The Stairway!!
I’ve seen most of my life as a series of steps toward greater and greater levels of... what? achievement? excitement? Before I moved to Portland, for instance, I remember thinking that in later years I might look back at the move as the beginning of a wonderous new stage in my existence. Thinking that, from that future vantage point, it would look like my time in Portland was the most important in my life, and it all came from that moment of truth, the move. Perhaps I would have found success as a writer, built a family, achieved some of my more elusive goals such as a nest-like group of friends, communal living, polyamrous relationships.
Actually, that last year in Austin was saturated with such musings. I felt almost as if I was being propelled along a set course, moving from discovery to discovery, preparing to experience each new level in a pre-arranged course. Each new level would so thoroughly overwhelm me, that I would recognize all the false notions I had come to accept as obvious or straightforward for what they were-the beliefs of one who had not experienced enough to disprove them. This process could theoretically continue to an absurd extreme; I could come to realize that everything was an illusion, that my life as a human being was just a training course for my true life as a warrior spirit of the Penumbrian Veil, perhaps. Realistically, it was more about things like my first experiences with psychedelic drugs, my developing relationships with my friends, my sexual milestones.
This kind of musing is related to the idea that, in my fiction, I might be able to establish a kind of sense of normalcy, and then break it, to establish a new and different sense of what will be normal, and repeat the process indefinitely.
Actually, that last year in Austin was saturated with such musings. I felt almost as if I was being propelled along a set course, moving from discovery to discovery, preparing to experience each new level in a pre-arranged course. Each new level would so thoroughly overwhelm me, that I would recognize all the false notions I had come to accept as obvious or straightforward for what they were-the beliefs of one who had not experienced enough to disprove them. This process could theoretically continue to an absurd extreme; I could come to realize that everything was an illusion, that my life as a human being was just a training course for my true life as a warrior spirit of the Penumbrian Veil, perhaps. Realistically, it was more about things like my first experiences with psychedelic drugs, my developing relationships with my friends, my sexual milestones.
This kind of musing is related to the idea that, in my fiction, I might be able to establish a kind of sense of normalcy, and then break it, to establish a new and different sense of what will be normal, and repeat the process indefinitely.