Only three entries so far bespeaks my difficulty with maintaining a clear focus as well as momentum for this “blog”. Sometimes, maybe even often, I can feel my impetus for writing it become softened and flaccid. Those are the moments when I need some literary Viagra, or at least good jolt of caffeine, or weed perhaps….though weed can also push me into reveries and feverish longings that wander through the past rather than scavenge the present or anticipate a future. According to the cadre of therapists among whom I hung for a while, my “issues” were part of a lifetime pattern of avoidance of commitment and a persistent persistence problem. Hmm. Okay. Off the track I am. I began this riff considering intentions and motivations. Let me address that. Indeed I will wade into the murky fen of purpose, but I don not expect to find an answer yet.....
First off there is the matter of context. Life in general in this age of technological toxicity and the apparently genial and unthinking corporate crushing of the planet, has so befuddled my mind that any previous clarity has become cloudy. I often find myself drifting in a miasma of existential angst. All of my previous certainty of my life’s purposes has become increasingly vague and spongey. My existence often seems picayune and pointless. As I have become more and more aware of my own minuteness, I have become, ironically perhaps, more easily distracted and susceptible to promising seductions of the senses and the brain. The weather in my gut, the tone of day set by a sticky lingering dream, or the intrusion of external chaos around the house or around the world, just to name three potential generic disrupters, can easily muscle aside all of my good intentions. These days it doesn’t take much to nudge me “off message”. All too often, instead of smelling the roses and enjoying the rejuvenating breath of a caressing breeze, I feel, in addition to gluey ennui, a generalized pressure, a franticness, fanaticism and agitated despair of a culture in decay and decline. Though I look for the songbirds of happiness I usually see no birds at all, except black birds of prey and swarms of grey drones. In fact, the last truly colorful bird I saw, was a Baltimore Oriole. It appeared to have battered itself to death against the window of an earth mover and was lying in the mud next to the machine’s tire and a smushed coke can. Its appearance was so stunning it took my breath away.
And yet, there are also days when the sun touches my face with the softness of a lover’s caress. I can smell the soil warming into a sweet frenzy of living perfume. I can sense the vibrations of the microbes adancing and the earthworms waltzing to the rhythm of cosmic turnings. In those moments Gaia herself struts and stretches, her naked beauty irresistible, mesmerizing, lush and creamy. On those nights, the Coyotes howl, owls hoot, and luna moths congregate in congress on the window sills; all seems for the moment balanced and luscious, right and fit. In those moments I feel I am an inseparable, essential part of it all. I am loved to my core by a benevolent spirit. In those moments I am absorbed into Gaia’s embracing grace and experience peace, place and purpose. Even with my stiff limbs and crackling joints,in those moments I can dance. SO I guess it’s time to pick up the bone of “why?” and chew on it for a while.
Why, why, and again why am I writing this at all? I suspect mostly to please myself, to see my thoughts laid out in words and marvel at their aptness or its absence. I take a soupçon of selfish delight in my occasional cleverness, or elegance and grace of expression, and just as often I cringe. All of it is a constantly leavening growth. A lumpy, doughy neediness to “express myself” lodged in my psyche, like an undigested potato. I suspect you’re familiar with that feeling too, that churning desire to spout off about “things”. Coupled with this, and to take a therapeutic tack, I share with most men a compulsion probably more peculiar to our gender than to women. This compulsion is initially honed and encouraged by our parents or guardians. What is it? Simply to be the alpha male in at least some arena or other of our lives. All of this bespeaks a hungry ego which I am unable to cleanse from my psyche. But then, why should I really? Is it necessary to purge myself of this sometimes dodgy desire, or should I just let it be part of who I am. After all, I am no saint or bodhisatva, nor do I strive to be one. I was indoctrinated into mild-mannered and self-effacing Christianity, not the muscular, boisterous and belligerent Christianity that to seems to me to be more devilish than godlike.
Like most writing of this sort, and perhaps most writing in general, is that it is basically an act of vanity of a sort…the vanity of giving voice to individuality. And like all acts of individuality, though it be constant, and loud or soft, it is as certain, as malleable and as changeable as water.
Next time around I’ll get back to geezer-ness….maybe….though
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