Between the idea / and the reality
One problem with loving words, and with doing some version of words “for a living” is that every day you are confronted with whether you read or you write or you listen.
There are so many books to read, and so many lectures to which I’d like to listen, and so many things I will forget or leave unprocessed if I do not write them down.
I cannot effectively do any two of those at a time. And it feels increasingly difficult to do even one of them, finding the energy to hold the space despite the barrage of doom-filled notifications or the distractions of ecommerce or the mundane emotional reality of trying to survive a pandemic.
I can’t listen it away or write it away or read it away either, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying.
If this new notebook doesn’t solve all my problems perhaps this new under-eye concealer will
Between the wildfires and the hurricanes, between the people lining up at the food banks and the people being evicted from their homes, between the chaos and the cruelty—
a whimper
Attribution:
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long— from The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot