How many times have I thought through, parsed and planned, motivated and meditated upon advice from the armchair?
There was a time and a purpose for such cool compassion, dispassionate discourse, untangling the web of wire, the thinning thread of thoughts to bring order.
But that time has passed. Strictly centered, beautifully bundled, a machine of motion and ordered abode, my mind is become the reflection of my revolution.
But life continues, challenges chafe at my rumbling routine as I sink into ponderous patterns pat… pat… patting along and I feel my grip begin to slip up the incline.
So I return… to the texts… the books… the self-help helping me list and orient and order the perfect pace and stellar schedule… and it doesn’t fix it.
Rust rises upon my machine and my thoughts dwindle down from advance to maintenance to retreat reflecting ruefully upon what was.
I list more strictly… I meditate not upon anything but seeking a center, centering in nothing and grasping for a trail.
In rhetoric and reference and re-evaluation, frustrating repetition, Kipling comes to mind “Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again.”
I am beside him, in those lines, my pack hangs heavy and the sloshing mud over my own footwear until I am jolted out of the poem.
Kipling’s works stir me to reverie… and Herbert, Howard and Burroughs… verse and tales and spinning yarn spin new threads in the web for me.
At Conan’s side as he sling steel and steals maidens… fighting fate with the Lisan Al G’haib, questions of strength and faith and finding the Way I stir to see myself a dozen steps further than I had been.
Self-help can suffer in any but small doses… dimming and inward-turning the spirit and thought.
“The world is not in your maps and books” Tolkien reminds me, inspires me, my thoughts need not be a cell.
I set out anew, again to conquer, to climb and overcome… the words of the Song of the Lord echo in my mind “Therefore rise up, Arjuna, resolved to fight!”