Ridden Hard and Put Away Wet

The logbook of existence for many people is scarcely enviable. Rather it is a balance sheet with uncommon liabilities. In brief, life is hard.

The accomplishment of getting out of bed in the morning is a victory won with only waning pride. It merely sets in motion the lurching disappointment which already reigned through much of the night when frustratingly trying to smother one’s orbiting dreams in the pillows. Once standing disarrayed and staring into the mirror, one lamentably murmurs, “How long can I keep doing this?”.


And yet we do. The ritual of the morning revival and ablutions provide their lilliputian and successive elevations. By diminutive progress we breath life back into our exhausted frame, enough at least to begin another day. Like J. Alfred Prufrock, we prepare a face to meet the faces that we meet. The greater disappointment however is having to face ourselves, to confess we have not succeeded in all that we set about to do, that we have instead repeated the failings in which we daily become more practiced, that the chance of obscuring the blemish that is our plight diminishes perpetually.

Scratch the surface of even the most decent person and you will uncover a maze of turmoil and indecision, a underground battle of competing aspirations and dashed hopes, a nest of thriving decay and reduction which like ravishing termites remains just below the veneer. Why should he any more than we escape the rigours of life?

True, a summer morn and the bouquet of country flowers will pinch the nerves of sensation sufficiently to awaken that fleeting bliss which is life’s occasional reward. Perhaps we should be content with such manna if not for its empirical benefit then for its token diversion. What after all were you expecting? Where now is you entitlement? What harness upon happiness have you?

I know of no one who has not had to endure loss. Whether it is more sustainable if gratuitous rather than self-imposed is irrelevant. The fact is, no one has it all. Nor, have I discovered, is being any easier for others than for me. Each imperceptible advancement is crudely hewn from the rude material that is life. It requires elbow grease and doggedness, sometimes mirthfully nurtured and uplifted by a calm resignation to our unspeakable destiny. And while perhaps not effulgent, we nonetheless can give the changeful appearance of prosperity and design, achievement and advance. Disinclination is the enemy. For some in the know, illusion is all, though nothing erodes the philosophical misery of the condition humaine, epic moments of suffering.

A day’s work, putting in time to fill the crevices of human need and desire, is oddly measured, unwittingly tuned to the rising and setting sun. Life is our breastcollar harness. And like laborious horse flesh we fulfill our appointed tasks and are then put to close quarters.