(no subject)

[reenka]

Sometimes I think it's not enough to just... live. To just accept things as they are and portray them-- or worse, exacerbate them. Take all the darkness and dinginess of the world and merely swallow it, perhaps even use it to your advantage. Sometimes I could almost hate the people who help the wheels turn in any way-- however personal or public. Then again, the personal is always a miniature of the public, so any domination and subjugation of the will of one is a reflection of the many. The one -is- the many, in some ways.

I'm not sure what to be idealistic about, even. It's like... I'm such a great example of the postmodern disaffected youth, not knowing what to hang on to, what to believe in, but needing something. Needing any art I create to reflect something greater than myself, and failing miserably for the most part. It's like... my inability to really navigate my own life reflects my inability to see through the haze of misery and fear I see in the world at large, and I hate it, I hate it so much. Not the world... and yes, the world. Where does one draw the line between the real and potential, and deliver judgement?

Art-- literature and visual-- is... is like religion to me, I suppose, except I'm more than a bit drunk with it. It's an illusory escape, I suppose, just like religion, and a real one, too, except.... Everything blurs together. What I want the world to be and what I want myself to be and what I'm afraid of being and what I think I need and everything-- all of it-- so overwhelming. I probably just have too much time on my hands-- or at least, I spend too much of it letting myself imagine things. And even now... even now... now that I know so many people (comparatively), and I'm not a 15 year-old misfit anymore... it feels like the writers and artists and all-around geeks I know all have a better grip on how to live without dreaming all the time than I do.

I just... want everything to be beautiful. As beautiful as it can be. I don't know how to make that happen. I mean... there's a saying, right. 'If you don't change the world, the world will never change.' I guess that applies to yourself, too. If you don't get up, no one's going to pick you up. If you don't walk, you will waste away, not even crawling. If you don't choose, nothing chooses you.

I don't think I can explain anything this way. I've gotten better, though. It used to be that I was even more obtuse and pointless in my writings. Hard to believe, I know. I've come a long way towards lucidity, which is just hilarious, all things considered.

People may ask, "what is your point?" and I may answer, "I don't know, what's yours?"

I want to do (or say) something important, I guess, but even though I can make a good attempt, maybe, all that comes out are garbled rantings. Maybe. I mean, I think sometimes I do have an idea, and I can focus. And sometimes it just seems like any point I could have is way off in the distance, somewhere beyond the horizon. All I know how to do, then, is tell fairytales. I can do that. It's sort of what I do. I suppose I'm embarrassed of myself, a lot of times, something like I never grew up and a part of me realizes that children aren't like this, either. I'm in a state of perpetual confusion punctuated by endless repeated flashes of blinding certainty.

Things are clear, though, when I write or, to a lesser extent, draw-- when I really feel something intensely. Like when I'm alone with nature. Sunsets... lakes... rivers... streams... trees-- sometimes even people, when they're still. They all make me feel some sort of deeper peace, like the questions can wait, like they're not urgent. It's okay, then. One could just exist without always worrying about who you are and what you're doing and why. You can just-- enjoy. And if you don't think about that as the "answer"-- you can just go with it. Life is handed to you, so you take it. What else can you do? Maybe that's as important as anything gets, I think, before I begin doubting all over again. Maybe.

It's funny, isn't it? Like, why have I written all this? Who am I writing to? What do I hope to gain? How can I expect to be understood when I don't even know what I'm really trying to say? I rarely do, of course. It's like I say things, and then figure out what I meant later.

I think I just... want to capture that peace and hold it. That sense of the terrible beauty of the universe. I just want to spread it everywhere, until it touches everyone who'll listen or watch. Not exactly something one tells one's guidance counselor, and then goes out and gets a job. "Hello, I'd just like to be a surveyor or possibly a transmitter of cosmic beauty. Thanks."

Like that feeling... my favorite feeling in the world....

When the world is soft around the edges, and the sky is the darkest blue it gets before it's black. There are only a few stars, and the moon is so clear you can see the face on it, all the shadows stark and vivid. There's a light wind, carrying a number of scents too subtle to name. Everything sways a little-- the trees and the grass and your hair. Every artificial light seems welcoming and warm, then, like everything would be warm and shimmering bright if you could just follow it. If you breathe out, it's only a little bit warmer than the air, and you're slightly cold if you stop moving, but you don't want to stand still anyway. You just want to walk and walk, watching the stars come out.

It's no longer Friday evening, or Saturday or Monday. It's some timeless moment, suspended and seemingly endless. There's no yesterday and no tomorrow-- there's only the world as it is, cloaked in enough mysteries to keep one occupied forever, all of them shimmering on the surface like a smattering of dew.

