Turns are on my mind.

At every turn some version of vert or vers—those ancient Greek roots—will emerge: conversations are the challenge that propel me through this piece; versions are how it forms and reforms; something between aversion and subversion to the demand of sustained effort is what tugs at me. And so we turn; toward one another, reshaping thing into thing, turning away, turning under.

But we also resist, and thus I stay with the page; with this page, of all the pages spilled out on the table.

It’s quite likely because I’m introverted—or inwardly inclined—that roots of words will linger in my mind. Others, more taken up with the actual physicality, more engaged with the momentum of the day, would likely have little focus to spare for the splinters and shafts that fix our language, intangibly and irrevocably, to meaning. (And yet, even as I persist, the mind wanders, taking its own turns. Diverting my focus.)

***

My puzzling through the whole bundle of complications at the heart of conversation began in the hours before dawn, during one of those sleeps punctuated by insomnia. My thoughts wandered wildly and freely, as they’re wont to do once they’ve pulled me from sleep. The topic was suitably vast; a perfect playground for the mind to romp through, having triumphed over dull sleep. My notes hardly make sense even to me, looking, as they often will in the light of day, like a cross between crazy jottings and obscure poetry.

Conversation: a downhill ski run; an adrenalin rush.
          But I’m a control freak. Loss of control scares me.
          I’m an introvert. And afraid of heights…
          And an avoider of conflict.

I script conversations in my head (while I run, often, or in these sleepless hours)…
I often dread conversation (and am—or was—a timid skier).

Sometimes can’t navigate the turns, and end up, instead, lagging behind others,
or off in the clouds, giving up to converse inside my own head.

In my mind I write, and I also converse.
I used to ski, was happily plateaued at intermediate level.
And ok, not even that, for more than thirty years,
So an analogy with lots of limitations. I’m crashing into them already.

Maybe the assessment of ability holds true for both things, though; that in conversation, as with skiing, I dream big, but am forever stalled at intermediate. With skiing, I always loved the atmosphere, the chilled air, the mountains. But heights scare me. A fear that may have thrilled me, too, fuelling my love of the act.

My memory is of adrenalin rush, anticipated thrills, exhilaration.
And afterwards, of feeling chilled, bone-tired, but charged and restless, too. I’ve never slept well afterwards, would jolt awake from dreams of flying down a steep bank out of control, with leg spasms of enough force to feel as if they might lengthen my legs by a centimetre. Which, oddly, makes me long to do it all again.

***

Conversing:
      One-to-one. That need to tend to relationship.
             Will you let me in?
             Will you join me? Could we take a few turns together?
      No agenda, or maybe some agenda, vague, hardly discernible…
      A general route perhaps…

      Where have you gone?
      Ah, we’ve diverged.
      It wasn’t the same experience.
      Our paths haven’t intertwined.
      No more us; I’m lost.

Skiing:
      Air currents
      Temperature
      Pitch and pace
      Terrain
      Skiers traversing the same trails, individually.

      Push off and swing in
      The shape of decisions
      Over and around,
      Carving moguls, setting tracks.

Does the analogy work? Both feel like solo sports, done in tandem.

I don’t know. I didn’t then—and still don’t. Navigating those scribbled words and the thoughts that must have percolated beneath them is hard-going. Clearly, I was in the grip of what felt like a revelation. And then sleep came again.

What I noticed, having apparently drifted to sleep and awakened suddenly, is how earth-bound my metaphors tend to be. And how we are such mechanical creatures, physiologically constructed and constrained. And how waking from dream or sleep can both shatter and inform a sense of reality. Thoughts which must have retreated to back-of-mind, there to resonate with some just-read article on astronauts, to get taken up in another dawn-lit conversation with myself:

Reacquainted with my physicality and mechanical contexts and constraints.
That’s a gift and a marker of our mortal human existence.
We forever habituate.
What amazing machines we are; what an amazing machine I am.
My hard-won takeaway! Now can I go back—to old ways? (Or to sleep?)
Have I earned some oblivion? Some complacency?

***

In the sobering light of late-afternoon sunlight, rested nearly to indolence, my mind turns back to conversation. And arriving back here, I’m drained. The effort of traversing, of steering myself through these thoughts and scribblings leaves me spent. And also satisfied with the journey.

But even as my energy runs down, the notion of journey tugs, pulling me back to roots. This time to the link between jour and dia—twin roots of day—which have also been flickering at the periphery of my attention. From memories of skiing to the slowest meander toward articulating the challenge of conversation: a cockeyed journey.