She asked how I was doing and I said I was fine and she said:

Are you?

So am I?

***

Yes.

More accurately, I am just fine.

Neither more nor less than.

To the extent that I can remain focused on what Is, I am happy/enough.

Maintaining that focus is much harder than it sounds.

Sometimes I drift reversed in time, into the past, and god knows there’s plenty back there to wallow in all miserable.

Sometimes I drift ahead of myself, hyper, manic, all tangled up in what Might Be, in this or that glorious or at least arguably Better future.

If:then; If:then; but I was told

and I believed, god damn it

Gautama was right. Desire = Suffering.

***

What if, going forward, no one’s promises, expressed or implied, were ever kept, and therefore no chunks of belief littered my road as mortal hazards?

What if the auto mechanics and plumbers and doctors and insurance companies and alma maters could never be fully trusted, because of the capitalist profit motive or any other bad ugly broken reason?

What might life look like if I stopped making promises of my own?

Those are interesting questions and worth considering, but they are also the definition of drifting ahead of myself.

Instead of Being right here in this sorry-ass interstate town state of existence, and accepting it as what’s real.