I am experiencing a prolonged entropy of thought, er, somethin - my notions are growing further apart, harder to arrange into reasonable stories, or explanations, or whatever it is that notions are supposed to become. It is clear to me that my measurable writing output is declining, even as the thoughts that inspire me come more frequently. Indeed, sometimes they seem constant. All indications suggest that I will never catch up.
They come more frequently, and yet they are more distant than ever from words, and from any practice of expression of which I am capable. It is as if any practice in translating my inner language onto the metaphorical page is also strengthening my fluency in the inner language.
Writers need focus, I have heard. Maybe this is why?
I have more desire than ever to share my thoughts, and my writing, and this blog and Fifty Mile Point are my outlets - given my pathetic output, there clearly exists a disconnect. I will keep trying. And yet, I do have another outlet that has not expressed itself yet.
I am trying to organize some subset of what I have written - the subset that I suspect could be coherent (and maybe even resonant) to other human beings - into a collection of short stories. I feel I have a semblance of focus on this goal, even though all that really amounts to is finishing decent stories and deferring or forgetting the rest. I do not pretend that I am a good writer - the list of things I need to improve is a very long list - but I have something to say, and find it possible that others would read it and find something they can connect with.
Shitty writing likely detracts from any connection a story is capable of forging, but I want to try anyway. I am not so much a perfectionist as a simpleton, capable of ignoring some pieces of the puzzle.
I think it will be fun to see what year I actually finish it. Forced to guess, I would say 2017, although I have to admit now that the key variable aside from focus is drive:
1) How much time will I spend writing? (drive)
2) How well will I use that time to finish the collection? (focus)
Still, it would be depressing to muse on what might be a reasonable confidence interval.
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Friday, January 2, 2015
What Everybody Needs
"When you recognize that pain — and response to pain — is a universal thing, it helps explain so many things about others, just as it explains so much about yourself. It teaches you forbearance. It teaches you a moderation in your responses to other people’s behavior. It teaches you a sort of understanding. It essentially tells you what everybody needs. You know what everybody needs? You want to put it in a single word? Everybody needs to be understood.
And out of that comes every form of love. If someone truly feels that you understand them, an awful lot of neurotic behavior just disappears — disappears on your part, disappears on their part. So if you’re talking about what motivates this world to continue existing as a community, you’ve got to talk about love… And my argument is it comes out of your biology because on some level we understand all of this. We put it into religious forms. It’s almost like an excuse to deny our biology. We put it into pithy, sententious aphorisms, but it’s really coming out of our deepest physiological nature."
- Sherwin Nuland, from "The Biology of the Spirit" (found via Brainpickings)
And out of that comes every form of love. If someone truly feels that you understand them, an awful lot of neurotic behavior just disappears — disappears on your part, disappears on their part. So if you’re talking about what motivates this world to continue existing as a community, you’ve got to talk about love… And my argument is it comes out of your biology because on some level we understand all of this. We put it into religious forms. It’s almost like an excuse to deny our biology. We put it into pithy, sententious aphorisms, but it’s really coming out of our deepest physiological nature."
- Sherwin Nuland, from "The Biology of the Spirit" (found via Brainpickings)
Monday, December 1, 2014
David Foster Wallace on Life
"In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness.
The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.
I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don’t dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness — awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us."
- David Foster Wallace, "This Is Water"
The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.
I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don’t dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness — awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us."
- David Foster Wallace, "This Is Water"
Monday, October 6, 2014
Reflections On Our Wedding
Merry and I's wedding has come and gone. And how? In Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, one character asks another, "How did you go bankrupt?" His answer: "Gradually, then suddenly." I would say the wedding weekend arrived the same way, first drifting slowly closer in the fog of the indefinite future, then rushing by in a blur.
At this age, I find myself in agreement with the adage, "anything worth doing is worth doing well." And so, if we were going to have a wedding, my thoughts went, I wanted us to do it on our own terms. But weddings are complicated things, made more so by the pull of tradition, and the expectations of other people. My aim was perfection, and as the date approached, and time grew more scarce, a different reality came into focus. I tried to accept this, with imperfect results, but all I could do is try. It passed, and somewhere along the way, I came into a state of peace.
