I'm leaving someplace i've lived for 5 months. There are many conflicting emotions which i’d like to sort out if i knew how. Are humans capable of selecting what they feel, or is the challenge simply to recognize as much as possible the dimensions of one’s emotions - or a blend of both - to understand what one is experiencing and to then choose the “appropriate” response? i don’t know. It would certainly simplify most matters if we as a species could know as much as possible about what we are feeling at any given moment, and to then make an informed decision about which way to turn - fight or flight, as they describe the lizard reflex. It is 6:30 am on the day of my departure, and ordinarily i’d have spent the next 3 1/2 hours sucking on the internet tit, but mysterious circumstances have rendered the internet inaccessible. A suspicious component of my character attributes a petty vindictiveness by the proprietors of where i’m leaving, nor is my unease entirely a projection of the expected anxiety that attends moves such as i am undertaking. Part of the difficulty in going anywhere is to be where one is welcomed and comfortable; those conditions do not describe my current habitation, and there is no fault. There is little i can do to change the suspicious attribute in my character, for that would be like asking a leopard to change its spots, but there is much i can do about which behavior i choose to carry. I’ve watched three biographies recently when access was allowed - John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway and Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Each of these stories described, in part, individuals who had been swallowed by the personas attributed to them through the coercion of fame. If i’ve stumbled into an environment where those in a position of responsibility would employ deprivation, be it internet, water, respect etc., to express a conflict in their hearts, the only rational response is warmheartedness, regardless of how valid my suspicions might be.
I know very little about my destination, outside of its address and vicinity within a larger town. If my lack of access to the internet where i am is a desperate act expressing some inexpressible feeling, the compassion of warmheartedness is the most generous path i could choose and if the lack of internet service is simply the synchronicity of a greater mystery, then the logic of warmheartedness is a gift to myself as well as a suitable lens with which to gaze into the unknown. Each of the authors mentioned above when at the end of their lives seemed to have deprived themselves of warmheartedness, with two taking their own lives, and the 3rd dying from self inflicted cardiopulmonary collapse due to excessive drinking and smoking. I know that each tackled the thornier issues of their day rather than slap a happy patina on their prose and upload content into the “clickbait/dream machine factory”. Lao Tzu says “be content with what you have, and the whole world belongs to you.” I’ve thought about this quote often during the past 5 months, for there is much that is suitable about my lodging and i’ve accomplished good work, it is the sense of community that feels absent. This notion of community is a complex issue for me but is close to love of family, for that is what is left to me based on choices i’ve made in my life. One can never really remove oneself, or be removed from the birth family, yet where one chooses to live and who to keep within one’s heart is an entirely different matter. I choose to be near any loving vibration because i have much to learn about how to abide in that medium. I am motivated partly by depravation, like a parched Kafkaesque creature ambulating toward dampness, but my travels have encouraged me to also see how thirsty all human beings are; where i am now leaving is a perfect example.
There is a tangible lack that seems to have informed every choice made in this compound; from an excessive sized dog pack, to manifold cisterns for holding water in a declining water table within a historical agricultural community. On the surface it would seem a copacetic, even idyllic site with ample, in a stinted kind of way, appointments. What is built into the situation that would not be expected based on its alternative-to-the-status-quo facade is a rigid ordinate/subordinate hierarchy replete with locked-away-tools; derogatory remarks about the worthiness of the area’s historical inhabitants and an almost palpable contempt for those they would ostensibly be hosting. I’ve done my level best to understand without judgement; i greatly admire the courage and pluck it took to uproot and build an estate in a foreign land; i have to ask myself at what cost¿ While weighing my decision whether to remain, knowing what i'd learned about the behaviors and prejudices of my hosts it's been tempting to assume a superior air - if for no other reason than the illusion of independence within a deceptively closed society. But that is not helpful, nor warmhearted because i’d be simply be mimicking what i don’t understand. What i did find in my effort to understand was greater coercion to comply, and still i don’t understand . . . two days later in my new digs: Polar opposites seems to characterize my life including the backseat-driver diagnoses of 'manic depression', blended with a touch of narcissism for taste that my birth family uses to project their various demons onto me. Fortunately one’s actual skin is not interchangeable; with those who'd presume superior awareness of other's interiors. So i spend my time seeking peace with my own demons and providing freedom for us from all fear.
My new room opens into the main entrance hallway to the building; my bathroom windows open into the same hallway, so the sound of family dinners mixes with whatever i may be watching as i go to sleep. The journey i’m on will not conclude here as far as i know, nor am i in any hurry to depart. The hosts are kindly, warm and native. Unbidden by me, a grandson brought a board that had been fabricated to facilitate my drawing efforts - it was the kindest gesture i can remember in a long time. But this is the key, i felt no compulsion to accept. I can only hope my execrable translation adequately conveyed my astonished gratitude and reasons for not accepting the gift. I do not know the customs, but am counting on honesty to carry the day. It is too close to my demise to curry favor by accepting kindness that would not serve any purpose - i do not want to die fake. Like emerging from some sort of cocoon, from the past 5 months, i’ve been forced to not only neuter a pathological hunger to help, but also tempt fate by honestly expressing what i need and don’t need. We, as a species, may have lost sight of the real journey’s that sum our lives - transformation. I’m constantly struck by the transition of my own thinking - the wholesale rejection of previous convictions and prejudice in favor of more practical solutions; even the elusive avatar of self awareness seems to go in and out of focus. There are moments when i re-experience sentiments, glimpses of former realities as filtered through visceral memory like revisiting former haunts that remain similar but no longer contain any ghost of a former self - if that makes any sense.
I do know that just as we are a portable population more so than anytime in human history, so too is the terrain of our interiors subject to decisions of itinerary. We have the capacity to choose a destination and then take those steps necessary to arrive in the vicinity of that destination. But just like arriving someplace you’ve never been, it is impossible to know about the mystery or suitabilty of your destination until you’ve undertaken the effort to satisfy wants and needs. For example, if you decide that warmheartedness is the place you want to live, and you arrive there only to find yourself lacking nourishment and rest. It doesn’t mean that you are in the wrong place only that you haven’t yet found the resources that your unique character requires to thrive. What is important is that you are searching based on what you know about yourself, that which feeds your appetite. I am lucky to have learned struggle is part of my hunger and that drawing and writing provide adequate impediments to prevent complacent satisfaction of that hunger. So i’ve learned patience for those stretches in the beginning of a project where hunger is enhanced like aromas from cooking. I now wait patiently for any point where starvation begins to abate; the trick is to let the pot simmer, and eat sparingly once the meal is cooked. I have found this metaphor works for most efforts to acclimate, be it a physical destination or the more challenging exploration of one’s internal dimensions. Wherever you travel, there will be unsavory dishes, and sometimes you will have nothing else to nourish you; be glad for what you are able to choke down having learned something about what you don’t enjoy; be comforted by the certain knowledge that if you are patient and have the confidence to continue your search, you will find provisions that satisfy whatever you have learned about your unique appetite and how to secure what provides you strength and happiness in this life.
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gone - the sonnet
the sun was up; i was already gone
it felt funny being someplace else so soon;
there was no reason to wait for the dawn,
anymore than there’d be waiting for noon.
If i was there no longer, where was i?
is “going down the road” a destination
anymore than where i'd been answered why¿
my company now is contemplation.
beats the shit out of traveling alone.
could that be the “why” i left where i was-
fighting for memories - dog and his bone.
i am feeling lost in the land of “because”
not dwelling still in the land of knowing
‘cause answers for “why” are found from going.
jts 4 July 2017
http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
prohibited from AI sampling in any form
reprinted with permission; all rights reserved
∞
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