It began with the slightest of intimations.
A slight change in tempo not unlike driving across the vast
Barely perceptible slopes of endless open spaces of the American west.
Driving there I realize - only after hitting 100 miles per hour -
A gradual change taking place.
Only this was its opposite: Barely perceptible slowing,
I had been on an unrushed downslope for how long now?
On a scarcely noticeable featureless downslope of temporality,
Something unannounced within inexorably slowed my pace,
A downslope that gently let fly away what remained of
Any artificial motivation, synthetic interest,
Fabricated vigor or spurious vision for life.
I recognized it. I monitored it. The pattern of me en déshabille was unchanging.
Gradual deceleration, meticulous slowing; curiously, though, still in motion.
I recognized then that, try as I might, I was powerless to reverse
The stripping away of my primordial impulses or my lagging velocity,
Couldn't revitalize my spirit, couldn't change gears back into drive.
I had been coasting, speed diminishing steadily, gears in neutral
For days, weeks, perhaps even months.
The trend had acquired its own life, its gently dominating pace,
A relentless character of its unique bent draughting me into it in
Total disregard of my hollow protests, my petitions for help: petitions
Shrouded in silence, heard by no one.
What about my research? What about my future?
(I tried to sound urgent to myself.) But even the urgency,
Culturally sanctioned as it was,
Was inauthentic.
I know the sound of my own voice. This was not it.
A tepid protest for an empty failed cultural norm encoded a while back.
To where would this unexpected
Current of spiritual stillness remove me?
A true adventure.
And as with all true adventures, I was not sure I wanted to know the answer.