Sunday, September 09, 2007
There are times when...
fear assails my mind, sending black lightning down the neural network that is my consciousness, my electrical existence, and in many ways, the warden keeping my spirit tethered to the confines of my limited intellectual capabilities. It comes in the deepest hours of the night, when I am alone in bed with only the drone of a fan and the dimly illuminated ceiling to occupy my thoughts. In those moments before sleep brings its fragile reprieve, fear slips in on the back of other thoughts, a trojan virus implanting itself at the forefront of my awareness. Thoughts of distant tomorrows, family, the immediate future, the perpetually empty pillow beside me; all can be conduits for fear to make its way into the maze.
Once it is there, it is incessant. Background noise of mild concern becomes a rolling symphony of worry and I realize that I am in for a long night. When the crescendo begins to change, I have already crossed the Line of Demarcation between settled sleep, and disquieted insomnia. Sleep is such a luxury, losing it to troubled thoughts, and restless questions is a total tragedy. The suffering is magnified by the magnitude of the subject matter, which is usually my duplicitous relationship with solitude. A literal living of solitary existence is impossible in this place without turning one's back on life altogether, but the sense that one is alone in the crowd can be a very real and powerful thing. It empowers, with the proper perspective, as it gives you access to a different position from which to consider society, but it also hinders, in that it constantly threatens to unleash loneliness' beast upon those who embrace it. Nothing is without a cost.
And that is the way it should be. I accept solitude, as it sets me free in more ways than it entangles, but occasionally I fall into those tangles and find myself staring into the darkness of a room I know better than any other place on this Earth. That is when the darkness sends its inky black electricity firing through my brain and solitude becomes a hole in the ground, rather than the sky above it. Once I am in that hole, the questions become imps in my ears, rather than curiosities floating through the air around me. Loneliness, and its related worries, begin pecking at the edges of resolve, even as they start to quietly sing the virtues of acquiescence.
It all becomes so melodramatic, but I remind myself that our hopes and dreams are undermined by such concessions. No beautiful life, big or small, long or short, has ever been lived under the thumb of conformity. Giving up on a dream is the spiritual equivalent of self-mutilation. Giving in to the ugliness that is forever with us only serves to blind us to the beauty that accompanies it. We lose Yin when we stare too deeply into yang, and eventually our vision is distorted beyond repair. What could have been a beautiful life becomes ugly. What was once light becomes heavy, and we bend beneath its pressure until what's left of us is little more than a groveling, broken version of what we could have been.
Our sleep is stolen by unprotected spaces at the joints of our armor, this is where the fears work their way through, like parasites through the skin of our well being. They serve as a reminder that more often than not, we are our own greatest trials. Even when we have found our way, and we are sure of it, a part of us will have to bring everything into question, if for no other reason than to purify our understanding. In this way, fear checks our true intentions. Perhaps this is how we know whether or not we are living true to ourselves. I'm not sure, and I doubt that I ever will be. I know that after decades of questioning, I am still holding fast to a dream, so that brings a certain reassurance, but the potential for such dreams to not ever become realities cannot be ignored, so the fear of not ever having them actualized cannot be cast aside. I carry on in faith, blind to every new moment, just like everyone else, hoping that these dreams do not end up being time wasted.
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Have you ever thought about painting these feelings?
Funny you should ask, this is exactly the kind of stuff that will start popping up in my work in the immediate future.
Yeah, I read your entry and I could picture it. But not a literal room. Something abstract with deep hues of blues and black.
No, going directly to an image of a room would be a bit too obvious, wouldn't it? :) Ironically, I've been charged with using only bright colors throughout this particular class. Drawing (with paint, no less) ideas like fear and uncertainty with bright greens, yellows, and reds should be interesting!
Yeah, that will be interesting. Good luck with that! :)