Ticking Boxes (ak)

It was quite a journey. This much was apparent from his white faced collapse. He seemed to look past me into some distance that I was unable to encompass, to find an image or a representation of what he might be seeing. But I knew that he had made this extraordinary journey for me, or at least out of his sense of what a father is. Or could be. Or should be. The bringer of blessings. To come down out of the mountains, through the white swirling clouds, winding along the scarcely known pathways, to leave behind this other world which he had arrived in, years before, exhausted, after tramping through the damp forests, the maze of heavy foliage, tendrils, vines, past the temptations of Bacchus, the soaring
spirit of Apollo, the final days, the slippage, consciousness sliding into pervading darkness. What happened then? A howling wind? A fall into emptiness? The long habit of walking taking over, making the journey automatic; the trappings of technocratic modernity long past, gone, dissolved - leaving the steady never ending pace of walking: alone but always keenly aware of the way.

 

    Keep your eye on the prize. Perhaps I should have said to him that I had tried to keep my eye on the prize. Was it the prize? Or rather was it what I had mistakenly understood the prize to be? I am sorry that you are so exhausted, I am grateful (and surprised) that you did. Amazed actually.

 

    How is that deep connection made? So solid that nothing can break it - even in the face of the shadowings of forgetfulness. I think it might be a sort of branding - both the red hot metal sizzling on flesh and the current version of what we call corporate branding, so that we know what we should do. We know what is right. I wouldn't want to pretend that it is not problem free. Like so many things it is open to the abuse of arrogance and some weird assumption of authority. Like Putin having a bad day, or for him, probably, business as usual. There are, of course, endless examples. We are always sliding into bad faith and then bad faith can become a habit like everything else. We need the corrections of rubbing along with the great horde of us dancing along in joy or shuffling along in misery.

 

    Anyway you made it, made the journey to give your blessings, it's what fathers are supposed to do. I hope I, too, keep remembering that blessings are there to be freely given. Not withheld. What would be the point of being mean with them?