I love feeling like that. Like nothing matters except the way I feel right now, and that seems to encompass everything in existence. It's like... listlessness turns to calm, rushing turns to running, and fear turns to anticipation. It seems so easy-- like there's a hidden trick to it, but one can't always get to it in the light of day, the way one forgets how to fly when one wakes up. There's no longer any hurry to the world, and that seems to unclench some essential knot that had been keeping everything in place inside you. It's like floating and swimming and flying and like none of those things. Both active and passive at once. Just... peaceful, as if there was a music to everything and you're only hearing it now, after a long time plugging your ears.

That's all I want. That music.

Comments

[theo-fabula.livejournal.com]

Who am I writing to?

It's hard to tell you something in response to this, as everybody has that striking sence of beauty, once and a while. It's also not something too easily wrapped up in words. I may be a tiny bit less idealistic about universe, but all the more falling down the endless pit of metaphysics - games and games once more, the function of the mind, the common that exists between two people born any place and any time.

Insecurity in the post-modern world is theme du jour in well-off countries (as we're all so interested about ourselves) - we sit and study for our exams, go to work. The idleness of empty hours is too much to take, at times. And here are born all the questions. The Vultures by David Diop comes to my mind: "--who knew all the books but did not know love." At times, it seems to me, we create art only to drive out boredom. And I'd desperately want it to be more.

Beauty, peace, Utopia - it's all wonderful, but only as a thought. To get a glimpse of it is enough. The concept of perfection is always defined by its negation.

Well, if I'd have some viable points, I'd present them. All I can really give is speculation. But maybe it's not the answers we're looking for.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Wheee! I love getting replies to stuff I was so sure was going to get none~:) I think I enjoy the talking itself more than any particular meaning that may be created. I mean, there's just something reassuring about it~:)

I know what you mean about the art-for-boredom. I mean, I often enough go further and call it a bodily function. I really think it fits. Much more so than thinking, creating seems to be... more instinctual, more unconscious, so of course when the mind is at rest or restless-- when it doesn't have an immediate occupation it wants-- then the instinct to dream aloud seizes it. I mean, it's more than that but not really on purpose. It's like... in the end, all things have meaning as their emergent property. It creates itself, you don't need to put it there.

I dunno. I think if you perceive the world in the right way, it's always going to be sparkling. Like, when I was a child, everything was fascinating to me, and to a certain extent, it still is. I wasn't conscious of it as "beauty" or "perfection"_- I was just always lost within the world, spellbound by all sensations I had. Peace doesn't have to mean standing still and being awed, I guess. It's not that hard... it seems to me that the veneer of adulthood and civilization is much easier to shrug off than one's childhood is to let go of. For me, anyway.

Yeah, I doubt we're really looking for "answers" so much as keys to make it all more okay somehow. Which is proabbly an emotional state rather than any idea. I mean, I know that constant pleasure and contentment would become baseline and no longer enjoyable after a while, maybe, unless... one could forget about the past and the future, I guess. Cease remembering that this is how it's always been, this is how it'll remain, see. This whole... "glimpse" versus "constant vision" thing-- that's related to time, isn't it? And I suppose that's what I want to escape from the most, even knowing I can't~:)

[theo-fabula.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I wouldn't want to renounce time. Everything has to constantly strive towards perfection and never obtain it. ;)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Hee. I dunno if I want to -renounce- time so much as... mess with it. Either that, or I'm a trance-addict of some sort, ahahahah. Like... I'm sure most people who live for the times when they're out of it & flowing with the music/art/porn/whatever don't think they're "renouncing time" but I'm nothing if not high-minded :D

Achieving perfection would be boring, which is why I don't think of it as that. More like pleasure and/or beauty (semi-synonymous), probably, would suit me fine :D

[theo-fabula.livejournal.com]

Heh. We're probably talking about the same thing with different words. I understood "perfection" as that timelessness (no future and no past) of yours.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I think of timelessness as having that quality of surprise and variety that most people exclude, y'know. Like, that's why I don't like most people's idea of heaven. 'Cause they think of timelessness as being monotonous-- or rather steeped in the monotonousness of "perfection". Most people's idea of perfection is a static thing, where everything is in some sort of stasis, right? I suppose what I want is constant movement without meta-awareness, which is different.

I suppose I feel too self-aware, so all I think I need for happiness is just... to focus my awareness outward instead of inward. That is actually harder than it seems :>

But... I think if you do that, the way you perceive time changes significantly and you become a lot more at peace.

"Perfection" itself is a meta-concept which is antithetical to true timelessness, which is beyond that sort of awareness, I think. If thinks were perfect, ironically, they would be as imperfect as can be-- it's just that this would be be okay. Beautiful, even. Maybe. :>

[theo-fabula.livejournal.com]

A sort of peaceful entropy. ;) Okay.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

....

why does that sound like, "a sort of nice, slow death" to me??

hahahahah.
i am never happy :D
the timelessness is to get away from entropy.
but entropy is needed to have change...?

that is what i want to escape.
in my happy fairyland, there is change and growth, but death is... part of a repeating cycle.

so it's... too cyclical to be entropic. or something.
*laughs at self*