"Fear not, for you're still breathing"
It isn't all that I remember on a second and third moment's consideration. But such are all memories, all perception. We look to events with an eye for reinforcing what we hold as truth, adding shades of meaning to everything to preserve our fragile beliefs and identities until the resulting product is all but unrecognizable. This could be viewed in a cynical way or not;
"Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?"
Perhaps we do love a lie. Perhaps art itself is nothing more than a pretty lie. How can we help it, being the emotive, thinking species of this imperfect earth? I can't be anything but a creature of opinion, changing the world around me to suit me even if only within the confines of my mind. And that could be a kind of power. I will take the suck and I will make it catharsis. I will take the shades of darkness and form them to complement and shape the light until my view of the world is a starry, starry night. I will take the simplest things; the Great Blue Heron sailing over my river, the blush in a sunrise, the delicate curve of a hand over my shoulder, and make them into diamonds strewn down my path, little signals from God himself. Because I crave that myriad, chaotic, sublime view. It is the only way I can keep...I dunno...marching toward Arete. (how the hell do you spell that word in English?!). If it is a kind of self delusion, to let myself get drunk on my life and stumble through it in a kind of daze, then so be it. This form of self-medication is the only thing that seems to work for me.
To want is to hope and to hope is to assert that excellence, beauty, good are all still possible. So even a vain hope might be an attempt at the good, however mean and rudimentary. So difficult to allow such a moment to slide away free, undiminished, to not tarnish it with greed or your own fear that it will never return. In that regard, I've already failed to a greater or lesser degree a number of times, but I have my whole life to get better at it. And though I don't believe in God in one way, I find myself unable to discount the notion of a kind of benevolent order to life.
Yeah, I know. I don't make any bleepin' sense. For the moment, it really doesn't matter to me so much.
"Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?"
Perhaps we do love a lie. Perhaps art itself is nothing more than a pretty lie. How can we help it, being the emotive, thinking species of this imperfect earth? I can't be anything but a creature of opinion, changing the world around me to suit me even if only within the confines of my mind. And that could be a kind of power. I will take the suck and I will make it catharsis. I will take the shades of darkness and form them to complement and shape the light until my view of the world is a starry, starry night. I will take the simplest things; the Great Blue Heron sailing over my river, the blush in a sunrise, the delicate curve of a hand over my shoulder, and make them into diamonds strewn down my path, little signals from God himself. Because I crave that myriad, chaotic, sublime view. It is the only way I can keep...I dunno...marching toward Arete. (how the hell do you spell that word in English?!). If it is a kind of self delusion, to let myself get drunk on my life and stumble through it in a kind of daze, then so be it. This form of self-medication is the only thing that seems to work for me.
To want is to hope and to hope is to assert that excellence, beauty, good are all still possible. So even a vain hope might be an attempt at the good, however mean and rudimentary. So difficult to allow such a moment to slide away free, undiminished, to not tarnish it with greed or your own fear that it will never return. In that regard, I've already failed to a greater or lesser degree a number of times, but I have my whole life to get better at it. And though I don't believe in God in one way, I find myself unable to discount the notion of a kind of benevolent order to life.
Yeah, I know. I don't make any bleepin' sense. For the moment, it really doesn't matter to me so much.