I think of reinvention as a dirty word. Probably shouldn’t, but I do all the same. Like the great many things I reduce down to calling bad habits.

     And I wonder whether these fingers might still be at all this when withered. When they were younger, it seemed beyond a doubt. All the poise and prose and self-infatuated prominence that seemed so certain when so little was known and almost everything was left to see.

     Enough wisdom has been gained to see such former folly. Yet, I wonder whether enough has been seen to seem more clairvoyant. I suppose it goes with the fluctuating growth of a straight line time progressive. Yesterday was the fool, and tomorrow the sage. But what does that make of today?

     Over, essentially, is all I can call of today. A few maintenance tricks to make sure I slip beyond the waking into that occasionally terrifying temporary unconscious. The one which all my sentient sensory security can not guard against. The place where the memory blends with fantasy and unrequited desire to form some inverted perversion of introspection, unavoidable and unassailable.

     Sleep and dreams, etc.

     As I sit and contemplate how little I seem to arrive here, I admire the cavalier forbearance that knew so little and yet said so much. Enough of the right kind of experience can be humbling, if not totally silencing.

     But still, the more constant expulsion of thought seemed to create a stability that has yet been since been reached. Though my ignorance shows when I make such succinct claims. Not only had the fool energy and enthusiasm enough to regularly proclaim some prose produced ramble- he knew little enough to think himself foreseeing into some future, a bastard form of destined and divine.

     Never would he guessed we’d be here.

     Consumption has been the game much of the last decade, much to the chagrin of the idiotic barely out of adolescent. Kick and fight and scream, he would say. Shout.

     But he does not know what I know. And I know everything he knew, and more. Seems like I would easily be at the advantage with some former self. Yet I cannot deny the gusto, and the bullying effect it has on my unadulterated adult self.

     Thoughts of keeping up. Thoughts of falling out. Behind. Beyond the reach of any worthwhile ideal. Plagued about my mind while marching forward, because nothing less can be accomplished than a better tomorrow. And with such comparative contemporary introspection, something dawns upon me.

     That the more ideal, youthful self- he could never bear the weight I carry every day. He would crumble after a bad date, nevermind the repercussion I have felt for the better part of a decade on the daily. His hard road was paved for the softest tread. No blisters ever appeared in any kind of debilitating way. What would take a week of recovery in the heyday, I give myself but moments to conquer before meandering or stampeding elsewhere. A penniless fool, with nothing but hormones galore and ignorance to wave him forward.

     Handsome fellow, though, he was. And beyond necessary, albeit for none of the reason he had once dreamt. His flops and faults and failures the key he’d never schemed but would always end up needing. While he would fantasize all sorts of success- it was always the failures that would deem his resolve and steam. And had succeed been the only held creed, a pitiful pile of unworthy excrement would have been the only viable bi-product.

     And instead, from some virgin block, chip by chip, by chip- something better emerges. And today’s fool clears the way, be it by folly, feign or fury- for tomorrow’s sage. And better he will likely be, with each step toward the decreed ultimate we all seem to always seek.