want. not wish, not lack. want.

For a few minutes there I regarded this feeling with suspicion. Crazy, rising up from the depths of my mind to drag my attention away from real life and down unpleasant bunny trails, has felt similar. I'm writing from a place which combines powerful emotion with a great tightness of the intellect, mind like a long-tensed muscle. So please excuse the flowery, rather than correct, grammar et cetera.

This feels like impatience, anger, resolve. Angry, not crazy. I want whatever happens next to happen now, now, now now!
I want to mosh.
I want to get respectably educated about a loud angry band and go mosh.
I want to see Local H again.

Oh, this wanting, it is dangerous stuff.

Sometimes my brain calls up the memory of gun oil and for a moment, I smell it. It is a comfort; reminds me of Dad.

I want to start an organization, a congregation. I want disciples awesome enough to supplant me and leave me in place behind the scenes in an advisory role. Disciples only in the sense of people who are trying to figure out the same sorts of things I am trying to figure out. They may or may not start out by listening to me. At some point, though, I want them to have enough of their own opinions, informed by experiment and thought, that we can generate a common terminology and have debates about things which are otherwise almost impossible to speak of.

It is as if, by giving myself leave to actively desire, I have opened a skylight on a room full of long-dormant lush leafy vined things that, of a sudden, all began to sprout and grow. Violently. Which desires to prune back, and which to let climb, bud, flower. I wonder. Which flowers would bear nourishing fruits.

Reminds me of a dream I had recently. Of which I won't say anything except that it reminded me strongly of a Miller and Lee quote, a commonplace in the Liaden Universe: Can you nurture the children of your actions?

Another dream, last night, ended with me looking at myself in a mirror. Always a good thing, mental-health-wise, when you dream your face in a mirror and it is your own face.

I want a place I can go to play my music where people recognize me, expect me, know me by name, are familiar with my catalog, give me sass when I'm off my A game. I know, now, how to earn such a role. If the place were of the right character and the scene spacious enough or nascent enough for me to be that person there without supplanting someone else, which I would dislike.

I want people to walk away from me and say to each other, "you mean she's like this all the time?!" In a good way, though.

Life cycles through seasons, or rather, we in our dance with life throw ourselves into different things with different amounts and aspects of ourselves. It seems to me these changes are guided by what we are becoming, and how we go about it. I've gone through a long season of not writing out my changes as I go, not attempting to draw out a map behind me in words as I travel through time. I have been acting, doing, and when I've stepped back analyze I have kept it to myself. I want this season to end. And that will require a time of a different shape.

The burden and danger of desire is that what we desire, we do. What we do, we become. What we become, we stamp on the world around us, in the imprint of our presence on the people with whom we interact and the tasks we perform.

There are two ways in which you can believe you are unworthy to desire, and so shut off that place within yourself. You can believe, as I did for a time, that desire itself is a power you are inherently unfit to wield. That everything which grows from you must wither or spring up poisonous and thorned. Or you can believe, as I did for a time, that desire is too great a danger and a responsibility. That by taking it up you place in your hands a terrible weapon, which you dare not wield for fear of doing some great harm.

I do not think so much of myself, now, that I feel my mere desires to be a danger.

Fear--that formless, irrational terror that drives self away from self and out of reality--does not drive me anymore. Nor the smaller, more reasoned caution that served in its place, the extreme vigilance that kept fear itself in the background while I altered those parts of myself which generated it. Now it is not only acceptable to me to desire; it is necessary. Otherwise I would not have had the courage to attempt so risky a transformation!

I want to find out exactly how dangerous I am. The power that may be used to destroy may also be used to create, and a thing well-created serves and enriches far more than it consumes. I want to make things, and not only things which may be called art, works of the mind that each person must encounter in the quiet of his or her own awareness.

I want to turn locations into places. As in, "if you're looking for X, that is the place." I want to turn processes, interactions, people participating in groupthinks, into times. As in, "oh, those were the times when we were really getting X done."

I want to take some of this stuff I've learned how to do and use it.

5 comments:

Amber E said...

George Gray



I have studied many times

The marble which was chiseled for me—

A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.

In truth it pictures not my destination

But my life.

For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;

Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;

Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.

Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.

And now I know that we must lift the sail

And catch the winds of destiny

Wherever they drive the boat.

To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,

But life without meaning is the torture

Of restlessness and vague desire—

It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.



Edgar Lee Masters

I've always thought this was the saddest poem in the Spoon River anthology but it has inspired me at times to dare. You are not George Grey, you face and have faced many things boldly. I am not saying you felt bold but that that was how you have dealt with hard situations even if you weren't feeling it and I respect that. BTW I just realized that because I have the rosary on cd I can put it on my iPod, how cool is that! Okay, hope you are having a good evening, catch up with you soon.

