Wandering Mojo

The doubt comes in quiet. It doesn’t shout. It settles.

There was a time I would have said, “I know what I’m doing here.” I would have said it plain and meant it. Now I’m not sure I would.

The doubt comes in quiet. It doesn’t shout. It settles. It’s like smoke that drifts across a field after something has burned out. You don’t see the fire anymore, but the air isn’t clear. You taste it. It gets in your eyes. It edges into your mind.

I remember when things were easy. I could talk to people without thinking about it. I could walk into a shop and buy what I needed without a list in my hand like a set of dumb orders. I could drive without feeling I was in a dogfight I hadn’t agreed to. I could stand in a queue and know what I would ask for when my turn came. I could decide to do something and then do it. I didn’t drift. OK, maybe I wavered, but I’d come through most times.

Those things fade. Not because you stop using them. Not exactly. It’s more that something in you goes slack. Being yourself doesn’t always feel like enough. You remember seeing over a fence once. Now you can’t. You haven’t grown shorter. The fence hasn’t grown higher. Still, you can’t see over. What were you looking out for anyway?

It isn’t weakness. It’s rust. A human kind. The mind stiffens. The spirit does too. The part of you that once moved cleanly now hesitates. You can almost hear it from somewhere inside.

The thing people call mojo wanders off. It’s like a cat that slips out at night and doesn’t come back when you call. It finds some other warm place, some other dark corner. You wait for it, but you don’t go looking. You know better.

If this sounds like nonsense, well, maybe it is. The thoughts don’t feel borrowed, but they don’t feel owned either. They pass through. You write them down because they’re there. In your face. I’m doing that now.

But I still could write about some band I used to like to listen to. Or a book, a gummy paperback I liked. Or a film that has come back to me. That would be simpler. It would feel like I knew the ground under my feet. Instead, I have this: I don’t know what I’m doing here.

It’s not dramatic. It’s just true.

I’m here. I’m just writing this down. Anything and nothing.

That’s enough for now.

I’m going on my break.

Then, if it’s not too dark, I may well paddle my canoe across to the “Isle of the Dead” just to check in on who’s home.

Conversation is pretty easy there.