in my success. 

All other thoughts died away, and with this voice to guide me, I picked up the spoon once more.  In my mind, as loudly as I could, I commanded the spoon to stay.   One moment I had been holding the small slip of metal, the next, I was simply grasping an iron rod secured to the air as though it had turned to stone.

It was a jarring moment.  My hand still completing the motion of trying to catch the spoon which had no intention of falling.  My thumb let out a solid protest at smacking into the wall of cutlery.  I let out a hiss and a curse, rocking backwards and pulling my hand to my chest protectively. 

Then the laughter came.  Thick and rich, as it had once been when my life made more sense.  When joys came to me more fully.  That laugh blasted the last ten years off my life.  Here, at a tiny breakfast table, in a tiny kitchen, in a tiny apartment, wonder was rekindled.  I was looking into the eyes of my daughter as she understood love.  I was watching her take her first steps.  I was gazing across the hand of priest to my wife.  All the pain and despair, all the sadness and slow spiral to hatred and mutual acrimony, slammed out with the pain of a sprained thumb. 

I studied the spoon, sitting still as my life whirled about it.  I summoned up all the mental energies that had gone into commanding it to sit still, and threw a silent shouted command.

“Move!” 

The spoon, heeding my command, vanished.  One moment it had been impossibly suspended in midair before me, and the next it was gone.  My breath caught, my heart pounding in my ears, I turned to see if the spoon had gone where I had directed it. 

There, sitting above the soapy water in my sink, was the spoon.  It had moved exactly as I had commanded, and had done so more rapidly than I could see.  It had made no sound, hitting nothing on my miserable excuse for a kitchen counter, to assume the mid-dive position I had commanded of it. 

I spoke, the words fumbling out of my mouth as though I had never uttered such relics before.

“Fall in.”

The spoon ceased it’s paranormal display, and let out a slightly noisy splash as it hit the sink.

The gleeful laughter I hurled after it swam across the surface of the tiny lake of dishwater, desperate to follow the source of my joy.

To be continued….

Soapfully,
Justin