Friday, January 16, 2015

there is no dry

"You're just too creative to work here, and I think you'd get bored with any of the positions in our current group."

"You're so selfish!"

"You're too aware of yourself; you're biggest weak spot? Not believing in yourself."

These are the things that were said; these are not the thoughts in my head. And as I am Borg, and they do not compute, shunted they are; left aimless in tangential code somewhere in my mental matrix until the next purge commences.

Anaïs Nin said, "I must be a mermaid. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living." And the first time I read those words, I thought I had found a lifeline, a justification for my mental deep sea diving. Feeling like some transcendent bohemian icon personally granted me permission, I plunged and lunged into the dark recesses of my psyche.

For a time, just plunging satisfied. Depths existed, and the knowledge sustained my wallowing. I floated in that in-between, relishing questions requiring no answers to justify their existence.

Eventually, though, the weight of unanswered, ever-present questions mounted, like the weight of water, and I took another deep breath before swooping down again, trying to escape the pressure.

One of the challenges presented in plunging the depths of one's psyche repeatedly (besides the obvious blurring of favored scifi references and running out of swimming synonyms) becomes where to store all the questions, no matter their need for answers or resolution. Because although they may not require resolution, they certainly fill up the mental spaces!

And not to put too fine a point on it, but questions exist to eventually be resolved; they float on the support of answers. Questions, in Yoda-ese, the Force are; answers, the Jedi be. One can exist, hovering in the ether with no correlating tether, but needs call to that which fulfills. And a master and pandwan must be found.

Because in no reality or universe did an astronaut venture out into space and avoid a planet teeming with new life and/or new civilization. Even when they were utterly lost in space.

The last time I took stock of the questions gathering space in my head, most of the questions didn't survive questioning. After all, what's left when all that's left are questions?

I questioned my questions. And found God.

Who led me to Oklahoma. And away from any semblance of stability.

So now the question beneath all the others, the pressing weight of Force and water; more powerful than the fear of being viewed as selfish, rebellious, weird, artistic, or worst, inauthentic, cowardly, and incapable, is this: dive or dive not? There is no dry.

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