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Dread Locks
“It is better to be feared than loved, if you can not
be both.”--Machiavelli
I am afraid of drowning. Deep water terrifies me. I
think I have drowned several times in past lives.
It used to haunt me when I was in the Navy.
I used to fear love, the genuine kind, because of
the myriad of responsibilities attached to it. Now
I am afraid of abandonment and loneliness. My
creeping disability feeds this fear daily.
I have a visceral fear of high places. It makes my
heart race and my feet tingle; plus oddly I have to
fight the urge to jump. I envied the Mohawk steel
workers who scampered on moving beams a
thousand feet in the air.
I fear tight cramped places, like when having an MRI,
six feet deep in iron with only two inches clearance. I
feel like it’s a preview of the coffin.
At my age, I am only a minute away from death. I know
I could die today, or twenty years from now. So, yes. I
fear death, but at the same time I am fascinated by it.
Soul is energy. Energy is never extinguished, it is just
transferred. I have a lot of Zen New Age notions about
death as merely a transition that I want to explore.
The hare does not fear
the hawk. It never sees it
dropping down as death..
Glenn A. Buttkus
Haibun
Posted over at d'Verse Poet's Pub
15 comments:
Good to learn more about you, Glenn. We share some of the same fears (deep water and MRIs.) I like your attitude toward death and appreciate your fearlessness even while you are "a minute away" from it. Your attitude on death calms me.
A good read — haiku really good, and so well-connected to prose.
Nice inventory of fears, Glenn. I share a few. Id bet most of us do.
Wow nicely listed and then the drop. Excellent haibun.
Thanks for dropping by to read mine
Much💜love
You bore witness to myriad fears, Glenn! Your honest facing them evokes the very courage we need to overcome our own! Bravo!
Excellent Glenn, and I relate brother. The haiku was tremendous, and tied the prose into a taut package. But sir, I must ask, if you fear drowning to the degree you expressed — why the fuck you in the Navy? 🤨😉
Excellent question, Rob, but a tale for another time. 1966 was a bad year for me.
"I could die today or twenty years from now." That is the line of thinking that keeps me from fearing death. If the rabbit looked up, it would probably die of fear before the hawk even got there.
Like you I wonder why some can walk on construction beams or I wonder how others go miles underground into mines all day. Then that final paradoxical fear of death: as long as we don't see it coming, we're okay! Can so relate, Glenn. Great haibun.
pax,
dora
I, too, often dream of rushing dangerous water. Your haiku nicely summarizes your post. I like it.
You share some very real fears Glenn. Interesting that you were in the Navy, and have a fear of water! Thanks for sharing this personal and heartfelt haibun. I share some of your fears of aging and losing control of my life!
Glenn, those fears are so real and that is a gem of a haiku!
True confession time: I fear heights, deep water, closed in spaces. Looks like I'm in good company. A great haibun, Glenn.
May your transition be delayed as long as possible.
I think I fear your very sound fears, but also the knowledge that it also tingles with excitement (not the MRI though). May it be those 20 years.
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