tonight i write in the absence of music. instead, i hear the wind roaring outside. it can be a comforting sound, the wind. i'm not quite sure why. i suppose it is the contrast between the tumult and turmoil outside, and the calm and shelter within. i suppose it makes it seem appropriate and sufficient to cuddle up and sleep. it makes you think you have no business worrying about anything else. it makes you think that there exists this thing called peace.
life is made up of contrasts. the contrasts hide a truth that underlies everything. in reality, there is neither peace nor chaos. when someone thinks they are at peace, it is often only because of a relief that things are not worse, but if one weren't in the proximity of calamity, then one would only find other, littler things to worry about. i suppose that's part of the crux, that there is no ultimate peace, or at least no peace that exists independent of the world. or should i say, no peace that exists dependent upon the world? we always rest in the world within a stance, and our weight is always placed somewhere, and that weight makes us dependent upon some fictional ground... but the ground is perhaps ultimately always unstable.
***
i have been thinking about this idea of reduction. in chemistry, there is this thing called a redox reaction. basically, it is an exchange of a couple of electrons. there is a "reduction", meaning a giving up of electrons, and then there is "oxidation," which involves the taking up of electrons, often with the accompaniment of oxygen. but in any case, reduction, which in other contexts, usually means a diminishment, well, perhaps in relationships (human), there is a sort of exchange that occurs there as well. when one is reduced (diminished), then another is empowered. i think there is something desirable about being reduced at times. i can't quite explain it... i describe this in aesthetic terms, as an acknowledgment of the true nature of the world, of being ultimately completely vulnerable to it, but it is more (and less) than that...
i think that to overwhelm someone (with pleasure) is to simultaneously reduce them to something vulnerable to feeling. and perhaps that is accompanied by a simultaneous empowerment. i'm not sure...
***
i want to remember something. but i can't recall what it is. so i won't know if i've found it.
"wish i knew what you were looking for. might have known what you would find."
i think what i seek is a feeling of continuity with the past. perhaps if i felt the solidity of my past, i would feel more confident in the flow of my present. because things have seemed quite fragmentary of late. because there is a constant questioning, and interrogation, of being...
***
the directions we seek to move in life... how time mocks us. it finds us still in the same place, with the same unanswered questions. and yet we have changed. we are older, more diminished, less relevant, worn, faded. the questions, the feeling, the urgency, it becomes tired. our hopes and dreams become laughable myths. once, i might have wanted to learn a martial art- but then, time and tide questions me, and says, "for what?" that effort is like a sandcastle vulnerable to the waves. work and work and work at it, but if you stop for a moment, it all disappears into the soup. and what for? there is no one to see the sandcastle. no one is there to witness it. was the point to have a witness, to impress someone? and if not, then what was the point? is there an end in itself? is there a reason outside of the "play" of relations?
***
i have often asked that question. i have wanted to know if it were possible to devote oneself to art, apart from the eyes of others. i remember training in the graveyard, in the snow...
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