The following is something I wrote a few days ago...it was directed to a new acquaintance in response to a different blog.
You can check out his site
Finite Machine if you like...
July 14 , 2004
"
What use is it to love God, to dig my hands in the dark red soil of my home, and feel for it a passion which is not possession-- but recognition?" --
Jeanette Winterson Is it you, Mike, who's hands are tied and passions are perhaps occasionally muted by the drone of reality? Is that you who wish to be radical and assess the damages later? Anyhow- I thought I might have something to say to you...I'm not sure.
How strange it is that I find myself in a similar place, but looking toward you I feel hopeful that you'll do something. It is so easy to stay in the mental game that is my life and to continue thinking, processing and developing new thoughts about this crazy thing we do (living, that is)... but when my eyes fall upon the action part of life I can only see black and white. Steal it or pay and give it away. Run away or stay and work it out. Leave it all or buy in deeper.
Winterson talks about digging in and loving and feeling passion...but if those things remain empty-- mere recognitions-- something you have known and desired but have never possessed...what value remains? There is the compulsion to reach out and grab what you see and what you feel coming on...but in hesitation and hindrance the compulsion is quenched and the thirst is quelled and the white noise in your head drowns the kindling of discontent. Ultimately, we show ourselves to be content with recognition...
But despite all this there is something to be said for possessing continuity. Despite urges to jump, to fly, to leave, you stay and you keep longing and thinking and moving and progressing (though progress can be akin to regress...) and while you remain riddled with the emotional desire to break your life in pieces just so that you can feel like you've done something or been somewhere...not stagnated in confusion and indecision...suddenly you wake up from the drone of time and realize you've actually been doing something all along. While the image of Bauhaus and your books and your angst-ridden-PhD-self-with-too-much-caffeine lingers...you're moving. You're doing, progressing, growing...
What you're not doing is feeling-- feeling the slow process that will drive you mad. Suddenly you find that you've been listening this whole time to the movements in your spleen when you could've heard the clink of gears and the rush of a breeze...and that one time when you thought you felt promise rushing toward you, you stepped out of the way because why gain just to lose.
So maybe it’s all a minor glitch in our systems...chemical imbalances and whatnot-- you're actually standing knee deep in the river of change...but do you just need to tell yourself that it’s okay to watch it happen rather than make it happen? How much can we decide how things pan out?...Certainly you can recklessly make things happen or you can slowly make them happen. I guess it’s a matter of taking the blinders off, whiffing the smelling salts and seeing mud pies in the dirt that you find in your hands.
I don't know...just some thoughts.
Happy to be so...
