it has been quite a year... i feel tired and overwhelmed. i just want to drown in the simplicity of every day life. there are always things to take care of. there are always things to worry about... lately, i've begun to feel the weight of time... like, i recall thinking of investing in the start of a project, and then worrying about the regret i would feel in a year, or two years, or more, years wasted of a life rushing to its end. somehow as i get older, the activities that i partake in have more weight. or perhaps they should. or perhaps they shouldn't. but in any case, the question has arisen. when you've got less gas in the tank, then you really start to think about where you're going, and whether it really is worth going there.
in my last writing, i wrote about how my heart is incremental. and i think it is... i long for a quick stroke of brilliance, like writing in some luminescent, silvery ink, a wound across space and time that would be immediately recognizable and palpable. but i am not like that, i don't write like that... and yet, i was thinking that art is not life, and that if i am not like that, then perhaps i need to really meditate and peruse my thoughts, and distill them to a heightened purity that can then be expressed... that's the idea, anyway. to be honest, i haven't really worked that hard on my writing. there have been so many- SO MANY- other things to worry about...
i think- as i often do nowadays- about sexuality and intimacy. it is a funny thing. it's an analog to life in general, i feel. if you don't feel it, if you don't feel turned on, then you simply can't play. you aren't interested in playing... if the river of life doesn't fill you with its current, if you don't get pulled and pushed and tossed by it, then... in a sense, you aren't alive. and anything you say or do- well, your words will be "dead in the water" so to speak, heavy stones that aren't moved, and do not move... you can't turn someone else on, if you aren't already as well... i also thought about that aspect. to sit apart, uninvolved, to feel a kind of quiescence and peace and stability- these are things that are desired, in this chaotic world- but at the same time, that sort of stance would negate the possibility of participating in life... at least in a way that is authentic.
and as i get older, i realize the futility of that, the sexuality of it all (which, as i said, is an analog for other things). it is a dying light, the last flickering of a flame in the winds of winter. and yet, i cling to it. for what alternative is there? i know, there will come a time when it will all snuff out. and then it will only be the pale shifting insipid light of memories, the ignus fatuus, that will glow about and above me like the stinking false fires of the dead... but in this moment, i will live. and i will help others to live. to feel life, to feel alive... i am still on this side of the divide, and i will burn it up with all the passion that i can muster...
*****
i have been thinking again about amphibians. creatures with "two lives," that can live in water and out of water. but instead of being an advantage, these creatures are half alive. they are never master of their element, but captives of it. they can never leave water fully behind. and instead of dominating both realms, they are prey in both realms. true, their life cycle embodies a complexity that is absent in other species. but what gain is there in that complexity?
in the same sense, we have words like "ambiguity" or "ambivalence." to be two is not to be better. if anything, these result in a cancellation of motion. a lack of clarity.
when i speak of my heart, i understand that i am, like a frog, an amphibian. i understand two realms. i feel two currents. but instead of gaining anything from this, it always makes of me an insubstantial being... i cannot be purposive without questioning purpose; i cannot "simply be" without feeling i am wasting my time and life. there is no simplicity of being in me, there is always, always, always, a relentless questioning and mockery...
i wish i could convey this in a way that would be understandable and "clear," but in every expression there is that ambiguity that both is an expression and betrayal of the message.
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