motivation (ii)

at a certain age, or at a certain stage of seasoning, it becomes impossible to apply simple motivational techniques upon oneself.

"i'm an old dog," the soul mutters, "and those old tricks don't work on me." a laziness of sorts begins to creep into old bones. motion and emotion becomes economical, measured. and other things begin to be valued, replacing the old youthful dynasty's monetary system.

"your currency's no longer good here."

everything is now measured in a kind of feeling, a feeling akin to riding waves...

it is impossible to prepare for a tsunami in advance, simply because it is a wave that hasn't happened yet, and hasn't arrived. those who do prepare are the ones who "have it together," who still operate out of that quaint mythology that the world can and should be prepared for. yes, there is a certain elegance and simplicity to that.

but for those who have loved the world and been irrevocably broken by it, it is impossible to prepare for anything. not only that, it is undesirable to prepare. preparation, in a certain sense, kills the world. it lays a blanket of dominion over the future, and prevents the true tomorrow from arriving, the tomorrow that everyone and no one anticipates, the tomorrow of a fresh face and a new horizon.

i will address things as they come. there are too many things to love right now. i may be, will be, killed by something sometime soon, but i never played this game to win. i played this game to play.

***

imagine yourself a character in a book. you have the privilege (or curse) of being self-aware, and in a certain sense, in control of your destiny. do you rail against the pages you have been written into, seeking to find that empty space that has never been written? do you struggle to climb out from beneath the covers that contain your narrative? do you shout in capital lettered quotations to the invisible author who writes you into being, to set you free?

or are you quiet and inwardly laughing, as the story unfolds before you? you have no choice but to live it, no choice but to follow a path that has been set before you, with illusory decisions to make. "no choice but to choose." some call it abdication, but who here has every turned the world on their whim? better for a fish to swim in its sea, than to seek a way to escape all tides and waves in the suffocating air above.

the one who wrote me and writes me still has not a single clue where he will put me. perhaps for periods of time he lays me down and forgets all about me, his cares directed elsewhere. and for those moments, i live my life, oblivious and aging, a secret to myself and to "him." and i flow into the rivers and i stagnate in the pools. i live and i die. sometime, somewhere, events unfold that make waves, and perhaps for a time, those waves stir me and i flash into a narrative again. but the point is, i am not in control of anything. i do not write the story. and, in any case, no one is there who has the capacity or patience to read it, anyway...