Again, I might take the time to stress, at this age. Who have I become? Does time make everyone a pragmatist? Perhaps. Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, said, "If you're not making mistakes, you're not moving fast enough." I had always applied that quote to my life on the basis of my daily, even hourly productivity. Now I am starting to see it detached from time, attached instead to my progress as a human being. Inner refinement, that is, rather than outer movement - action for action's sake. Who cares when the lawn waits a couple extra days to get mowed? Nobody should hasten to accomplish busywork faster, but everyone should hasten to become the best, most fully-actualized person they can, while they can.
And so our wedding day has come and gone. Mistakes were made, yet it worked - all of it - and so if the mistakes did not harm it, then are they mistakes? I now don't think so - they were just some things that happened, amongst many things that happened, which added up to our wedding weekend. The biggest "mistake" of all, by the standards I would have judged it even a week before, were our vows. After all, if the ceremony is the core of the weekend, and the vows the core of the ceremony, then what could be more important to get right? We both wrote hasty vows near the last minute. Blasphemy!, I might have responded to the thought, even just a week earlier.
I told Merry a few weeks before the wedding that I suspected she saw the guests as the metaphorical anchor to the event, while I saw the ceremony as the anchor. It took the experience of the thing itself for me to see her viewpoint (though I still hold onto mine, as well). I simply cannot deny that almost all of the most important pieces of the weekend were shared with, and dependent on, friends and family. Those friends and family helped and supported us in dozens of ways, even as we may have failed to write vows until the day we would recite them, and then to a lesser quality than we might have with more time - our faults alone, and yet not something I can view as mistakes. After all, what vows could be more appropriate, given that we both understand that vows, by the nature of a living relationship, are always being written and re-written? Every time I promise myself to make myself better in some way for Merry's sake, I am writing a vow. As we conquer our limitations, and as we encounter new challenges, our sentiments will change, though hopefully our intention to serve each other as friends and partners will not. And so the vows we recited last Saturday are neither the first nor the last vows we will make to each other, but merely one day's snapshot of our intentions for that small, hazy portion of the future that we have tried to discern from here.
At this age, I find myself in agreement with the adage, "anything worth doing is worth doing well." And so, if we were going to have a wedding, my thoughts went, I wanted us to do it on our own terms. But weddings are complicated things, made more so by the pull of tradition, and the expectations of other people. My aim was perfection, and as the date approached, and time grew more scarce, a different reality came into focus. I tried to accept this, with imperfect results, but all I could do is try. It passed, and somewhere along the way, I came into a state of peace.
Again, I might take the time to stress, at this age. Who have I become? Does time make everyone a pragmatist? Perhaps. Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, said, "If you're not making mistakes, you're not moving fast enough." I had always applied that quote to my life on the basis of my daily, even hourly productivity. Now I am starting to see it detached from time, attached instead to my progress as a human being. Inner refinement, that is, rather than outer movement - action for action's sake. Who cares when the lawn waits a couple extra days to get mowed? Nobody should hasten to accomplish busywork faster, but everyone should hasten to become the best, most fully-actualized person they can, while they can.
And so our wedding day has come and gone. Mistakes were made, yet it worked - all of it - and so if the mistakes did not harm it, then are they mistakes? I now don't think so - they were just some things that happened, amongst many things that happened, which added up to our wedding weekend. The biggest "mistake" of all, by the standards I would have judged it even a week before, were our vows. After all, if the ceremony is the core of the weekend, and the vows the core of the ceremony, then what could be more important to get right? We both wrote hasty vows near the last minute. Blasphemy!, I might have responded to the thought, even just a week earlier.
