The Ox and the Wheel

Why of course. I am seeing 2009 as a giant wheel to turn. It’s a wooden cog of sort with a diameter as large as life itself. I could not help but see myself attached to the cog. Me, looking like a beast of burden, a bored ox or a water buffalo who needed to walk a circular path and push the cog to rotate. In pushing, I made an orbit without even noticing that the wheel follows me like a shadow. That somehow, the same part of the giant wheel is following me in my path.

The wheel and I are moving in similar pace.

Indeed there’s a wheel and there’s me attached to the cog. But why the hell are we moving about a common point? Why do we rotate on the same axis? To orbit on a single point creates a cycle, precisely because things often go back to where it started. As long as the momentum is there, things would always register a trend. There would always be a sequence of start and end, of high and low, of positive and negative and of good and bad.

Now I am wondering if the giant wheel is depending on me for its spin. The wheel that I perceived now as my life may somehow entrust its motion on me. The manner in which the wheel rotates is based on how much effort I poured into my actions.

How this wheel rotates leads to how I could sustain the juices of life. The wheel allows the cog to churn my life and then squeeze out the extracts of happiness, of triumphs and of successes. This kind of set-up is comparable to how the sugarcane got pressed and squeezed by a beast-driven press to extract its sweet juice. It would continue to produce the extract for as long as the beast continues to turn the wheel around.

The thought sends me spinning. I am sitting here at the coffee shop once more for my fix of mocha latte. It’s only the second day of work for 2009. I don’t want to move just yet. I am still in a daze. I could not cleanse my system from any lethargic bits. I am still sluggish. I do not want to set the wheel in motion but then it’s there, jerking and trying to yank out of place.

How I wish that I do not have to work.  How I wished that I’m detached from my wheel so that I could step aside and watch it turn from a distance. I know it’s impossible. The wheel would not spin without me. The question is, what would it take to push me to move? What would fuel me to keep this wheel from turning?

I need to survive. For me to hang on to my job which in general I do not abhor, I need to keep moving. I need to set a lot of things in motion. At this time of the year, business is still lean. The business climate is sleepy since people had just recently gotten off from the yuletide season. And the cycle has just started. Things are expected to be slow and sluggish. There’s an overwhelming drag and somehow, the machinery must have to bear with it for a period of time.

No matter how much I would exert for my wheel to turn, I guess at this time, the impact wouldn’t be significant. I may need to make up my mind soon and decide on the time for me to continue on with this cycle.

I should not let myself be astonished on the things that may happen within the succession. I must have to accept the thought that in life, there are things that diminish the monotony and the weariness. There are several things in life that drag us down and often times these attacks of laziness happen at the start of the year.

If I let these things yank me out of my spinning then I would be very unsure where I would pick myself up. I would not have an idea where my wheel would go. But definitely the cycle of life would terminate at such point of letting boredom dictate the spinning.

I could still see the wheel at my side. I could still see myself as the beast of burden. The yoke is upon my shoulders. It’s getting heavier by the moment. Spinning would allow me to unload and pass on the stack to the cog, hoping that it would transform the energy through its movement.

I know the wheel is still waiting for me to continue with the turns. I’m quite uncertain of what the juices of life would be in 2009.