Maud'dib - The Mouse

spring comes slowly
to this old frame
still I'm frozen
I still live alone

I've probably mentioned this before, but the eye of my mind can see the future. I am Maud'dib--the mouse, the teacher, and the torturer--and the fabric of time ripples before me with dips and crevices spread out, snapping and contorting with potential and reason.

in time memories fade
sense numb
one forgets how it feels
to have loved
completely

I do not have regrets, I have memories of lessons.

But in the midst of the learning experience, it is hard to swallow your own spit, bite down hard on the bitter herb, and let the unintended but inevitable consequences come rushing up at you across the fabric of time like a tsunami, creating furrows in reality that will toss and displace those around you with a fierceness only you see coming, as if from the top of a mountain, from a distance.

Detached.

love well young man
while you still can
once your leaves turn
you won't love again

I cannot say this with enough vehemence. Love well. Love as thoroughly as you dare, and then give up daring and passion and security and pride and love with the little bits of the corners of your soul that you were keeping in reserve in case something better came along.

I have loved, do love, and shall love. But my love is harnessed, a dog pulling a sled laden with objectives and personal concerns. I am too faux-wise and too careful to cut them loose, since they were so carefully collected, but the same fate need not befall you or your kin. Do not strive to collect weight, as I did, that will restrain a sure and fleet-footed love.

A child tugs at a book just out of reach, the height of its placement indicating the maturity that should be reached before reading it, and the tugging threatens to bring that book, and it's brethren, down upon her head with a crash that will echo through her life for years to come. Will she see, years from now, why I entreated her to seek knowledge on a lower shelf?

is it special when you're lonely
will you spend your whole life
in a studio apartment
with a cat for a wife?
the seasons when they call you
do you barricade the door?
are you stubborn stubborn
stubborn to the core?
is it your way or the highway?

I am content in my old frame. The mouse can see farther, plan better, and dodge more gracefully, via the warnings I receive from my mental predictions. A critical eye and a cynical soul let me stay one step ahead, and embark on daring and often doomed ventures in the hopes that even if I do not achieve a single one of my objectives in full, it may be that the ripples I am too ambitious to count as successes will change a life for the better.

then the longest winter is on her way
you called her without knowing it
and now it's too late

I do not have regrets, but my lessons are many, and were often learned the hardest of ways.

The tsunami comes for me now, the edge of the fabric dips beneath my feet, a fantastic visual illusion of retreat that merely serves to predicate a sudden and drastic reversal of fortune and life. And here at the brink of another broken heart, I am stretched between extremes: more invigorated and yet shockingly lifeless.

And the questions that hang on my lips are not questions of whether it will happen, or when. The rift is coming. They are questions of second and third generations of repercussions. Will she take anything away from it that she cherishes?

Will it be the final straw, or will a glimmer of hope from it carry her through the hard times ahead that she's pulling down?

[Completely Bipolar Sidenote: Willem is coming to visit! HURRAY!]

Lyrics: Pedro the Lion - The Longest Winter