12 May, 2015

The insidious black

1:19 AM, and the moon still treads its steady path. This is not the end, this is just a beginning. Seeking is not itself the answer, but a means to finding it. The answer, as much as it can be culled down to a singularity, lies in everything. It is all around us. It is the fight and the flight, the terror and the horror, the sorrow and the sadness, the rumination and the remembering, the elation and the expectation. The answer lies in the finding, not the seeking. Seeking is an action, not a place to dwell. These abstract notions put together in words make a kind of sense, but it is not the real sense. The real sense is the real. In the experiential we find the present and eternity. All abstractions or generalizations of this real are fabrication, tools implemented to hide and comfort. With that concealing and congenial order they appear to impart, there is some violence done to the original. There is an order, but it does not reside in numbers or figures on paper. It is an ebb and a flow, a natural state of bliss that can be achieved through the real. That is where we belong, and where we keep ourselves from, for fear of the unknown.

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I want to print this on paper for the aesthetics of it. Standardized serifs litter a page, giving a feeling of righteousness. The page was blank, but it has been imparted with meaning, or perhaps it has shown forth its latent meaning. The Platonic recollection is a kind of image, letting us move tectonic plates in our remembering--the process of discovery. The cover has been undone, and what is remains. It's very abstract and philosophical, this pursuit of the Real and other capitalized nouns, but it is also a concrete and practical occupation. We cannot pretend not to live with our minds, and we (or at least I) can only hope not to live in them. So (as much as I can use "ergo"-style rhetoric in this mush of a logic) the finding is a visceral, earthly adventure. It is rocky and rough, and we cannot pass over this trail without our feet bleeding and our bones breaking. This universe is not a syllogistic one. We exist through connection, and the one thing with which to connect is the real.

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I don't want to overthink all this shit. I mean, really. We're all here, so what. We might as well enjoy ourselves. I read about people saying that you can't really be a writer unless it's necessary for you to write. You can't not do it. You do it in your free time whether you're getting paid or not, and not always for enjoyment. It's a way of life, an obsession, a ceaseless mantra striking the drums in your head even as you obey and scrawl your yarn. Do I have that obsession? I must be talking less formally in this paragraph, because I'm using more contractions and speaking in the first person. I must have written this a few weeks ago, because it sounds familiar to me--the beauty lies in the act of translation. It's true that we can't transport the abstract into the concrete, we can't really codify an experience. But the beauty is in the experience of creating that approximation, that translation. If it is a good translation, it may stir up some of the same untranslatable sensations in a receiver (reader, listener, viewer, etc). For me, is it that aspect of connecting with what IS and translating it what I want to do? It's not about the result, and I don't know that it ever has been. It's about the experience of approximating. It's exploring those pieces that you never would have seen unless you had to dig through and find the right little structures to attach things to. The right words, notes, images, whatever. This is very philosophical and I know there's at least an aspect of my rotational mind (the new moniker for my mortal enemy) in it. But that's just it--it's another aspect of the appeal of this...whatever you want to call it. This experience, this art, this mantra, this painfully unavoidable way of living. Maybe it's the only way to really live, at least for me. But the rational aspect of it, the exercise of creating structures from nothing, of the information coursing through, of the aesthetics of the technical, also resides in this space for me. It is enjoyable to do meta-art and consider what it is to create, to translate into a communicable medium. What is more artistic than art about art? (Concluding rhetorical question for effect.)

I'm escaping into the mind palace again, leaving behind the anger-rage that was at the beginning of the last page. I'm rebuilding my bubble. It's overtaking me again. My mind is OK with these last paragraphs because they're safe. They're rational. "It's alright, that's why you like this stuff! You can do this, as long as you come back to this place and check in frequently." Curse my rotational mind. Damn it to hell and let it burn. It has given me nothing but pain. It is a block that keeps me from the real. Sure, it's undoubtedly keeping me alive in a lot of ways (I'm still paying my bills, for now), but it. is. not. real. It shouldn't take a Jill Bolte Taylor kind of episode to connect with what is.

This kind of writing is similar in form to writing I've done in the past. I feel bad, angsty, malignant, dulled, crushed. So I write. Partially to indulge myself in the feeling and entice it to stay, but also to encourage it to leave and let me go back to my distracted life. To my web-surfing, book-hoarding-but-not-reading, amassing information for some unknown, abstract reason. I hope that this writing is a little bit different though. The goal is not just to entice the angst to stay, but with the goal of using it to propel me into connection. To the real.

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