Stress

Writing Club 

I don't remember what the original prompt was other than we had to use a nursery rhyme. 

Stress

Row, row, row your boat,

I am rowing, rowing,

But getting no where fast,

Travelling counter current, with a calculated trajectory that sends me nowhere, relative to a fixed point beside me along the shore.  Oh yes, all that trigonometry that I valued so highly. 

Angles of force, desired vectors, to send me up the ladder of levies, now seem like mistakes that have kept me idle, or rather, relative to the point on the horizon I desire, pummelled me on in eddies towards the waterfall behind. 

I am a victim of Alice’s Red Queen, running like the white rabbit.  I’m late, I’m late.  I run, yes I run only to find that ground beneath me has run faster and I fall behind.  Survival of the fittest the zoology prof would say, Steven Dawkins would call it successful perpetuation of our genes. 

Gently down the stream,

I go.

Merrily, merrily, merrily,

Merrily into drink and oblivion for some, not for me.  I have other vices.  Not as evil, but nearly as consuming.  I feel all too aware of the ravages of time upon my frame.  The weight of life crushing on as I tread water,

Merrily seeking escape,

Sleep even evades at times.

Life is but a dream.

Or is it…

I wish it was a dream, an easy flowing, meandering river.  Naivety is bliss, floating along on currents of innocence, like a child.

Complexity is like a pleasing drug, delving into the depths, only to be caught in the undertow, circular logic of understanding and knowledge and its validity.

So I row my boat, in circles, so what?

Streams of consciousness, flow of numbers and thought come easy, mingling with perception, 

Streaming like headlights on a highway at night.

It’s all in how we row our boat most say.  Paddle harder, more efficiently.

But maybe more is less,

Then perhaps the stream could be gentle, the effort light and the way merry.

Happiness is relative to perception, is it not?