On Stasis

Essay 43

Be one of those people who refuse to give up, who say they’ll lie down only in rigor mortis. Things slow down as they age, and maybe your mind has fallen quiet, I get that fateful feeling of the snugly stuck, that great gravity’s pull; one starts struggling less and less, as if being halted mid-change was a small win for those sure they’ll lose.

There’s wisdom in retreating from all that is too easy, as repeating is easy, as it’s much easier to make someone stop than to stir them to persist; the cold aged hand grabs at the wrist by the door of the home, her stale books will be read instead of starting one’s own, one’s life recursing until all drops still.

Fight, fight against the rest! The nothingness of days, unravel yourself until you’re raw, until it can regrow and regrow and regrow. Resist the deadweight of the good enough, the this is an okay place to stop, the why try if one must fail one way, that acrid fear in the throat when one tries, the blank nights, the rotting—the eyes that one believes not even when spotting the best. What’s organic must circulate and undulate and metabolise, all human stopping is self-cut, the muscles built to lift furl tense as they hold back what wants to move—disprove, disprove the murmur that tells you what you are is not, that all who start must stop, live as the counter-entropy insurgence that man is, the crisis through which atoms dream the world.

Fight that heavy sticky ground kicking and screaming, beat and bite at the hands that push low, refuse to stay put and to wait and to be content; learn to search and to want what is better. (Beware those who say there is no such thing, they just need someone as stuck to sit with.) It is those who stay standing that can see the road curl away, it is those with their arms up who will catch winds and whirl away, who will point in the right direction those just getting up—or any direction, really, except none. My sole glued to the surface of easy doubt I shall lift with each step with all my might. And there will be many, many steps, I know, and some will soon feel light.