Nature – You

(If you find this too depressing...I can't see why, personally, but...you might want to look at the post on the daisy chain. Or not.)

This pain makes me wonder: it always does. With it I am so familiar, I believe I should know its name. Or name it. Naming does not give me power, but false hope and that (though I know its nature) distracts me from the other things that …

This is such a strange journey: unlike any other, unlike any other’s.

I know that.

Sometimes I wish I did not, blissful in ignorance. “I’ll give it all up for a face.” I once would say, and while believing, wanting, knew I never would.

The door is half-open. Apart. A part. Which is the echo? I want one to be an echo but, again, I know it is just a fiction I create.

I think of my companions here in the jungle and how it is they travel so effortlessly, yet weigh me down. But they are going home…(perhaps)…they are home: I know them to be so adaptable.

“Did they steal from me while I slept?” I ask myself and always distrust because I cannot know the answers to the questions I rehearse daily, hourly often, perhaps in fear lest I forget them. And they are important to me. I think I’ll need them at some point.

I think of the guide’s words, when once our paths crossed. Maybe we never really met. “Learn and repeat this. Learn and repeat. And believe. It will be your comfort.”

And so I learn and repeat my motto: “Your conscience my sword, my innocence my shield.”

The one gets battered so frequently it has no shape, no form, no strength and often seems so unwieldy I beat it myself, in rage and frustration. But I will never let it go. Never. It is me.

The other remains sheathed, as far as I know. I certainly have never drawn it, often never would, even in the most dire of circumstances, but then…it is not mine to draw.

I walk to the edge of the circle, taking a thimbleful at a time and follow the path that was never there one footfall ago. But even were I to walk straight, as oft I must, must I not (?) I know that still I walk in circles, of a fashion. Ellipses, maybe. But there are always circles and people treading paths. Ellipses, even.

I think of counter-intuition: 1 + 1 (to infinity) = 1 + 1, not two. And most seem to have 1+ 1 = 1, which I feel is right. The Thought Magician did not teach me that. I wonder if he is a fake. Often I do yet sometimes when the mood takes him, I see a different side; different sides, for he has many many. But still they are his, and he, and I wonder if it is the illusion he creates.

I think of, I think of, I think…and thoughts swarm like noisy, nosy gnats, vying for my attention.

Like the noisy, crass adverts that assail me in this world: “Try me!”, “Look at this!”, “Buy this!”. I make my own choices. Alas.

But the thoughts do not come quickly, periodically, in a line, controlled. They come en masse; tens, hundreds at a time. Unformed, moving, changing, bumping into each other: to form new alliances, defeat the competition, be hidden by a more vociferous companion, only to resurface in the quieter moments. Though those are few and far between.

The cacophony heightens and even with my practice I know there will be so many casualties, and part of me mourns for the loss of what might have been: the spark, the the novel, even the ans- HA! NO!!!

Again I return to counter intuition. Had I coherence I would finish even half a thought sometimes, but that is rare. And so I have learned to put down markers and if, come night’s passing, the trail leads me back, then I may carry on from where I left off: scrabbling to make sense of all that assaults me.

I wonder without wondering at all why I have 2 goals. My caprice and arrogance so great, untouchable even among the Gods of Olympus. 2 goals: unattainable.

I know them. Not in words, but in knowing. “Why do you not leave them behind?” you ask. I look right and left and hold up my arms … “Because…”, I answer.

And I feel the pressure within building, building. Things knocking at the doors of my mind: “Let us out! Let us out! We are done!”

“But are you? I fear you are not and while once I would just purge and purge and …now it seems I cannot. Once I would let things go, half-cocked. It did not matter whether you saw red or brown or yellow. ‘ You see a tree, right? Well, that’s enough. It’s a start. You can fill in the gaps, I know you can. And anyway, is my red, your red? I know it is not.”

And I need to allow you space: to think, consider, experience, realise, be. I want no part of tyranny.

But now things seem different. Surreal in an unreal world. Now.

This is not a post, per se, but I now know it will become one. Verbatim. A halting ‘blocked-now-turn-around-and-find-another-way’ journey that I will periodically undertake. Until something else comes along. Although I know deep down that there is little (anything?) else and all roads lead to … here.

I seem to have lost my ability (such as it was) to ‘post’. The daily trash I would just throw out by the bucketful, sometimes not caring where it landed.

Even among that detritus, now being heavily edited, washed away and discarded like those possessions kept by that pointless fondness often felt, like books in the attic. Still I hope to make some use of them: the products of my never-ceasing mind. Maybe it’s just misplaced?

I like irony, for what it’s worth (…). Nothing exists in 1 dimension, not even 2. And thoughts and emotions, feelings, are not constrained by the measurements we call our senses. So I like to try to see everything about everything. I know the impossibility of the task, but….

I flip to the ‘off switch’ that I think I have, though unreachable. I hope I have; it, that by default I buried, landslide after landslide just to …what? What exactly? And I remember:

“Would you rather … pretty face or hot bod?” (face)

“Would you rather …looks or brains?” (looks)

Always contrary by instinct, with both I was the odd one out. And to you, perhaps, this is a non-sequitur, the babbling of …? To me it is the logic I was born with; that I understand so well.

And inwardly, I smile. I love, no adore the fact that I do not (but sometimes do) take myself seriously. I think it is one of my greatest gifts (perhaps the greatest): to laugh and laugh and laugh. At me. At myself. And most all else besides. And …to let you join in. Invite you to, even.

Laughter. Not the rank, coarse, cold, phlegm-filled rasp of the babbling drunk or the rancorous mass, though I can countenance both, but the laughter that brings relief. A laugh massage – let tension fall away for it is never as bleak as you may think. And if it, and you, are meant to be taken seriously, you will be. In all but the bleakest heart beats humanity, though faint and intermittent. Or so I believe.

But time presses and I have spent too long here – in many ways than you imagine, or perhaps even understand. Though the clock suggests it is but hours.

And still the incomplete call for attention, or release. And while I could spend days or months (or even longer?) here, just to finish this day’s work, my twin is stirring like the rising sun, yin and yang and restlessness stirs from enforced slumber, too strong now to ignore. Away!