can't see the end: September 2003 Archives

logic requires payment of at least lip service to this, this concept of release. this l... this lett... uce. this lettuce. no, no, this letting

go. this letting go. i've talked the talk to myself for some time now, and as easily as the right-sounding words come to me, they are even more easily discarded, carelessly tossed aside, or no let's be honest here they are very carefully and in fact meticulously tossed aside, a deliberate act in direct defiance of all that makes sense. excuse is as follows: what if?

what if i am wrong about how right i am about this? what if i do what i am convinced i know i must do and five minutes later i feel the universe shift on its axis (which is within me the same as it is in everyone and everything, trust me on this) where was i oh yes what if the universe shifts within and spins things around so that this terrible unfulfilled need is suddenly within the realm of possibility rather than the almost ridiculously unreal estate it occupies at the moment? everything is entirely different from moment to moment and you never fucking know, honest you don't and neither do i, and so who am i to simply turn away from this and say that i know this, that i know this is not? what if my pessimism (if that is what this is) costs me this (i have no words for what this is)?

i play the music that invokes the feelings attendant in the letting go, randomly breaking down in a manner suggesting i am feeling this letting go, telling myself over and over it's done now and time to be letting go, and still i find my self clenched in a deathgrip in the absolute opposite direction and find i am not even close to beginning this ... this letting go.

i am, however, going and getting some more beer. at least there's that.

not sure whether i'm more of the former or the latter, but ... um. ok, back to work with me.

and oh, how i wish i meant that at the depths of me. i think it would improve life a great deal to greet every day grateful for what is and what has been and say, if today is it then so be it let's on with it.

so i think about death. more than i imagine is normal. i think death is what defines life, certainly it is the point at which a life is complete, finite, a solid finished product rather than the tracings of a path through space and time that i tend to define by saying 'you just never fucking know' in a solemn and thoughtful tone from time to time. i think being fragile and rather easily killed is probably a good thing, without this humans would be an insufferable lot. but while i would tend to object to immortality in a general sense, i also tend to think that it would be okay if just a few of us had it. even a few extra centuries would be nice, i have so much still to learn, and i'm at least halfway done with my years, probably further than that, and i'm feeling my limits these days, oh my. and of course what you're hearing here is the illogical but vital voice that speaks in all living organisms, life forcing its will to continue into the future. it is a simple message, life is. this is a mindless, single-purpose, one-way force, life, its business is to resist death which is irresistable and i feel this conflict from the bones on inward, in the marrow where the blood is forged and further in the cells themselves and matter of fact i consist mostly of this conflict. well not mostly. but enough of me. and enough of that.

i think about dying well, and wonder if i'll be able to manage that, i don't exactly have a history of living well. i like to think i could accept an acute terminal diagnosis (as opposed to this long term, indefinite one), but chances are i'd freakout and waste whatever time i had left screeching about the fucking unfairness of it all.

i understand enough about being seriously ill, i know that acceptance is built into the process, it's about being tired in a way that even the worst exhaustion in a healthy body doesn't even come close, it's about enough of the struggle and on with it already, and yet a determined whiner such as myself could no doubt manage to bemoan the loss of even the most unrecognizable remnant of existence ... it's just not a good hairday is it?

ideally of course i'd have the amazing strength and be calm and focused and make every minute count yeah right, because i've got such a stellar record of achievements in the areas of calmness and balance and focus and i've always been so emotionally fucking stable it's just unreal isn't ... um, maybe this isn't a good time to discuss this.

i think about death in every day i live, more than in passing; for perspective for one thing, and for another in hopes i can create the sort of acceptance i so admire in others and would treasure in myself, if the need ever arose. as a matter of fact i might not be thinking about death enough, not so much thinking about it as living my life intense and with purpose since it is such a finite amount of time until my journey turns into that inanimate object at the end. also it would be nice if that object wasn't completely and utterly insignificant, but what a conceit that thought is, and with that i'll end this.

this is one from the vault, i had to edit this to reflect a slightly different mindset and still find the peace in it. it might have lost something in the translation to past tense.

it is also possible nothing at all was lost. i'm too close to this to tell the difference.

it might not be online too long either, not sure about the releasing it, but clicking post anyway.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

William Shakespeare
[Merchant of Venice, IV. i. 184]

and what is given what is taken what is left laying out in the rain rusted wasted lost the extent of it is unknowable like the lamented potential i personally pissed away back in the day. and though i try and never wonder what might have come of me, in vulnerable times my own voice still rains down in my own mind, a voice that lost itself years ago, screaming ranting raging until it reduced itself to this ragged whisper, a difference which passes for grace in this journey of mine defined by rain and it hasn't been gentle with me, nor i with myself.

as i pass through the merciless aftermath of my latest mistakes, my path takes me straight through the worst electricity of an entirely stormy existence; i am at the mercy of the elements here, but i am also the elements themselves. i am my own solstice i am my own justice, and as such i have neither given nor taken very much mercy.

oh. a conclusion? don't have one.