Ode to Entropy

All change distributes energy
spills what cannot be gathered again.
Each meal, each smile,
each foot-race to the well by Jack and Jill
scatters treasure, lets fall
gold straws once woven from the resurgent dust.
The night sky blazes with Byzantine waste.
The bird's throbbing is expenditure,
and the tide's soughing,
and the tungsten filament illumining my hand.
A ramp has been built into probability
the universe cannot re-ascend.
For our small span,
the sun has fuel, the moon lifts the lulling sea,
the highway shudders with stolen hydrocarbons.
--John Updike

During the past year or so, I've been learning a lot more about entropy after losing the use of my air conditioning because of a drainage pan leak, after watching the hole in the siding of my house grow larger under my "temporary" fix of paint and duct tape, after being without running water for a week or so, and after spending three days or so without power in the aftermath of a rather big storm.

Now my water heater has started leaking.

I've shut it down already, lest the trickle become a flood at some indeterminate point (probably soon). So, no more hot baths until I can afford a new one. Am not sure when that will be.

More than one of my friends has offered to help me out. I've been thankful for the offers but have declined. "Pride is evil," one tells me. Well, it's all I have at the moment, even if it's been buried under a mental haze more often than not for the past few months.

Now, finally, my strategy of self-sabotage in the wake of challenging circumstances has succeeded in whittling away at my options, until I have no choice but to act, to earn more money, to do something, anything, rather than just succumb to inertia and depression and coping mechanisms that no longer make sense.

I just need a week's worth of energy and a clear head. I'll find the right lever. I'll find where to stand. The world will move.