grant us peace
There is a world out there - a world in which people wake up in the morning and go to sleep before the night has turned to day. These people go about performing the tasks of life - work, friends, family. And that is the crucial difference - to act, not merely plan or imagine.
Tonight I dined with some people among whom there were those with real occupations for the summer. One in particular has an internship with prints & drawings at the AIC -- my dream internship! These people have actual topics of conversation, actual events that have happened in their lives. I feel . . . like some gray wisp of a dream. It would not surprise me if I turned out to have never even existed. As if I were a main character in a film, silent and intent, never stirring a leaf, the cheap trick being that the character alone knows not in which realm she lives, that she is the only character. Are we not all mere apparitions consoling ourselves with ingenious shadow puppet shows? Is there genius in falsity? . . . There I go again.
I can construct mad worlds in my head. At times I feel I can even escape thought itself and sail weightless amidst forms. As a small child, I bent my head back and held my face an inch away from the crevice beneath a dresser. Upside-down like that, the floor and dresser created a black mustache-like shape. I gazed into the darkness, and it went deep - so deep into a swirling mass of life full of marvelous creatures, peoples, and colors. That is one of my earliest memories; I cannot have been much more than 4 years old at the latest. I was so amazed. The space beneath us was teeming with such joyous terror. My dolls and toys, growing up, were always alive; perhaps that is why I did not play with them more than I did, which was little. They were company that I respected with vague fear for their powers.
I am getting off subject. Maybe it was just the blood rushing to my head that got me giddy as a kid bending her head backwards and upside-down; and even still now, as a child-adult trying to get by walking on her hands with feet up in the air.
I wonder if my peers who score actual internships and jobs, and spend their time on objectively constructive activities. . . I wonder if they feel satisfied. Perhaps they might conversely desire some rushing blood and fireworks in their eyes? Or maybe they already have it, but are just better able to incorporate it all into the concrete at their feet.
Yes, I can construct mad worlds in my head; I can function in multiple dimensions of myself at once. Then with such a capacity of imagination, why cannot I picture myself existing even one year from now?
No, I am lying. Of course I can picture it; it is so simple to do. The catch is staying grounded and then realizing it. Picture after picture, I can re-make - an endless succession of me. (!!! Was that the dream/hallucination I had while in London??) One may chase her own shadow to infinity, while all she need do is to accept that the potential for movement lies in her self - that the shadow isn't the thing that's pulling her along. And don't forget that there is ever the Sun. Ah, what minor role He plays. Where have I not gone wrong?
Tonight I dined with some people among whom there were those with real occupations for the summer. One in particular has an internship with prints & drawings at the AIC -- my dream internship! These people have actual topics of conversation, actual events that have happened in their lives. I feel . . . like some gray wisp of a dream. It would not surprise me if I turned out to have never even existed. As if I were a main character in a film, silent and intent, never stirring a leaf, the cheap trick being that the character alone knows not in which realm she lives, that she is the only character. Are we not all mere apparitions consoling ourselves with ingenious shadow puppet shows? Is there genius in falsity? . . . There I go again.
I can construct mad worlds in my head. At times I feel I can even escape thought itself and sail weightless amidst forms. As a small child, I bent my head back and held my face an inch away from the crevice beneath a dresser. Upside-down like that, the floor and dresser created a black mustache-like shape. I gazed into the darkness, and it went deep - so deep into a swirling mass of life full of marvelous creatures, peoples, and colors. That is one of my earliest memories; I cannot have been much more than 4 years old at the latest. I was so amazed. The space beneath us was teeming with such joyous terror. My dolls and toys, growing up, were always alive; perhaps that is why I did not play with them more than I did, which was little. They were company that I respected with vague fear for their powers.
I am getting off subject. Maybe it was just the blood rushing to my head that got me giddy as a kid bending her head backwards and upside-down; and even still now, as a child-adult trying to get by walking on her hands with feet up in the air.
I wonder if my peers who score actual internships and jobs, and spend their time on objectively constructive activities. . . I wonder if they feel satisfied. Perhaps they might conversely desire some rushing blood and fireworks in their eyes? Or maybe they already have it, but are just better able to incorporate it all into the concrete at their feet.
Yes, I can construct mad worlds in my head; I can function in multiple dimensions of myself at once. Then with such a capacity of imagination, why cannot I picture myself existing even one year from now?
No, I am lying. Of course I can picture it; it is so simple to do. The catch is staying grounded and then realizing it. Picture after picture, I can re-make - an endless succession of me. (!!! Was that the dream/hallucination I had while in London??) One may chase her own shadow to infinity, while all she need do is to accept that the potential for movement lies in her self - that the shadow isn't the thing that's pulling her along. And don't forget that there is ever the Sun. Ah, what minor role He plays. Where have I not gone wrong?