I told Merry a few weeks before the wedding that I suspected she saw the guests as the metaphorical anchor to the event, while I saw the ceremony as the anchor. It took the experience of the thing itself for me to see her viewpoint (though I still hold onto mine, as well). I simply cannot deny that almost all of the most important pieces of the weekend were shared with, and dependent on, friends and family. Those friends and family helped and supported us in dozens of ways, even as we may have failed to write vows until the day we would recite them, and then to a lesser quality than we might have with more time - our faults alone, and yet not something I can view as mistakes. After all, what vows could be more appropriate, given that we both understand that vows, by the nature of a living relationship, are always being written and re-written? Every time I promise myself to make myself better in some way for Merry's sake, I am writing a vow. As we conquer our limitations, and as we encounter new challenges, our sentiments will change, though hopefully our intention to serve each other as friends and partners will not. And so the vows we recited last Saturday are neither the first nor the last vows we will make to each other, but merely one day's snapshot of our intentions for that small, hazy portion of the future that we have tried to discern from here.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Fear of Airports
I have a strange sort of fear that comes about in airports - a nameless anxiety that is independent of subject or circumstance. It comes, I believe, from a notion that as events occur in my life, and as time passes, I am succeeding or failing by some absolute measure. Whatever that measure might be, it consists of terms that I do not detect or concern myself with in any ordinary day or place. It is difficult but necessary, perhaps, to realize that the discrepancy should not exist - airports may be a reminder for me of the nature of time, but they do not indicate in any sense that some days should be treated differently than others. If I am correct regarding the source and nature of this feeling, then it should be felt always, or never. But which?
Remarkably, I have retained very few memories of airports, and even amongst those, none seem to inform the impression that airports give me today. Aside from some particular travel difficulties (customs in Morocco, an overnight in Detroit), nothing particular of any consequence strikes my memory. And yet I have certainly experienced hundreds of things in airports, and spent an inordinate amount of time drifting in thought through those spare hours, whether daydreaming, or meditating on how I am choosing, at any given moment, to live my life.
Perhaps the closest thing I have to an archetypal memory of airports is my layover after a trans-Atlantic flight to Stockholm, before connecting to Helsinki. I was irreversibly far down the road of quitting work, going not only back to school but going to school a third of the way around the world, preparing to plunge myself into a situation that would force me to meet people, and in doing so, succeed or fail on absolute terms. The terminal was empty and the first light of dawn spilled across the horizon as I sat thinking - mostly about my checking account, which is perhaps weird for me to note after what I’ve said so far. The reason I find it notable, though, is that it represents a more general focus on how circumstance comes to be - how we might decide things for ourselves, or drift through life with an innate sense of trust, or an innate sense of rudderlessness. A checking account is not a profound thing, but I had not worried about my checking account in years. What I was doing was examining the process of change, which is another way of saying meditating on how I am choosing, at any given moment, to live my life.
I can be confident in saying that many similar, though smaller, moments have occurred in airports. I had several of them today alone. But they do not much register - not for too long, anyway - and I do not remember them as individual things.
I have carried a fear of forgetting for as long as I can remember - I was fixated even when I was young on an idea of cataloging the world that I experienced, to keep all my memories as possessions, as if there would be further use for them tomorrow. I was fearful of forgetting and sought all the traditional tools to help me remember. I took photos, and journaled each day. When my family decided to move, I videotaped the layout and composition of the house, as if such information would prove not only useful, but critical for something critical, to be accomplished later.
What I did not understand then is that even when we have forgotten particulars, we retain essences - patterns on top of patterns, becoming ultimately what I abuse the term “archetype” to describe - a sense independent of the thing - its common nature.
Before I knew the experience of air travel, I knew the loneliness of airports through random visits and the music of Brian Eno and Radiohead. There was an alienation and sadness expressed in OK Computer, both literal (the cover art, the song Let Down: “Airports, motorways and tramlines, starting and then stopping, the emptiest of feelings.”) and figurative (placidness covering profound depth of feelings, good and bad, in songs like No Surprises and Lucky). For all the calmness of Discrete Music and Music for Airports, what I heard personally was the terror of man-made empty spaces, where we vacuum away the soul of nature to achieve profound impersonality. Those feelings no doubt color what I feel today, but how much?
