i.

There are always nights, but some of them are emptier than others. That's the pessimist's way of putting it, I suppose. I really mean to say that some are fuller than others. Filled with the light of absurd happiness that leaks in through the outlets in the walls. We forget the power of the first things. The seeming witchcraft of electricity delivered to a particular location--what is this strange magic that lights our houses, powers our laptops... And there we have the twist. That in moving beyond, we lose sight of the steps that it took to get to this world of wonder, steps wondrous in themselves. Who can see the outlets when there are iPhones and 3D printers? Franklin with his key and his kite poses on pages of history no less remote from our conceptual spaces than the galvanization that brought Frankenstein's monster to life in Shelley's fiction. 

But that's not the fullness.

"Shit happens. But sometimes shit doesn't happen, and that can matter just as much."

A room cleared of all the possible worlds that have been sent into dusty attics to rot for all time because they were not and are not, and now they're simply taking up space that isn't theirs to claim. The sensuality of the stretching out and settling in--the walls have been pushed back, the ceiling rises, and we find more room to grow when we're not boxed in by "might have been."

Which isn't to say that there's not still a shelf lined up with "could bes."

Every morning, I dress myself (or sometimes afternoon--we'll not speak of those days) and with the corporeal touch of cotton, wool, nylon, polyester, rayon, there's the abstract plan that settles over my limbs, preparing to direct them through the day. It is not yet, but it's waiting to be.

Without the could be, we are naked, vulnerable, and confused, unsure of ourselves and our agency. What is there to become when we have become all that we wish to be? At least in the not knowing, there is still a measure of breathless anticipation, but the cessation is lassitude in muscles accustomed to the heavy conditioning of the marathon run embarked on decades ago and only just now ground to a halt. Let us go and go and go, lest in the stopping, we lose our momentum forever. There are worlds to explore and our hearts and feet are the only means of transportation that can get us there.