Who I am, who I was and will be, replaced somehow by a what-ness, much due to questions of scale in the cityscapes of life’s living. The bureaucratization of life as I became some cog in others’ imagination – whether it fits me well, or not so well.
Losing some war in which I found my self thrust, between who I was and who I thought they thought me to be, I abandoned thinking about my being. Often I invented a new war between what was left of some notion of myself, and my refusal to be that depiction. And the war became my entire self…or its replacement.
I, growing older, flirting with problems of death and life, became the observer of my living, as I experienced the pains of tension’s tension, and entered also into war with my bodily being. Always a few seconds from pain, it became my enemy, someone to avoid, and I was then two: myself and my pain. As pain became my master and guide, I felt lost.
Recovering, yet recovering, I learned to stretch my muscles and joints and ligaments, and studied the pain which was my guide, until I learned it and it became me. As it did, I could remove my self from the pain or the pain from my self, and gain a distance from it, which I used to locate the character which had disappeared.