Awaken

We are awakened by cataclysm.  Social cataclysm, social awakening.  Personal cataclysm. . . .

And awakened without will, reluctantly.  It is awful and terribly uncomfortable.  We would prefer to sleep.  But there we are, face to face with the thing itself.  What we are.  What we've become.

I woke in the dark long before dawn.  I stayed in bed.  It was simply too early to get up.  The cold had come in the night.  And now the cold morning begins.  The squirrels feel it.  They are very active today, frisky.  A female cardinal flew to my window and hovered for a long while peering in.  Long enough to startle, its wings flapping ferociously, maintaining its balance like a giant hummingbird but without ease or grace, more than long enough to unnerve.

I have not been living unconsciously.  I have been conscious.  But that has prevented nothing.  I am conscious now, too, in a different way.  It is like shifting your perspective by merely stepping to the side a bit and seeing something you could not see before.

We choose by necessity.  There are limits.  Still, we unavoidably must choose.  Why me?  Why not me?  It all comes down to that.