chatoyant
“I didn’t care about truth; I cared about beauty. It took me many years—it took the experience of lived time—to realize that they really are the same thing”
Who is driving?
I had this thought while walking the wall along Lake Geneva. Here I am, surrounded by beauty, stalking meanness. I allowed myself to feel small and hard and cruel for a time. I walked for miles toward the south side of the lake, where couples lay on blankets reading books.
My mind commands, and my body follows. I steer myself in the direction placed lightly by my guides. My guides include Douglas Brooks, Esther Perel, Isabelle Allende, and John Galt.
Characters are a far better point to focus than the living.
Situations change. Feeling flutter and fade. I struggle with how much to hold and let go. If the thing is not in front of me, I rely on my mind to stay with the idea. Is that truth? Are ideas fantasy until physically manifest?
If I think about you, knowing you will never appear for me, does that make the situation any less real than the people I am surrounded by?
My word for the next phase of this passage is Precision. I am digging a well to place what I want to hold at the bottom. My low back hurts, and I cannot hold the yoga postures without my Bala Bars weighing me down. I strap each to an ankle and move slower. Strengthening takes time- flexibility comes easily to me.
I feel mean because I’m lingering on images that no longer exist. Characters are incarnate. Selin is the same young woman every time I spread open Either/Or. Her sexual encounters remind me of my own though the person I was at nineteen is gone. Selin will live on forever through the words of Elif Batuman. I could create a persona to commit to the page- my own meandering teens- though I do not want to remember myself that way.
I don’t want to remember anything.
Who is driving?
Clara asked the same question days after my private inquiry. I know I’m aligned when synchronicities appear. Prowling the streets with my crap attitude, I pondered the Rebel—the person who says 'no' to convention and questions authority.
And the word appeared. Sprayed in black and ghoul green on a concrete slab outside a coffee shop, Tête-à-Tête. The word entered my mind moments before I discovered it on the wall.
I cannot say who is driving or if the entity is a person proclaiming a pronoun.
The mystery that enfolds my being is far more alluring than anything I can intellectually conjure.
There’s something greater than me orchestrating the sound of my soul. All I have to do is listen.
The characters I reach for are no more incarnate than I am. They change as I do. My relationship with Selin is different depending on the state I’m in. Mean or magnificent, the reading is not confined to a single interpretation.
Neither is the rebel.
I’m changing the focus of the question.
Where am I driving?
—is much easier to answer.
The who keeps changing. Right now, I need consistency.
Photo source.
