03.13.21

There's always too much to write about. Words almost get in the way of perception...and it's those great moments that soften the gaze and push through all pretense - those I'd rather claim, not words, not any specific knowledge (although I'll take what I can get). It's a synthesis. I've remarked lately that my entire tenure in certain realms has been almost purely alchemical. That old motto: Solve et Coagula. It's possible that dissolving one's premonitions, prejudices, and expectations altogether can render some Higallian masterwork. A tertiam quid arises out of the muck and dust and chaos and slowly things begin to settle into their proper respective modes. Growing up, I felt little if any connection to the prescribed dualities and acted in an almost-deliberate manner to bring both condemnation and contempt from all the right people. The important thing isn't the contempt. It's the experience. It's endlessly watching how humans react to stimuli. Moreover it's carefully observing one's self in all approaches until a picture forms. Time and again, as customary with Japanese pottery students, I'd create scores of outcomes and attachments and immediately smash them against the rocks and walk away amidst a dying cacophony of harangues. I listened for the crux where that menace grew fainter and stirred against the Santa Annas and my own footsteps. 

I always long for home and then I long to climb. I always breathe in...and breathe out. I am not sustained or comforted by principles and words for very long. I read to read. I walk to walk. I write to write. I compose to compose. There's no payout, no accolades I haven't heard before, and no motive that I can sink my teeth into other than showing us what we are and what we are not. What grounds and nurtures the mystical and what denigrates and cheapens that same capacity, for that's what we are: Capacitors who can glorify or degrade ourselves. 

And these perpetually-dissatisfied souls; they often say "But why not this?" And I have to remind myself that if I had asked for anything other than what I have the capacity for I'd be truly ungrateful and I am not that. And I remind myself that spurious accolades are just as dangerous as spurious condemnation and that there is nothing external that doesn't have internal roots and no bit of matter that isn't strung through by spirit. And I remind myself that I am myself and that I have been writing this story, this rough draft, this introduction, this forward, this first chapter for decades.  

I always long for home and then I long to climb. I long for hard work and then I long for deep sleep. I long for great comforts and then I long for extraordinary challenges. I long for the sun and then the stars. I long for resonating timbres and tones that ring to the corners of my mind and then I long for absolute silence.