hours and roles

For too long, I realize (only) now, I've hacked and slashed my day and my life into the artifice of hours and of roles – writer, husband, dog-dad, collector, grandson, son-in-law, (I gave up on being a son long ago), caretaker, family member, etc etc – and it's done me no good: everything, every inhabitation of each, felt like a performance done by a husk waiting – desiring, only – to be swept away to the next inhabitation, the next gig, in the hopes that one of them might feel like the real me.

Reality is that they are all me and that I am all of them and more, simultaneously: there can be no separation, no selective inhabitation between them; to pretend otherwise is to live an illusion, life as a half-hearted performance on a splintered stage to polite golf claps and patronizing pats on the head.