better sir?

I’m trying to recall the last time i wrote anything.

Wow, I can’t.

I sort of want to blame facebook. Just because I hate facebook so much that it seems like a good thing to blame.

My updates are all there, I want to say. And on twitter.

Only it’s not true. I don’t update on facebook, and a barely tweet.

Is it any wonder then, that my friends keep asking me if i’m ok?

My answer: I don’t know.

My yardstick for ‘ok’ is so askew these days, I can only answer in relation to how I was.

Than last week? Yes, much better (I had a cold).

Than last weekend? Yes, a bit, the cortisone shot helped the pain in my shoulder.

Than last month? I can’t fucking remember.

Than six months ago? Yeah, i think so. I think, just maybe, yes.

Than a year ago? Than two, or three?

I can’t remember when I was just ok, with no caveats. Or to be more specific, I remember the times – the short, sweet, perfect moments are crystal clear in my memory, with flavors and scents and sound.

I just can’t remember how long ago that was; it’s too much of a fucking blur.

So I have to reel it in, measure on a closer scale. And that gets really, really hard. Because the context, the perspective, the range and distance are all missing. Dead-reckoning by instinct in the dark, the way you walk through your bedroom in pitch black and know where the door and the bed are, unless you stop and think.

But today? Yeah, ok.

I keep trying to get a breath, though. To get that little bit of distance ahead to start thinking, what do I need to actually be good again? And I can’t see it. Too close in; I’m in the thick of battle, fighting so many small and large fights all the time that I can’t see a battle, let alone know how to win it.

I’m wearing down; I can feel it. I can feel my body aging, and my mind with it. Some tide of battle surges up against me every time I think I’ve almost a some skirmish.

This would be easier if my battle-field metaphor were more true; brute force solves some problems so elegantly.

This is the battle on inches though; of minutes. And I’m losing it in tiny, almost immeasurably small increments. Like when something moves so slow you can’t only see it if you sit utterly still.

I can’t sit still; I can’t see the tiny progress forward or back.

So I need to do something to change the scale. I just don’t know what.