I believe that periodic reflections on my life have brought me a great deal of sadness, because life is unavoidably difficult, and complicated, and frustrating, in different degrees and in different ways as we age. There has also been a tremendous amount of joy and satisfaction, but it can be hard to remember, because our nature is to bask in the positives each day, absorbing the satisfaction they give and draining them of any novelty.
The trip I am completing now has been important - I am certain of that. But that is a different proposition from memory. Still, I wonder what my memories of this trip will be, ten years from now. I know from experience that just as the particulars will fade, the essence of what the trip was about will likely grow clearer, and in that process, I will see how it fits into the arc of my life. All of life is like that - perhaps what I described earlier as an archetype may simply be a misdiagnosis of a certain sort of experience, or wisdom.
Remarkably, I have retained very few memories of airports, and even amongst those, none seem to inform the impression that airports give me today. Aside from some particular travel difficulties (customs in Morocco, an overnight in Detroit), nothing particular of any consequence strikes my memory. And yet I have certainly experienced hundreds of things in airports, and spent an inordinate amount of time drifting in thought through those spare hours, whether daydreaming, or meditating on how I am choosing, at any given moment, to live my life.
Perhaps the closest thing I have to an archetypal memory of airports is my layover after a trans-Atlantic flight to Stockholm, before connecting to Helsinki. I was irreversibly far down the road of quitting work, going not only back to school but going to school a third of the way around the world, preparing to plunge myself into a situation that would force me to meet people, and in doing so, succeed or fail on absolute terms. The terminal was empty and the first light of dawn spilled across the horizon as I sat thinking - mostly about my checking account, which is perhaps weird for me to note after what I’ve said so far. The reason I find it notable, though, is that it represents a more general focus on how circumstance comes to be - how we might decide things for ourselves, or drift through life with an innate sense of trust, or an innate sense of rudderlessness. A checking account is not a profound thing, but I had not worried about my checking account in years. What I was doing was examining the process of change, which is another way of saying meditating on how I am choosing, at any given moment, to live my life.
I can be confident in saying that many similar, though smaller, moments have occurred in airports. I had several of them today alone. But they do not much register - not for too long, anyway - and I do not remember them as individual things.
I have carried a fear of forgetting for as long as I can remember - I was fixated even when I was young on an idea of cataloging the world that I experienced, to keep all my memories as possessions, as if there would be further use for them tomorrow. I was fearful of forgetting and sought all the traditional tools to help me remember. I took photos, and journaled each day. When my family decided to move, I videotaped the layout and composition of the house, as if such information would prove not only useful, but critical for something critical, to be accomplished later.
What I did not understand then is that even when we have forgotten particulars, we retain essences - patterns on top of patterns, becoming ultimately what I abuse the term “archetype” to describe - a sense independent of the thing - its common nature.
Before I knew the experience of air travel, I knew the loneliness of airports through random visits and the music of Brian Eno and Radiohead. There was an alienation and sadness expressed in OK Computer, both literal (the cover art, the song Let Down: “Airports, motorways and tramlines, starting and then stopping, the emptiest of feelings.”) and figurative (placidness covering profound depth of feelings, good and bad, in songs like No Surprises and Lucky). For all the calmness of Discrete Music and Music for Airports, what I heard personally was the terror of man-made empty spaces, where we vacuum away the soul of nature to achieve profound impersonality. Those feelings no doubt color what I feel today, but how much?
I believe that periodic reflections on my life have brought me a great deal of sadness, because life is unavoidably difficult, and complicated, and frustrating, in different degrees and in different ways as we age. There has also been a tremendous amount of joy and satisfaction, but it can be hard to remember, because our nature is to bask in the positives each day, absorbing the satisfaction they give and draining them of any novelty.
The trip I am completing now has been important - I am certain of that. But that is a different proposition from memory. Still, I wonder what my memories of this trip will be, ten years from now. I know from experience that just as the particulars will fade, the essence of what the trip was about will likely grow clearer, and in that process, I will see how it fits into the arc of my life. All of life is like that - perhaps what I described earlier as an archetype may simply be a misdiagnosis of a certain sort of experience, or wisdom.
"Through Hollow Lands"
I frequently find myself confounded in trying to put my present - the past few years - into the context of the past.
