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Friday, August 1, 2003

on interstellar drive . . .

There never was a rule that said the rate of time is constant. And so it never has been, not in your life, not in mine. Water in the air slows it down, I think, though it's not in anything that Asimov or Bradbury or LeGuin ever wrote. It's raining now, and the hours passing slow and cool through this bright wet sun of August.

I have been thinking about my little brother, who is slow and erratic in everything he does. It is sometimes hard to understand people without drive, that white-hot inward fire that keeps the blood from cooling in your veins. It is that which fires us to pursue our obsessions, to hunt the sky, to write, to sing, to live.

So because he is only a year my junior, and because he is gentle and sweet and good, I love him more than life. It follows that I have tried in every way I know to jostle him into connecting with this inward drive of his own. I know that unless he discovers the will, motivation, and fire within himself, his daydreams will never live, his words will never be written down, his songs will never be sung . . .

And he is so very beautiful and talented, which means it would be sad beyond words.

There is always a good reason he stays in bed another day. There is always an excellent excuse for not trying. It always makes perfect sense when he explains why he has to wait until tomorrow to start living. It is the song my other friends sing sometimes as well. There was this. There was that. Tomorrow will be a new day. We will get to it.

But there is one ironclad truth life has taught me:

WHY you don't do it never matters. It only matters that you didn't do it. Hard, yes, and simple. But true. That is why I am sad today.

Posted by Sonia