escaped / stopped

 

Light filters through the blades of window blinds onto the book I am reading and casts shadows.  A hole allows for a circle of light to encapsulate “escaped” and “stopped” on the page.  I’m not sure why it catches my attention, but it is more of a visual thing than a meaning thing.  Yet my mind looks for meaning in images, even those that appear to be random.  

Have I escaped or attempted to escape from something?  Did something stop me from running away as it were?  I can think of any number of things that might fit that description not least of which is an attempt to escape my poor choices in life.  I try to stay mindful of the ointment but there is always that black fly in the mix.  It is stuck, unable to die, unable to fly.

I wish to free it because of all the pain it causes and the despair it radiates in its dying, but it is indelibly fixed in all of the blessings that surround it.  I tell myself it’s part of what has formed me and that if I can discover the secrets of asceticism it may even be the key to fix what is broken in me.  But I continue to fixate on the fly and from that suffering follows.

***