One practical way might be to view my current condition against my evolving past condition through the lens of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In better regarding my own needs, and meeting someone that I care about and trust, and learning to eat healthy, and hell, getting sleep, I have removed or eased constraints on the lower levels, and sure enough, I find myself only increasing my desire for some sort of self-actualization (which was, admittedly, always there). My writing might even come from a need to express myself, be understood, and most of all, touch something universal.
It is that final point that I often come back to. It may have been different when I was young, when I thought the self was an act of differentiation. When did I get old enough that I started seeing the role of the self opposite - to integrate, elegant and harmonious, into what already exists, what is eternal?
Two years ago, I listened to Brian Eno in the last evening light at Chesler Park in Canyonlands. It was "Through Hollow Lands", what might otherwise be an innocuous track, but one of five songs in a row I consider perfect that end that album, when the elation of the three songs before settled into my soul and I had something like an out-of-body experience (not to put it too dramatically - I think some people would describe what I felt as "light-headedness"). I was out there searching for something in addition to solitude - meaning, connection, trying to link my past to my future. My grandmother loved the southwest, and I loved her. What of her - her values, her spirit, her mistakes - could I honor through my actions?
She died, what, seven years ago? That morning, I woke after a night out like a thousand others, strangely elated. I was lightheaded, hungover, but the morning light was upon me through the window, and I relented to it, rising early. Like some other rare mornings, the air felt full of magic, and I didn't want my walk to the convenience store, or my spell listening to the birds on the porch, to end. I called my dad that morning to ask if they were going to go see my grandma that day in the hospice, because I wanted to as well. I caught him at an awkward time - she had just died, but he hadn't called to tell us yet.
I know, among other things, that I managed to hurt him that day - the guilt of having not informed me, for they had seen it coming for hours. But I would not have wanted to be there. I might have tried to break the air in half, or the sunlight, for the feeling of cosmic frustration that must come with watching someone you love sliding into death. In failing to come to terms, I may have hurt myself (the way I used to dream of doing so).
In retrospect, there was no doubt the luck of time and circumstance on all scales involved, that she had the profound effect on me that she did. Not only that my day went that way, but that I was lost in my own life, and that I happened to reflect on hers amidst the haze of my prolonged adolescence, and understand in some dim way what was to be done. Most broadly of all, that I had the chance to know her - that the universe sat us down in such close proximity of time and space.
In the years since, I have grown into much more than I was then. More than once I have wished she could see me as I am now, for I want her to be proud of me - but what kind of contradiction would that be? And before I skip away down this road, perhaps it is wise to ask - when I say I have grown into more than I was, am I right? What does it mean? Does it matter?
When I look into the mirror today, I finally see some of the man I had been expecting to wake up as tomorrow for every day of the last 20 years - evolving though that image has been. And it is not in the wrinkle lines, or the hurt of my past that I see every time I am brave enough to catch my own gaze - but in the recognition of the collective past that I can see that I am finally there, at least in some way.
One practical way might be to view my current condition against my evolving past condition through the lens of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In better regarding my own needs, and meeting someone that I care about and trust, and learning to eat healthy, and hell, getting sleep, I have removed or eased constraints on the lower levels, and sure enough, I find myself only increasing my desire for some sort of self-actualization (which was, admittedly, always there). My writing might even come from a need to express myself, be understood, and most of all, touch something universal.
It is that final point that I often come back to. It may have been different when I was young, when I thought the self was an act of differentiation. When did I get old enough that I started seeing the role of the self opposite - to integrate, elegant and harmonious, into what already exists, what is eternal?
Two years ago, I listened to Brian Eno in the last evening light at Chesler Park in Canyonlands. It was "Through Hollow Lands", what might otherwise be an innocuous track, but one of five songs in a row I consider perfect that end that album, when the elation of the three songs before settled into my soul and I had something like an out-of-body experience (not to put it too dramatically - I think some people would describe what I felt as "light-headedness"). I was out there searching for something in addition to solitude - meaning, connection, trying to link my past to my future. My grandmother loved the southwest, and I loved her. What of her - her values, her spirit, her mistakes - could I honor through my actions?
