Rhythm is important to me. Not repetition, exactly, but keeping time nonetheless. There are naturally moments I should like to skip over, breeze past, fast-forward— but I’m glad I can’t. Those moments make me, and I don’t want so much control over my life that I find a workaround for living.

I have trouble sometimes with pausing. Less than I once did, but still…it can feel like stopping, like an end to a rhythm rather than the interval that defines it. I’m actively trying to maintain that perspective. There’s a Chinese proverb that translates into something like, don’t be afraid of going slowly: be afraid of standing still. I used to take that quite literally, and similarly literally was afraid of not moving: if my body wasn’t moving, my mind was, or my voice was, or I would move my body anyways: a constant foot tap, a twirling of my hair, a restless and continuous casting of my eyes arouond the space I was in.

These days I’m trying to internalize the idea that stopping is an illusion, an impossible state of being that therefore ought not be worried over. There is only the pause, the interval, the exhale between inhales. It is mistake to think of it as a rest, though— after all, holding still is often harder to do than staying in motion, if you’ve already started moving. I’ve often referred tot that state of perpetual motion as a constant state of ‘falling forward’— embodying the idea of direction without intentionality. I don’t want to spend my life falling forward. I want to be intentional some of the time. But like I said at the beginning, not all the time: I need some things to be out of my control in order for me to find peace in the illusion of having it.