Stream of conciousness - #1
I've been depressed the past few days -- unhappy with my career, a little lonesome since the move, etc. Rob assigned me the task of writing for an hour a day to help me vent. This is what came out. There is no order to it, there is no need to respond, it's just my inner workings made outer for a change. These are surface thoughts and some of the depth behind them.
Immovable. Intractable. Some would call these words words of permanence; words of finality. I know though that these words are a falsehood. Nothing – no absolute we can define with language – can be true. To coin a phrase, the only sure thing is change. I’ve given a lot of thought lately to the things in my life that I think are intractable. Things that, on the outside, look like permanent conditions of my existence. I know in my mind that they are not though, and I have set my mind to the task of overcoming this obstacles. I have decided that in order to overcome these obstacles, I must be like water: fluid, stable, conforming, yet gently and slowly changing my environment. Like the waters of the ocean, supporting myriad things in life, yet eroding the very rocks over which it flows, I must become as water.
Not an easy task, to be sure. But I am, as my mother once described me and information gatherer. I know that I do not know, so I seek to learn. I look through books, through my past experiences, through the role models I have and have had in the past, and through modern means like the internet. And armed with this new information, I make small changes in myself and to the vessel in which I reside. I both live in the life I’ve created and I change it to conform to my wishes – flowing over rock and crag, smoothing the rough spots, stirring up the settling silt, and redepositing it where it serves the highest good.
I recently met a man – a new friend in my new life in my new home – who is like a mirror. He is me if I had been born earlier in a different place. His mannerisms, his affect, his trials and tribulations are ones I can relate to and internalize. Some of these reflections are comfortable, some are less so. But I welcome the image as I welcome the new day – another opportunity to see the world as it is, and another opportunity to see how the world sees me. Why is this important, because the world is the rock I must shape – the rough stone I must smooth over. It is the reality I must manipulate to bring my perception of what I think it should be to fruition. It may seem grandiose to think of manipulating the world, but the idea is simple: I do not have to change the whole world, just the piece of it that interacts with me, and this is well within the capability of the water-soul.
I spoke today of changing jobs. I spoke of expression, of wanting more than anything to be an artist – a creator. For now, I do that through words. I find it a crude medium; so fixed, so limited in its scope and so easily misinterpreted. This crudity is the reason I put no stock in the Bible – it will only ever be a text, written down by man, expressed through a man’s mind, a man’s hand, and limited by a man’s intellect. God, if he wanted us to truly know his will, would never have chosen this medium for his divine power because that power is so quickly and easily diluted by man’s limited ability to comprehend the power of communication. I think instead that he or she daily chooses to express divine will in sunsets, storms, squalls and auroras – truly expressions of creativity and divinity. Had he never seen one, man would never have conceived of an event in nature composed purely of color or air or water in such massive motion – his mind is too small, his vision too meager. Let God reveal herself in nature. And let me reveal myself through my contribution to culture and art; not through my mending of broken computers and trivial music players. Let me be the music, the photograph, or the program that brings life and enjoyment of those devices to the user. But for now – let me be the words that inspire someone to think or do or move. Let me be the catalyst. Please world, let me just be.