She died, what, seven years ago? That morning, I woke after a night out like a thousand others, strangely elated. I was lightheaded, hungover, but the morning light was upon me through the window, and I relented to it, rising early. Like some other rare mornings, the air felt full of magic, and I didn't want my walk to the convenience store, or my spell listening to the birds on the porch, to end. I called my dad that morning to ask if they were going to go see my grandma that day in the hospice, because I wanted to as well. I caught him at an awkward time - she had just died, but he hadn't called to tell us yet.
I know, among other things, that I managed to hurt him that day - the guilt of having not informed me, for they had seen it coming for hours. But I would not have wanted to be there. I might have tried to break the air in half, or the sunlight, for the feeling of cosmic frustration that must come with watching someone you love sliding into death. In failing to come to terms, I may have hurt myself (the way I used to dream of doing so).
In retrospect, there was no doubt the luck of time and circumstance on all scales involved, that she had the profound effect on me that she did. Not only that my day went that way, but that I was lost in my own life, and that I happened to reflect on hers amidst the haze of my prolonged adolescence, and understand in some dim way what was to be done. Most broadly of all, that I had the chance to know her - that the universe sat us down in such close proximity of time and space.
In the years since, I have grown into much more than I was then. More than once I have wished she could see me as I am now, for I want her to be proud of me - but what kind of contradiction would that be? And before I skip away down this road, perhaps it is wise to ask - when I say I have grown into more than I was, am I right? What does it mean? Does it matter?
When I look into the mirror today, I finally see some of the man I had been expecting to wake up as tomorrow for every day of the last 20 years - evolving though that image has been. And it is not in the wrinkle lines, or the hurt of my past that I see every time I am brave enough to catch my own gaze - but in the recognition of the collective past that I can see that I am finally there, at least in some way.
Change
I read a story about New York. Then I thought about the movie Quiet City.
And, I thought that even though these two things describe, and show, the same general condition in the same place - in the same city, that is (wow, the world is changing every day) - the former is so much more recent than the latter, and I can sense that in the differing conditions they express, no matter how secondhand, or distant.
Once upon a time, I had an innate vision of the world that was one of stasis.
As with most life lessons, I was slow to realize that I was wrong. But, even in the span of the many intervening years since, I had not yet done a full 180, I think, until now.
The nature of the world is change; all stasis is an illusion.
Once upon a time, I thought the right delusions could be keys to comfort, happiness, salvation.
Nowadays, that notion itself is dissolving, and I understand that delusions of comfort are really missed opportunities to grow through deeper understanding. And now, I look back at those years and feel a terrible pain for the opportunities I sacrificed, blindly, by default, by my actions. My comfort, my satisfaction in my own bubble, offer little consolation against the loss of decades.
There is that old saying: "God is in charge of the content of life; the devil is in charge of the timing."
I think a heuristic for detecting wisdom might be: lessons we are predisposed, though not condemned, to learn the hard way.
That's life.
And, I thought that even though these two things describe, and show, the same general condition in the same place - in the same city, that is (wow, the world is changing every day) - the former is so much more recent than the latter, and I can sense that in the differing conditions they express, no matter how secondhand, or distant.
Once upon a time, I had an innate vision of the world that was one of stasis.
As with most life lessons, I was slow to realize that I was wrong. But, even in the span of the many intervening years since, I had not yet done a full 180, I think, until now.
The nature of the world is change; all stasis is an illusion.
Once upon a time, I thought the right delusions could be keys to comfort, happiness, salvation.
Nowadays, that notion itself is dissolving, and I understand that delusions of comfort are really missed opportunities to grow through deeper understanding. And now, I look back at those years and feel a terrible pain for the opportunities I sacrificed, blindly, by default, by my actions. My comfort, my satisfaction in my own bubble, offer little consolation against the loss of decades.
There is that old saying: "God is in charge of the content of life; the devil is in charge of the timing."
I think a heuristic for detecting wisdom might be: lessons we are predisposed, though not condemned, to learn the hard way.
That's life.
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