Fiat Lex said...

*wag! beam!*

Thank you, dear Amber!

This was for me the most memorable poem in Spoon River, as well as the saddest. Like Pearl Jam's song Sleight of hand (sorry about the popups on the lyric site!), it's a poem about a person who normally would never take the time or let themselves have the vulnerability to write one of their own. It is a tragedy when someone has all the materials of a passionate, fascinating life, and shrinks away from using them.

We avoid this fate, and instead experience other troubles! XD You and I, my dear, we have the sneakiness. Perhaps too much of it now and then. My sneakiness or caution or what have you has led me at times to foolish choices. Right now I'm just hoping my newfound boldness does not lead me into different foolish choices.

Spiffy, to have the rosary thing in a podcast! The stuff you were telling me about it sounded cool. The whole "take advantage of the quantum universe!" thing is something people rarely apply to existing religion--why, I've no notion. The Catholics, though, have spent a millennium developing contemplative and personality-construction type techniques. XD If you discover more awesome things in that direction, would you tell me about 'em?

Amber E said...

Certainly, I love to share shiny things with my sisters :) Ah, foolish choices, that could be a book but they are part of our personality development. For them not to be wasted I try to remember that there are parts of them I do cherish and I am, I hope a better person for having learned from them.

Did you ever watch the show Sabrina the Teenage Witch? I loved that show. There was one episode where Sabrina used her magic to make it so she didn't make mistakes, things went awry as usual and at one point she had to review all the mistakes in her life. Then when she got back to her trying to walk as a toddler and falling down she said something like Hey, everyone falls down a few times while learning to walk. Okay, so that may be a bit simplistic in terms of our personality discussion but truisms are that for a reason

Regarding why more people don't take advantage of things honed for centuries :shrug: they may not actually be aware of them as they are. . Once I had the random thought during Mass that I have joined an ancient mystery religion with complex rituals, ancient chants, ritual clothing worn by the celebrant where we read ancient tomes and participate in a mystical feast, invoke the presence of the Deity and solemnly watch a man wash dishes. If only it was secret and forbidden to outsiders everyone one want to join. Just teasing, I didn't actually think all that impiously, just another perspective on how it might appear to an anthropologist without focusing on the central 'mystery' of faith "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again." without knowing what that means and why we care it would be silly instead of deeply meaningful and important.

Things can almost be invisible if one grows up with the assumed premise Catholic stuff is old/boring/irrelevant. I am finding it dynamic and wonderful. Glad you enjoyed me learning about it. While I do not expect you to pray the rosary next time remind me to show you the pamphlet I have that shows what the Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious and Luminous Mysteries are just to get a better sense of it. Random fact, we only had the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious muntil recently. A saint who was a former satanist wrote about the idea of mysteries focusing on Jesus' ministry and Pope John Paul II liked the idea. http://www.catholicity.com/commentary/landry/00691.html I really think the Luminous mysteries completes the set.

Sorry for so much rambling in the random thoughts. Work was busy but good, yay spring is on the way! Hope you are well.

Amber E said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Fiat Lex said...

XD Your ironic comment about "if only it was secret and forbidden" reminds me of the postmen's society in Going Postal. I forget which character said it, but it was something like, "not so much secret as, sort of, well...ignored." Like, you said, people aren't aware of them as they are. I think a head-deskingly vast majority of times, people's experiences or what they learn about "what this is supposed to be like" end up leading them in the opposite direction of how the things are supposed to be used.

There was a pretty good post over at barkingreed, by the way, on prayer and how people approach it. Like, spontaneous prayer is creative and heartfelt and good in one way, but "rote" prayer is like a daily discipline that is good in a different way, to give shape and focus to one's time.

The article about Blessed Bartolo was really cool, and made me remember a blogger I used to follow but who hasn't updated in a very long time. Goes by the name Moriah Conquering Wind and refers to herself as "it". She's got this demon, see, that it's never occurred to her to give whatfor. Lady disabled comments on her blog after I'd commented a few times! Sure, she had awful, awful experiences with people who tried to bully her into kicking that wossname to the curb--but *various colorful oaths!* I want to give her some tea and calmly explain to her that this tick-riddled poppet she clutches will be the death of her yet.

XP Sorry to bring such a sad story into it. Moriah's kind of an extreme example, but it's amazing how many people let themselves get used by stuff which is supposed to be tools in their hands. Like, even the more inane seeming ones, they let the symbol systems they construct lure them into little cul-de-sacs in their own minds. Rather than pulling the whole structure back out into everyday life where it can be tested and molded into something which increases joy and the capacity for love, rather than decreasing it.

XD Of course I have no cred either way, so all I can do is sort of sit on the sidelines and sputter "ur doin it rong!!!" like, well, every other denizen of the internet.