Driving to spinning class this morning, I thought about how my life is a constant battle against falling asleep. Not in the bedtime sense, but in the one-life-to-live sense. It’s so much easier not to exercise, not to practice drawing, not to read a difficult book, not to think about my own mortality, not to start a scary project, not to take my camera out on a photo safari, not to meet new people. The soul wants to be awake, but it’s an ongoing struggle not to drink the waters of Lethe and indulge in a gentle forgetfulness, a spiritual indolence. After all, that other stuff is hard work and I always want to start it manana. I’d like to think my sluggishness is due to a thyroid problem (everyone I know is taking Armour Thyroid supplements) or to a lack of Adderall (although I wouldn’t turn it down), but in my case, it’s just that it’s so much easier not to do. Easier to think about writing a book than to sit down and type a first sentence that might be “As a child, I learned in school that our state was known as the Dark and Bloody Land in the struggle between Indians and settlers, conquered and conqueror, and that’s how I thought of our family battleground from that time on.” Easier to chatter over drinks about how I want to do a self-portrait out of newspaper and acrylics and found objects than go home and start it. Easier to pull the covers over my head than to face what’s lurking in my own Shadow.
