Return

I haven't been blogging lately I know, just a little something called work and getting intimately acquainted with the growing stacks of files that would probably pose a health hazard if I attempt to stack them all together. It's sad when you come back the following morning and remember exactly which tea-smudged tab in a particular file you left off at the previous night. It's sadder when staying till eight in the office feels normal.

It's been a week and returning to an activity that once seemed to be an aspect of daily life, seems strange and stilted. If only because every time I sit down now, all that comes to mind is how to draft a particular affidavit or summons. The task of attempting to give expression to the vacuous thoughts that flit about the recesses of the mind, strained and artificial. Much like flogging the proverbial dead horse if you will. As if by flogging it harder, through focusing ones concentration on the matter at hand some miraculous creative spark would restore the carcass to its former glory.

There is much to be said of the expression that disuse prevents reuse. Some cobwebs can be cleared away, others leave their insidious mark, little infractions that draw ones focus and attention from an area of interest and corrode the attention it once commanded. So whether this spirited return is for good remains to be seen for it is subject to whimsical fancies as fickle as a summer storm.

Who? What? Why? Where? Perennial questions that mark long lazy afternoons over coffee or a prelude to a stormy showdown. Or perhaps just tactful manipulation, as we divert attention away from greyer areas and stir up eddies of intrigue to conceal what it is we so desperately want to hide. And you wonder how people wolf it down, behind those plastic smiles as they pass by, mobile mannequins, their minds a veritable hornet's nest of activity as they process and pick apart the information received from the daily discourse.

But can you stand apart, to look down with disdain at the crowd from your exalted pedestal and say with utmost confidence and not a shred of reservation that you've never partaken in such activities? If so you must either be totally deranged with delusions of self-grandeur or be a saint in which this earthly plane is the wrong one for you. But for the rest of us mere mortals, this is a game that plays us as much as we play it. For by purporting to disseminate information to our advantage, we need to continue its propagation and the interaction with our counterparts' efforts is something we are often unable to predict, much less control.

But still we carry on this charade, this endless riposte, this need for self gratification, uncaring of the consequences that may follow. For as it has been said, deception is the sweetest mockery.