Tightrope

I still walk my tightrope. But it feels different now than it used to. Now that the net has disappeared from beneath me. That net. Its presence brought me a certain comfort, a peace of mind equal in measure to the uneasiness that now occupies my headspace. It was a comfort I was reluctant to acknowledge beyond the privacy of my own thoughts. After all, what kind of tightrope walker would I be if I admitted to taking a comfort in nets?

The truth is that the stakes feel higher now than they have in a long while. My footing is a little less sure. My movements lacking in the intention that once attended them. I look down more often than I used to. Forces of which I was only theoretically cognizant before, now seem to weigh on me.

But I am trained. My steps are unrelenting, if hackneyed. The threat of losing a momentum built up from years of practice and expectation compels me forward now. If I cannot be graceful, then I must be consistent. The show must go on and all of that.

Meanwhile I feel like no one remembers I'm up here.

"A tightrope walk," I yell to the distant onlookers below, "is a difficult balancing act!"

Someone stuffs a fistful of popcorn into their face.

"A dangerous flirtation with gravity itself! A death-defying performance requiring uncompromising precision, dexterity and skill!"

"Not to mention just the teensiest bit of flair," I muse.

I look down and see another wave of spectators making its way toward the concession stands.

"Dammit, why couldn't I have been an accountant."

If I could, I'd imagine into existence miles of rope. Rope enough to span the distance to the moon and back. Rope to be braided into nets and ladders and swings and webs, a web so dense that a fall only has one tumbling ever so gently downward, from catch to catch, until arriving unscathed and firmly planted on the ground. Could a tightrope career survive a fall like that? Or would the promise of a soft landing make the precariousness of the tightrope unbearable? I would imagine into existence storehouses of rope. But alas, there only ever seems to be enough of the stuff to fashion a single cord. And that's the one I am standing on.

With rope in such short supply, the closest I can come to summoning a net to my senses is to imagine the people in my life, all of them organized into a sort of grid. With arms interlocked, they form a lattice: a human mesh. Can I ask them to catch me? Would they be willing to take those bruises for me? What if my pain was their pain and it all broke purple just beneath the skin? If pain was like that, would it change anything?

In my mind, I have fallen many times. I have fallen enough to refund the ticket of every accountant in the universe. I wonder about the future of the profession. About those who will come after me. I feel a greater responsibility to them than I do to anyone else. I wonder: If there had been no net in place when I started, would I have even ventured out onto this tightrope in the first place? Will they? Why do I already feel like a vestige sometimes? There has been no greater need for a net than there is at present.

Where do we find these nets of the human variety? They are not likely to arrange themselves spontaneously. I suppose we'll have to manufacture them. We've got to find a way to work them out of the imaginations of those of us who need them and into clear view. We've got to do more than what's been done before. The stakes are simply too high. We've got to make catching our craft.