I no longer go outside.

I no longer go outside. I no longer take walks as I did in the days when my two dogs wouldn't hesitate to romp about, sniff, and urinate wherever they pleased.

That was quite some time ago, though. I was young then, they will say. I still am, according to my mother, who has a few extra tides above her body.

Life seems to me more and more to amount to unnamed haikus, inscribed in the routine of my thoughts. It's not so bad; nor can I claim it to be any less profound. The hours seem a bit less smooth.

Yet, flowing from my inescapable breaths, interpreted by my senses, and in every way, my ideas and my fears continue to nourish my wonder, my suffering, and my pleasures.

If I ache here and there, in my bones, my veins, and my gaze, not to mention my dried and cracked skin irritated by fleeting blood-boiling eruptions, if my breath stops short, lingers longer before resuming its task, if I don't know whether silence or wisdom is overwhelming my spirits—oh my spirits, sometimes floral, sometimes aquatic. If the shallow ocean of my existence left no moisture on the ground of experience, if all of this were in vain because I could draw no certainty from it, I will have nonetheless appreciated the gold of my reveries, the breathless hope of my desires.

A child, they say, remains within us, frolicking around our imagination. We don't listen to it enough, they also repeat. I don't believe one should judge what pulls the strings, for ignorance becomes a sin when dressed in arrogance and jingling edicts.

Doubtless I should resume my walks so that my bones might support me better. But above all, should I not run through my imagined cities, listen more to my dreams so that the music within me might continue its course? Let it swirl against its bed, hum and shiver in meanders forever as impertinent and joyful, with that hilarity which has no epithet but to be alive.

I have so much to say, and yet it matters not at all.