there are no easy dreams tonight. i wake at odd times, maybe because of the raucous wind outside, or maybe because of something stirring inside. there is some measure of solace in the even breathing of my wife beside me, or the sound of the children turning in their beds. but somehow it is not enough. i walk, somewhat exhausted, feeling burnt out from within, a light bulb whose filament has burst and painted my insides with opacity... i want out, i want in. i feel like someone who has locked his keys within himself, and there isn't a locksmith to call at this time of night/morning. so all i can do is rattle my empty head, and hear the sound of those secret keys jangling inside of me...
what is the point?
... okay, i'm recalling a fragment of this meaningless dream. it was some kind of halloween party or something. i'm alone for some reason, disconnected from my family. no costume. and there are these people, most of them strangers, but some i recognize, but no one says hi, no one talks to me. and i'm just drifting like whale vomit on the tides of the crowd, they are looking at this, looking at that, all excited. something about donnie darko (this movie i see people seem to have liked, every now and then), something like fluorescent chalk drawings on the wall under a black light, something... and it just feels so terribly meaningless. the whole thing. it is tiresome. it is worse than tiresome. it feels like i'm drowning in meaninglessness. because a secret part of me knows that i'm the author of this worthless piece of crap dream, but there is no way out...
what is the heart? what is it that gives life, that pumps life, into a thing? the gods/god fashioned mortals out of dust, but what is it that gave dust life? a coherence, a theme... sometimes i wonder about this. it is an essential thing, it is a SIMPLE thing, but it is something which you cannot re-construct. either you've got it or you don't... if you've ever heard that song, "them that have will get..." (i think it's called "blessed is the child") i always wondered at the lyrics, even while thinking how true they seemed (and at the same time wondering why in the world people would LIKE such a song, with what the lyrics really seemed to be saying): that those that have (whatever) will get more of it, and those that don't, will NEVER get a thing. a reflection on the present ridiculousness of our capitalist society, with wealth concentrated increasingly in the hands of a few? and the corollary: what is referred to as "cultural capital?" or perhaps something more fundamental: those that are alive will get more "life," those that are really dead inside, will progressively feel their lives slip away...
no one seems convinced by my act(s). say whatever you will about the validity of the "social eye," there is one critique that seems to hold true. it recognizes the "reality"/"interest level"/"LIFE" of a work. that is something that, in the myopia of working on a piece, the author/artist can NEVER see. in fact, perhaps that is the whole motive force behind artistic production, to "convince" another of one's hidden perspectives. it is a gamble, the artistic endeavor. maybe no one will like what you see. maybe what comes out will be stillborn, or deformed. not a creation recognizable, and therefore, only worthy of abortion. and all that effort, the figurative nine months, for WHAT?
i think i need to blank out. the thoughts are getting too hairy. i need to find a simplicity, a purity, in this world again... i'm starting to see through the skin of things... (thematically, the play between transparency and opacity has always fascinated me: how the thing which is opaque/NOT understood is, more often than not, transparent, in the sense that we do not see it; the thing which is apparently understood [transparent] is actually opaque, because we take for granted its inherent mystery). so things are becoming too transparent/opaque, nothing is what it seems... i must play up the other angle on reality, the realization that nothing is OTHER than what it seems, that "what you see IS what you get." the innocence, the vital necessity, of SKIN. that which holds each thing in. that which holds everything else out.
i pray for skin to bind me up. i pray for the skin of reality to hold, so i can trace its consistent edge with one line. everything to have an edge again...
well, enough of this ramble. there is sleep or something else to attend to.
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