It's the Same

I've shuttling too much in the real world for the longest time.  I've been most pragmatic about what living entails.  I've been paying my dues and concentrating on work, tying up loose ends and making sure things that need to get done are properly done.  In a moment, the rain will stop and I will feel that urge to be unreflective and entirely dull to these pulses that rise.  Perhaps it only takes two moments -- one the immediate present and then the confused step to re-create that moment in writing, circling the moment, turning it on its head, confusing the moment in time, with time.  An observation that grounds writing in the real world:
 
I went to borrow books today -- at the Orchard Library.  Borrowed two Tim O'Brien books -- both on Vietnam.  I must confess that I am often disappointed by the NLB system because books that are supposed to be on the shelf often go missing, are placed in the wrong section or have disintegrated into the pages of more frequently borrowed titles.  Anyway -- I was pleased that I managed to get what I wanted.  There is a dread I feel when I borrows books that has haunted me all my life.  I actually have this strangely silly fear that I won't read borrowed books -- that'll they'll merely exist as mocking reminders of my nobler intensions, on my bookshelf.
 
The shared community of the borrowed book.  Thousands of eyes skim through its words.  All of us borrowing from its moments and curves of language, disengaging in a thousand private moments to lift that mug to your lips or to stare at the next passer-by.  Epiphanies discharged, scattered on a page.  Perhaps.