I feel underwhelmed, unmoved, unable, uncomfortable, unaware.  I want to say so many things about so many things, but where do I start?  I want to jump off this train and hitch a ride on the back of a motorcycle.  I won't wear a helmet, I won't hold on to the handlebars, or on to whomever is in control.  I want to be the leaves as they fall from the trees.  I want to notice the ladybug that is dying, slowly dying, on the front porch of my too-small home. 

How do you ignite a fire that you can't seem to find any fuel for? Oh, there's plenty of oxygen in the sighs that exude from my bored mouth and mind, but no spark, no sign of smoke.  I want to rise like that smoke, dissipate, reconvene in a bonfire on the beach surrounded by a drum circle and a thunderous beat that tells the time and the story of my ancestors.

I want to become music.  I want to lose myself in a blues riff that reminds me of every woman who's been wronged, every woman who's had a hand placed on her body when she didn't want it, every woman whose voice wasn't loud enough.  I want to be that riff.  I want my soul to sound like the friction between a glass slide and the steel strings of Robert Johnson's guitar.  I want to be the product of selling one's own soul to the devil.  I want to be the notes you can't hear between the notes.  The story of the song: how it was written, where it was written, why it was written.

But I can't do any of these things when my creativity is steamrolled by life.  I can't do any of these things when the last thing I do before I go to bed is remember how many times throughout the day that I was disgusted by my brothers and sisters in humanity.  I can't become music if I can't hear anything but the sound of cash registers ringing up another purchase, the sound of the digital numbers on the gas pump changing so fast that you can never stop on an even dollar amount, the sound of pockets getting fatter, the sound of children falling through the cracks, the sound of bombs in faraway countries echoing in my conscience. 

Confusing, stifling, extinguishing my fire.  Life.  Not just my own.  In fact, my own is pretty easy to swallow.  It's worrying about yours that bothers me.