How unfortunate that I suddenly find myself living in a world befallen with bloodletting and despair, and yet cannot name my enemies. Any wrongs committed against me were so long ago as to have fallen outside the statute of limitations, rendering dubious any forgiveness I might offer. Their debt to society long since paid. I regret this is the case, because from what I know of forgiveness, the act itself is transformative, resulting in some sort of runner’s high or smoky mountain fever or flagrante delicto.
And yet even with the incentive of a cheap fix, I came up against the stubbornness of the blank page when I sat down to list my enemies, those who conspire against me and my aims, which, while admittedly few, hold dear, ink-permanent places within my Day Planner.
My Enemies:
1. Substance.
2. Myself
3. Yellow Jackets
4.
5.
You’ll notice only one of these is an actual person. And I abuse Substance far more than Substance abuses me, so much so that it is I who graciously offers the following apology: Forgive me, poison elixirs which draw me out of myself, giving me courage to write and wrack and scar my body.
I forgive the countless yellow jackets which have laid their venom upon me and my family.
Apparently, all that’s left is to forgive myself. I am my own worst enemy, as the saying goes. But before I forgive myself, I suddenly remember another saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This, of course, is linguistic trickery at its finest, because obviously the enemy of your enemy is you. So all this really means is that you are your own friend. These two sayings, therefore, cannot live together in the same paragraph, because they have opposite meanings and in the process of canceling each other out would appear blank on the screen.
I was able to get around this by actually posting the above text in white.
Results:
For Day Three, I’ve listed 3 enemies, and was frustrated in my attempts to forgive them all. And as I’ve proven, it is impossible to forgive myself.
Do I feel a little happier?
I think ee cummings sums it up nicely:
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive.
Tomorrow:
Notice Life’s Small Pleasures