The Life And Times
I have this fight or flight response in the most awkward and unlikely of situations, like,
I complicate my life too much by constant analyzation. Am I doing anything important? A constant question, a constant drumbeat soundtrack in my head, as if you even really know how you'd define that. As if you would even acknowledge it if some subconscious warrior in that pulp of grey matter you carry around started to think you were doing something as grandiose as to be labeled important. "I was drunk on the language of armageddon and I could see nothing else."
We make the world exactly what we want it to be. Just don't forget that. I am perfectly comfortable financially yet I let myself believe that financial ruin is just around the corner because I want to support myself with art. It would be so easy but I have such a hard time convincing myself. Today I made $100 on photos that have already been taken. Money in the bank. We were in her SUV on the way to the zoo and had stopped through the bank drive-up so I could cash a check and she asked me with seriousness in her eyes when the teller clicked through whatever she had to click through on the hidden screen, "do you have any money in there?" I am twenty-seven years old. At times the realization is like a ton of bricks. How silly! Yet there you have it.
The fight or flight. Sometimes I feel so thoroughly that I just don't belong. An anomaly. I am far too sensitive. Every small jab is a nail in the coffin and there are days that I am ready to throw my camera in the trash and start a life of financial accounting, or some such thing. Something stable. Understandable. Predictable. And as wholly illogical as that thought is, as consciously as I can see and appreciate its illogic, there are times at which, truly, I believe in my heart that a life of such granite routine and sterility would bring me happiness. It is as though a grandiose title would stop her from looking at me with the joking seriousness and inquiring about my bank balance. As though, finally, I would have made some mark for the family name. Perhaps this is all just in my head. There is a war waging in there and one faction would tell me to abandon these childish aspirations and grow up already. The other sits on the floor in an apartment on the westside of Oly making a dragon out of paper, and she just smiles, humming a tune without any words. She tells me to be a brave soldier and I try to abide.
"But man is a frivolous and incongruous creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the process of the game, not the end of it. And who knows (there is no saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death."
I complicate my life too much by constant analyzation. Am I doing anything important? A constant question, a constant drumbeat soundtrack in my head, as if you even really know how you'd define that. As if you would even acknowledge it if some subconscious warrior in that pulp of grey matter you carry around started to think you were doing something as grandiose as to be labeled important. "I was drunk on the language of armageddon and I could see nothing else."
We make the world exactly what we want it to be. Just don't forget that. I am perfectly comfortable financially yet I let myself believe that financial ruin is just around the corner because I want to support myself with art. It would be so easy but I have such a hard time convincing myself. Today I made $100 on photos that have already been taken. Money in the bank. We were in her SUV on the way to the zoo and had stopped through the bank drive-up so I could cash a check and she asked me with seriousness in her eyes when the teller clicked through whatever she had to click through on the hidden screen, "do you have any money in there?" I am twenty-seven years old. At times the realization is like a ton of bricks. How silly! Yet there you have it.
The fight or flight. Sometimes I feel so thoroughly that I just don't belong. An anomaly. I am far too sensitive. Every small jab is a nail in the coffin and there are days that I am ready to throw my camera in the trash and start a life of financial accounting, or some such thing. Something stable. Understandable. Predictable. And as wholly illogical as that thought is, as consciously as I can see and appreciate its illogic, there are times at which, truly, I believe in my heart that a life of such granite routine and sterility would bring me happiness. It is as though a grandiose title would stop her from looking at me with the joking seriousness and inquiring about my bank balance. As though, finally, I would have made some mark for the family name. Perhaps this is all just in my head. There is a war waging in there and one faction would tell me to abandon these childish aspirations and grow up already. The other sits on the floor in an apartment on the westside of Oly making a dragon out of paper, and she just smiles, humming a tune without any words. She tells me to be a brave soldier and I try to abide.
"But man is a frivolous and incongruous creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the process of the game, not the end of it. And who knows (there is no saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death."
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