On Recuperation

Two and a half years later.

A recent trip thru the internet, I find old posts of mine. Searching with one intent, and like many internet voyages, arriving at a different destination. I discover in retrospect, the present: stultification and ossification. Though the discovery has been on a continuum. It's the shock of reading the old that reinforces the new. Recognize the passive drip of imagination. Detente or dumbed-down thought? Diplomacy or denial?

Two and a half years of compliance. It numbs the brain. One does get swept into a category of right thought. One's curiosity does become circumspect. One's opinion does grow lean, filled with doubt, cautious.

Now I am in recuperation. I am disengaged and disengaging from the concrete load of academic duress, the four-books-a-month club. Like 'em or not. From the mandatory say-something-smart, the torture of immediate thought without the ample and needed cushion of retrospect. Done with the briefest introspection. Done with the minutes ticking, the calendar pages flipping, the 15th-of-the-month bearing down like some upended, roaring, misused metaphor.

Recuperation equals assimilation.