And yet still my aching heart... the thought of unfulfilled death plagues like bad cholesterol or some angina I've inherited.
So much to do, so little time. Its like being thrust into a monstrous amusement park and being told that you can only go on two rides. As a kid and as a man I've always freaked with constraints: which two will I pick, are there better ones if I hold out on my choice a little longer and search, what if I don't like one of the rides I pick. Anxiety and angst and conglomerates of things that make me sick. The real problem is that Im terrified of regret. My worst fear, or maybe second after being eaten alive by insects, is to be lying in my death bed, impotent and used up and unable to tear my mind from all the time I wasted not doing what I wanted, not making dreams reality, not standing up for myself and my image of the world. This is starting to sound a little conceited, but you know what Im trying to say, right? (cricket chirps, dial tone, whatever the internet sounds like when its sending bytes and receiving none)
I really just wish I didn't have a split mind about nearly everything that tarries important on my consciousness. All these life decisions and ventures never seem clear-cut options, there's always some little voice of dissent or dissuasion in my inner ear. I once talked to Dan about how I envied those people throughout history who dedicated themselves mind-body-soul to some cause or some art or some idea or world-image that they had, those who worked tirelessly and as if the hounds of death were closing in upon them at every moment (which, ladies and gentlemen, they certainly are). He was totally right when he said that those people were way out there, not fit for friendship or any love besides their preternatural drive ( maybe they are vehicles of some expression of the universe that only humans can unearth and must be unearthed and are therefore divinely dedicated way past what seems normal for we who do not have the hand and will of the unknown so closely laid upon our brow). But I still wish I had that single-minded lunacy rather than this schizophrenic indecision. I wish I could lose myself in some creative force that would overtake my discretion and perhaps make a monster of me, a psycho to the mass of inept madmen is indeed the only sane and apt inhabitant. And yet I am not sure....I see both sides always, and the counters to my hypotheticals weigh just as heavy and heady as my wishes. Antinomy, I know you well and just as well do I remain unknown to you.
And all the while I feel like time is running away from me, or dragging me tooth and claw away from birth and into the other, the Other grim and ravenous. It's a forced decision on my part, for my refusal to choose and take part is itself a choice to abstain from participation (which in our world amounts to a superficial participation in the rat race of consumeristic commerce, capitalist colonialism with corporate constitutions, and a congress of crap commercials.
See?
I want no role in this plastic pantomime (bowie in space!). Of what value is life, that which, when valued, is devalued in the experience of it? For, every time I've had those transcendent and life-redeeming moments I have been confronted gently with an eery sentiment of disconnectedness, a schism between my consciousness and my life -- a strange divorce that is both a triumphant blossoming of the flower of existence and my appreciation of it as well as an uncanny apperception of my own acceptance of death and the inevitabilities. How can the affirmation of death in turn affirm life? How can being ready to die transmute all of life from its natural bittersweetness into the most delicate honey of the soul?
