182

his limp only became apparent
when he sat completely still.

.
.

181

sitting on the side of the road,
he would once again find himself
enveloped in a fog of clarity.

.
.

180

he looked up; but, in a brief moment of honesty,
had to admit that the view was essentially the same.

.
.

179

setting down his cup, it readily found the ground of its world;
while his simply fell away.

.
.

178

unsupported
he would lean into the light.

.

.

177

he might have felt that life was fleeting,
yet even that would have been overstating it.

.
.

176

the curtains had been drawn
yet light still spilled into the room,
leaving him to wonder
whether it was the world or him
that had sprung a leak.

.
.

175

he suspected that freedom,
if freedom there were,
would lie not in choosing
but rather in remaining
within the unsupported.

.
.

174

even though so much was denied him
he always had the melancholy surface of things.

.
.

173

for him
the insignificant
would always
provide succour.

.

.

172

it seemed that he was never able to look away,
though such inner insomnia also had its price.

.

.

171

all attempts at clarity,
especially those successful,
only ever seemed to lead
to further obscurity.

.

.

170

there came a point when it appeared
that those who genuinely cared,
not for themselves but for others,
could only ever live in perpetual grief.

.
.

169

though quite sombre by nature,
he nonetheless found it difficult
to take things too seriously;
especially upon realizing that eternity
was only ever perceived
in the most fleeting of glimpses.

.
.

168

and what of the fact that the lightness he often felt
could just as easily bear down with incredible force
almost crushing him?

.
.

167

of course, there were rough patches, that was inevitable. what was
unsettling was the fact that his pleasures, too, were quite unforgiving.
leaving him to marvel that he experienced any joy at all, even at the
best of times.

.
.

166

the day eventually came,
which of course was no surprise,
when he began to wonder
how to discern between true silence
and what he suspected to be
a certain inner deafness
to which he seemed increasingly prone.

. .

165

he never ceased to be amazed at just how far
the tendrils of his inattention seemed to extend.

.
.

164

while sitting there, waiting for his lunch,
he began to ponder his options.

but no matter what he came up with
it always came down to pouring
from the empty into the void.

.
.

163

the world always appeared to offer a choice:
one could plunge into it
or simply skate across its surface—

either way he was left gasping for air.

.
.