At different points in the life of a kangaroo, it’s necessary to question whether life is going well or else maybe-not-so-well / not-as-well-as-maybe-could-be. A lifetime, for all of its ostensible solidity— clothes purchased, albums recorded, beverage cans recycled, toilet paper crumpled & browned before being sent down into the relatively intricate, watery abyss of a municipality’s ably-engineered intestines, photographs of moments & milestones framed— is largely dreams, sometimes recurring nightmares, as well. In mind is less the sleeping kind, and more the born-in-daylight kind, the ones conjured up so as to move roos into the future & into change— so that when we’re finally in the future: we might be other than what we were in the past— and, hopefully: in a fashion more reflective of our intentions applied for days on end in those days gone by. This makes it that much of a lifetime is pretty much the experience of feeling hopes— as well as the occasional reconciliation with their failure to manifest as life.

These hopes are minted to tender, at some future date, the terms whereby we evaluate our successes & failures: i.e., how many we’ve had of each, and to what degree. And while of course the final reckoning comes at the deathbed: wiser roos can’t help but develop the habit of checking in now & again, however at intervals of varying prudence. No roo really being able to judge what constitutes for anotheroo “a sufficient degree of prudence,” it’s probably still safe to assume: the more frequently the better.
        But not only is it prudence inscribing these interval marks upon the meter: oftentimes there’s circumstance, as well. When the shit hits the fan, not only is it good to assess one’s clothes, but also to check & see if any’s landed upon the meter to mark a new & unfortunate interval of shittiness. Assuming circumstances are in fact bad & that a new, shitty interval has indeed begun (and maybe also for reasons of kangaroos’ tendency to become what they behold) not infrequently can one’s meter assessment send a roo spiraling downwards into a state far worse. Thusly: when a roo isn’t doing so hot— or even when the world around one isn’t— circumstances can require the meter being read more often.

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Kangaroo wasn’t doing so hot. The things he’d taken out of his pouch having thought he’d done away with “once & for all” had silently found a way back in; the clutter & excess expunged had gravitated back towards him, circling ever closer & closer still, at once like coins in one of those very-precisely-engineered funnels on display in some science museums, as well as like vultures. Only in his case the spinning change wasn’t an additive monetary donation into the pot, so to speak, but rather a negative & unwanted presence in his pouch, as it were.

Such was his incitement to assessment; the details of which did not need going into. Addiction is the opposite of transformation. Addiction is the state of a kangaroo being bound (seemingly perpetually) to a repeated course of action, the result of which is to always achieve a familiar, known state— a pleasant one at first, and then not at all. The emotional result of this rise & fall is simply to be saddened by the expected & understood fall… again.
        Addiction vs transformation fights in an arena where it’s clear how each are opposites in virtually every way. A for instance: how the addictive state is familiar, where you instantly recognize you’re getting what you signed up for. With transformation, on the other hand: when you’re bounding along on the path towards it, you’re never quite sure if you’re there or not, save perhaps until after a long & uncertainty-riddled while; familiarity does not apply here.

Addiction exists on one plane, with the addictive act bringing glimpses of a different, seemingly lighter plane— until only to throw one back down upon the plane just left. Transformation, on the other hand, moves a roo from one plane to another.

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This is where K-Roo stood, looking down into his pouch, Platy nowhere in sight. Yet that now & again a new year may’ve gotten off to a rocky start should be of no surprise, no concern, even: life itself is no different; all of it having started billions of years back with the ocean’s tides crashing upon pebbled & sandy shores, persistently.