These bones

Somewhere under the disorganised desk of my mind, I've always thought of life as something like this: there's a structure, like a skeleton, of all the things that are very important to you. The things which have intrinsic value, which strike you as being beautiful and of good report, which drive your decisions about where you ought to go and what sorts of things you ought to be doing. The skeleton generates a sort of body around itself, and the body ends up being all the details of your life -- the things you do, what happens during the day, the birds you watch, the clothes you buy, the conversations you have, the places you go, the things you say, the things you think, the things you make, the hands you hold.

All of these things seem real and important because of the bones underneath -- the things that you hang all the other stuff on that makes it all seem meaningful and pithy and cohesive rather than like an arbitrary and disjoint collection of completely contingent whatnot.

There have been times in the past where I've felt pretty skeletal -- like there's only the bones of what I think is right and true, and none of the bits of life to hang on it.

At the moment, I'm wondering where the hell my bones went. My life is wall-to-wall with Stuff, with conversations and work and discussions and thoughts and dust and dirty dishes and flowers and applications for this, applications for that, mud and birds, coffee and new novels. But I can't remember what any of it is for.