I have lived a stationary life. While brief, intermittent geographical hop-scotches have occurred the majority of my life I have remained within a two hundred mile radius of the small town I grew up in.
Yet throughout this stasis I have had a continual yearning to wander. At times it is a dull ache, easy to suppress, while at others, piercing hot in its intensity. And I know now that this feeling will never leave me. It is as much a part of who I am as my stubbornness or my laugh.
Since my childhood I have had the strange notion that I will not live a long life. I remember having anxiety attacks - "spazz attacks" - as we called them, where I woke up at night in inconsolable fits - unable to control my actions but aware of everything. Only later did I recall the dreams that preceded these episodes. Huge, all-encompassing tasks at hand and only a brief amount of time in which to complete it all. It was the confrontation of infinity with brief, wondrous mortality.
The sun and moon rise. Seasons arrive and flee. Sand falls.
Time is short for all of us.
This notion used to terrify me and sent me straight into the arms of organized religion. I found little solace in such a sterile, formalized, self-denying view of the world.
I am certain of very little except that I am me and that I have but one life.
