What Occurs : What Prompts : Whatever

 

I’m prepared to admit that I am moody…(significant others would readily attest this).  My range of expression is evolving.  Formerly I drank vodka so as to physically present a Zen-like kindness and placidity.  My family didn’t fall for it.  Many other medications have been recommended me wherewith to alter my individual chemistry and be a finer, better human.  Different.  Okay.  It’s almost two years now since I’ve drank with regularity for balance.  (Imbalance).  Almost two months since I’ve managed on a braid of nicotine and tar.  I’m at the mercy of the winds.  In me.

I’m moving, frighteningly, toward “what you see is what you get” – some reckless combination of a voracious and highly informed neurotic intellect, strange aesthetically, theory-laden embodiment, and a high-voltage bundle of emotional attachment needs…a kind of human specimen to myself…and whatever literature I imbibe and an incredibly courageous family that somehow stays around me, thusfar regardless of…

 

If pressed, I would say I survive by language.  By art.  Whether visual, musical, or literary, I always feel (believe?) that there’s some place for me, some haven to inhabit, in the tremendous world of frivolous human invention/concoction/creation.  Though there is overwhelming evidence from my spouse, children and immediate/extended family and friends that I’m safe and accepted as the crazy creature I am, that’s a slow-growth root for relative paranoia (or shame).

All that, to highlight a miniscule moment that accentuated an obvious stimulant to my own commitments to compositions in whatever media or form.

A mood obtains.  Like clothing, I often feel surrounded and represented by my emotional states.  When this occurs, I look for “matches.”  Things in the world to mirror or affirm me – that I might maintain some sense of individuality and worth – i.e., “self.”

Something happens that I don’t pretend to understand, shifting my contextual fabric of existence into a new whereabouts/whatabouts/howabouts, and I look at the literatures that I saturate my living spaces with, the sounds I ensure are in queue, and images / persons / environments (etc.) arranged so as to secure or anchor me, and I ask for resonance, reflection, validation.

That isn’t fair.

I see that.

Thus I relate, to what’s around me.

 

Not so subtly (as my whomabouts can attest) I seek what mates with my singular in-sperience.

Not fair.

I see that.

It’s what I do.

 

Often there is very little in my surround “feeling WITH me.”  I.e. identical to myself.  Therefore, bigotedly, I feel alone.  And seek.

Today – in some combination of emptiness (moving away from four children and ‘home’ to be with two other children and beautiful mountains) and rich anticipation (my beloved ONLY flying back to me from another country – my spouse, my dearest deepest friend, my survivor); grief (two years of self-directed study and creation drawing to a close); irritation (growing consecutivity of 3-digit temperatures and a scalded environment – these Midwestern plains); an only partially confirmed/verified confidence (in mental avarice and aptitude, linguistic and theoretical comprehensions and abilities); excitement (of movement, vacation, escape, in-drawal with significant others); terror (maturing independence of children, un-necessity as parent, annoyance, superfluity, archaism); erotic desire (days spent apart from spouse + discipline + commitment + theory + desire); hope (renewed relationships, devotion to integrity, celebration of fidelities); melancholy (death is always the next thing); pride (I’ve managed thusfar); luck and sorrow (the ridiculous imperilments of tragedies)…

I’m realizing as I write that this list is a quick abyss of connections and trajectories.  Life is endlessly sourced and indiscriminately smeared…

 

In this molten, cumulative state I perused my essential companions – literary, musical, and visual…and…NO MATCHES!!!  All so far beyond me in each of their strengths – stretching, compelling, inductive… but not “mating”/”conflating”/”reflecting” to my own present presence…

and so…

…I write…

…seeking what I need…

…to create it…

 

And one day?

To find?