Excerpts from My Diary: "Backwash"

But truly, in the end we cannot win. For he has always been there, sitting in the middle of the room, calmly, patiently, without flinching or breaking any sweat even if he could. When our steps were lighter, we leaped across his lap, bumped into him, cried and laughed in our ignorance, screaming out songs of joy and pain. In moments, every slowly, we became aware of his presence amongst us, and yet he was still merely an outline or a shadow that we blocked out with whatever we had in our hands, whether it was a book, the weekend newspaper or a fabulous set of warm tits gently swinging in front of us. All the time however, he has gradually come into sharper focus: each time our bodies failed, each time our bruises became more noticeable or took longer to heal, each time our eyes had trouble focusing on anything else, he became clearer. And then there is the moment we realize that he has the greatest patience, greater than any saint, greater than the sun waiting to one day embrace the earth. In our wild revulsion we gather our fears, eat our children and lash out like small dogs; we bark and yip with false confidence, backtracking fearfully when we see that he is unmoved, as still as the day he got there, which seems to be forever because our faltering memories don’t recall when that day was. Some grow tired of waiting while others watch with trepidation as every last excuse for greeting him slips away. And then he rises, so quickly and suddenly, with a smooth grace of movements that we swear we have seen before; and before we even have time to think about being scared, he’s up and has left the room. And so have we.