Dear Selekoni

I feel separated from life today. It could be that the feeling is more acute than yesterday and the day before and maybe the day before that, but I’ve slept since. The question is . . . Is this separation, this alienation, of my choosing or has it been pressed upon me? I think I need to know. You see, I don’t recall choosing; yet, I suspect this reoccurring ache of discomfort comes from a growing list of gentleman’s agreements I’ve made with, well, someone I don’t recall meeting.

I say I’m separated from ‘life’, but I use that in a general way, a way of escape when I don’t really know what it is. You say ‘describe it’. Here’s what it’s not: It’s not my physical being, yet I’m aware of a distinction between dust and breath. It’s not the going-on’s of others, for I’ve come to care little for that which others care too much. And, though, I tend to dwell there often, it’s not even the realm of ideas, for Plato beckons me to his Being World, but I tire these days of a trip with no destination.

The Existentialists would counsel me that it is Being that I crave. The church counts my days of absence and tallies my sins. Psychologists declare me depressed, repressed, over-confessed, and assumes such separation-angst symptomatic of an unfulfilled dream.

Perhaps it is all a dream, a lullabyed existence. Have I slept all this time? Forty-five years can go quickly when dreams are deep, desirous, and distracting. All I need to do is awake.