The Pulse

My personality and my choices have brought to life a strange, long pulse that dances me interminably between the strangest of extremes - ones I have learned to control so readily, once they appear to me. The bipolar axis between joy and despair, urgency and boredom, optimism and purposelessness. I suspect my mental and emotional stabilizers are too loose, allow me too much freedom. I stand my joys in front of myself so eagerly to indulge. I am no longer afraid of running out; I want it all now.

Let's just talk about at least one up and I will leave the downs to worry about myself:

On my recent trip to Colorado, after the second consecutive long, strenuous day of hiking, we settled into our camp and I crossed a narrow stream with my iPod. I had gone to great lengths to compile a playlist meant to listen to in the dark and alone in the wilderness. (If you're wondering: something like a miasma of ambient and minimal music (Fennesz, Boards of Canada, Animal Collective's "Campfire Songs", snips of Eno) with a handful of delicate melodic numbers (Will Oldham, early Grizzly Bear).) I was exhausted, certainly too exhausted to be hungry, though I was depleted mightily. The ground was a little spongy under my feet, or perhaps my feet were simply spongy things now. The rocks and trees of the forest acted out of turn; I sensed something light, a web of presence beyond randomness. My brain caught this anthropomorphism and checked it out of existence and then went back into sugar-starved remission. Perhaps I simply sensed order and perhaps we are evolved to feel awe at that. I walked up a slope, down a slope, looked back up. I caught sight of trees that begged me with gestalt identities, wandered through breeches of enormous split boulders. The trees and rocks stood patient for me to look into and look through. And I, too, I knew then and now, am re-learning patience in moments such as this; the world, I sometimes forget, must stand always waiting, but I have a choice. I have not had a drug-induced psychedelic experience in a very long time, but my heart seeks out their specters in strange moments of respite, my brain away or asleep. What does this mean? Why are these things as they are?

I am always trying to answer the question of what I want my life to be. I often have some model of the world built to satisfy questions like that and it often burns down in moments like this. I search through the rubble and feel remorse towards the match.