Of course, I had to nod off. Strength returning, alright!

I was pretty sleep deprived though, and my brain is fried. Still is kind of fried, though less. Sauteed, maybe.  I should be good by tomorrow. I just feel bad about nodding off – I don’t want to not sleep tonight.

I’ve survived day one, and already begin to feel my strength return to me.

Looking through some photos earlier I came to realize that I’ve always gone for women that are way above my pay grade.  Which of course explains my vast relationship experience.

At this point I’m writing in order to keep my mind off.  I’m not sleepy and yet I should sleep.

I bought the hardcover Volume 1 of Angel: After the Fall, and I must say… wow.  Amazing stuff.  Also – really nice production values on the book.  Bronze recommendation stuff, that.

Anxiety.  I wish it were Thursday night.  At least I could look forward to partying.

I need to find some focus.

Perhaps my problem stems from one of evolution.

The warrior awoke, learned to fight. The fighter fought, learned to lose, but accepted happiness in fighting. The fighter fought, won, and accepted happiness in winning. Having won, the fighter now is no longer content to fight and lose. Is it a competitiveness in my spirit which has caused me such restlessness?

I should be happy at my state, and yet I find myself still struck with obstinate sadness. I am happy that I fought, at long last, as had to be done, but yet I am unhappy that I have lost the fight, though I knew it would happen and in fact predicted it could not have gone any other way.

Or did I forget to smile when death came for me? Did I falter? Did I give out?

These thoughts gnaw at me, still. Let them be quiet, else I shall be forced to reveal the truth of self.

When I first typed the phrase that forms the title of this post my mind blew with all of the different meanings that the phrase entails.  Like many things in writings Alexian, it is an enigma within a puzzle within a riddle, meant as much for its artistic buoyancy as for its definitional depth.  Not every meaning need fit the author, but they can fit the interpreter, the reader, or the narrator as well.

But I digress.

Today I have concluded that I am a poor user of spare time.  As we grow ever closer to the dreaded examination, I find myself with greater and greater expanses of time to do stuff.  The stuff of course is the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life, that which needs be done or can be done or should be done or.  And yet I find myself more often than not simply using this time to think and meditate upon my state, in effect accomplishing nothing but philosophizing much.

I will admit that my mental constitutionals have allowed me to retain some measure of that precious sanity that will, in short supply, become so valuable. My ability to retreat within myself has always been something of a boon – to straighten my own internal emotions to a stand still, order my thoughts, and still the storm that might otherwise betide my insides.  And yet I wonder how useful it is, this close to the proving grounds, this near to accomplishment…

I’ve glimpsed a better world, and I’ve had it within myself the desire to be a part of it.  I admit that in the last two weeks that desire has much abated, though the fact that my heart and mind still race so far removed from the possibility with the thought of this Miranda speaks to the matter that I have not yet forgotten and in all likelihood continue to desire to be a part of this world.

The word Utopia means two things – both the place of perfection and the place that cannot be.  I’m familiar with utopic concepts – concepts that cannot be, that cannot be realized, thought about, theorized, compiled.  We cannot achieve utopia.  And yet. We dream of a better world.

And I do nothing but dream.  I do not work at building it, I do not work at making myself worthy.  Am I worthy of that world?  I fear that I am not.  Despite all of my life’s work, all of my observations, my understandings, I fear that I belong with baser humanity.  Belong and not belong – such is my problem.  Broken, I am one of them.

Thus the better world will go on.  In ten, twenty, thirty years I shall not be surprised to see us entering that better world, ushered in by hues of gold and blue, a smile and a wave.  And my heart will break because I wasn’t a part of it.

Because I didn’t work hard enough – because I didn’t manage my time properly.  Even now, as I write these words, I do not realize them, I do not internalize them, I still sit and type and write and understand but do not do.  Why?  Do I fear?  Do I loathe?  Is it futile?

Futility is the core problem.  I have no hope, though I have glimpsed hope passing by.  A man without hope is a man bereft of life, bereft of situation.  We cannot be if we are not both in space and in time, and without hope we are nothing in time.

We edge forward towards oblivion, unable to make the leap of faith necessary.  I have been shaken, because I have doubted, and I don’t know if I can stand again.