Handcuffs

The Sunrise Cafe in Fayetteville smells of bacon, and my stomach is full of everything from eggs and coffee to a lousy, underlying guilt about the decent job I know I'm quitting. I hate it. It's not real work. It's sitting and sitting and watching the clock, and it's what everyone else is doing these days in a dying nation. I love working with my hands and shutting down my mind. Writing doesn't do that for me. Everything comes out all wrong these days—or at least it seems to when I try to sculpt words out of sensation, experience, and ambiguity. I rely more and more upon music and the voices of others to keep me here.

What is wrong with anonymity? Nothing is wrong with me today, except the creeping knowledge that I tend to disappoint everyone with my failure to live up to what they once believed was genius. I think they confused it with passion. The passion continues, most of the time—or at least waxes with the manic moons, and then I believe that I can do or be something special between now and oblivion. And then the crushing feeling—not fear, not anxiety or sloth...just the sensation of confusion about what it means to be satisfied with myself. It's true: most other people will only love you if you're never satisfied. If you're always reaching...“with the hunger of ambition, for the change inside the purse; they are handcuffs on the soul, my friend. Handcuffs on the soul, and worse.”*

Then I think that what I refer to as “satisfaction” must, in fact, be my special brand of fear. That tug inward that makes me want to be invisible some days, and appreciated or even worshiped on others. I think now that perhaps I know better than to want the rest of the world to love me. I just want to be good enough for the ones that should love me whether I am good enough or not.

“And when they say that you're not good enough, well the answer is: you're not. But who are they, or what is it that eats at what you've got?”*

A.R.

*Paul Simon