Listing and Listing

One of the gauges in my life is the presence of 'listing'. And I was about to say, 'not that drifting to one side list', but actually . . .

Listing, the art of making a list, is present in my life when I am listing in other ways.

I pause, and imagine myself as a little boat on the ocean, try and feel where the weight is, what is creating the list (to one side) and I find that it is in two spaces of my little boat: beneath the mast, a deep pull down, from masthead to the ocean floor, and beyond that, to the core of the earth (that hot churny nucleus). It is gravity, it is skull to pelivis, it is beneficial to be aware of this weight. The other weight is in the stern of my little boat. It is the weight of sorrow and fear and confusion. It pulls the boat back deep into the waves and the prow tilts awkwardly out of the water, sniffing the heavens. A vision of a panicked and tethered horse; its neck outreaching as if it is freely galloping, flighting away.

Naturally, with time, this weight will shift to the prow and the little boat will plunge me into my future. But then there are the other unbidden currents. The life currents. The wave that shoves one's prow into the future regardless of bottom heavy-ness. Today for instance, a job interview.

So, I was talking of lists, because I was going to resort to managing this need to write by creating one, but actually, I didn't need to in the end.