Over time, compulsion became my viewing glass. Some of that time I anesthetized it. Not always. I found the embrace too intoxicating to leave it stranded beside the road. An outsized concern with bedbugs, my own peculiar style of self aggrandizement, an irredeemable desire to tear leaves from trees and shrubs as I passed them by, all of those things covered me with a faint smell of desperation. No amount of baby powder scented deodorant could snuff it. Teen Spirit, Degree, Suave. I tried them all. Eventually, I realized that drifting out of focus provided that same kind of blanketing, but you could get something out of it. You could fend off moire. You could find balance in degrees of chance. Most of all, following angles of light eradicated the desperate odor of compulsion’s obligatory stasis.
by Hank Cherry
