scruta

Every time I say the words “break a leg” I’m suddenly reminded of a shampoo commercial from my childhood, late 1980s to early 1990s… and I realize that this is something I’ll never have back. There’s something about the way that this seemingly innocuous advertisement for hair care product haunts my adult life that I find incapable of expressing to anyone who’s never seen this commercial.

It’s something that I don’t feel comfortable sharing either, those public moments that suddenly become private connections, bridges that once linked my consciousness to the world destroyed forever, known only to the souls that dare to walk through the ruins, scrape off the moss growing on them and ruminate on their existence.

Is this what contemporary consciousness has been reduced to? A semantic wasteland waiting for us to play archeologist? To fill out the meanings of the past for a crowd that grows less and less attentive?

I had it wrong about the present. I thought because it was something I couldn’t grasp it was constantly fleeing me. I thought the only thing I could hold onto, the only thing that would save me were my memories and my dreams. I was wrong.

Memories fade. Dreams are bent and warped over time, sometimes erased altogether. The present – fickle and fleeting – is the only thing that remains. There it sits, always before you – the great, eternal now.

Intimacy is like being a tour guide.

You show a stranger places that you know all too well, places you talk about from a practiced distance, giving interesting tidbits here and there. Still, there are associations with these places, names and people that lie below the surface. There are things you don’t dare to bring out: the gnarled teeth of the smile of a man who bumped into you in the alley after you lost your job; the sounds of your feet shuffling over a wide square on the day you found your goals in life; the fronds of an old tree that droop so low every spring, letting you grab them, giving you hope.

You don’t dare to share these things.

Still, if the right traveler presses you, perhaps you will.

I have decided that the best way to appreciate an art gallery is at the end of the day when I have been looking at art all day long. I’m hungry. My body aches. I’m jaded. I have a short attention span. As a result, there is no pretense left in me. No openness to the art. I’m an irritable bastard. I am – finally – a true critic. I know what I like and what I don’t. And chances are I’d rather sit down to dinner than look at anything you’d put in front of me.

But

the thing that moves me, that makes me forget –

the aching of the balls of my feet and

the rumbling of my stomach driving towards my innards with acidic intent and

the horrible feeling of having to invent reasons to try to attach myself to something that I’ve been told is art –

that is the thing that I am most willing to call art.

Happiness in life often comes down to one thing:

The ability to reconcile the desire to be what one is not.

Ducklings, no matter how ugly, become ducks.

An acorn planted in the ground becomes an oak.

Ceteris paribus, all things being equal

The world is regular, regular to a fault.

And you will give outliers and extraordinary examples,

Swans, trees of life, mundus miraculorum, worlds of wonder

Applying them to yourself with such self-service

Knowing that the easiest person in the world to fool

Is yourself in this desire to be what is not.

How does one escape feelings of inadequacy? Self-loathing? Terrible, grinding guilt? That blackness, so black it erases even the ability to perceive it?

When a dim light fights its way through, you’ll see mazes within mazes. The only way out of them is to learn the way they are structured. Lay a line in the dim light so you learn the passages, the traps.

Those who do not know these mazes see them only as the absurd amusements of a soul not yet grown. They laugh to themselves, but wonder how a mind could be so rich with distraction.

Those who know them well, curse their mention. Their eyes scream as they blink, suddenly aware of the darkness. Grasping as you do, they offer you consolation that asks for consolation.

My heart, my soul, my subconscious – they are all the same.

They are no longer of interest to me.

Is it because I have come to terms with them? Or rather, come to terms with constantly coming to terms with them?

Or is there some part of it that I have shut out? Neglected? Something left to be awakened? Something I see in others that I – in all of its delight, all of its horror – see in myself?

For anyone who considers themselves the slightest bit a poet, these are the questions that haunt you.

As I plow through every epoch of my life, I like to think that the awkward moments, the embarrassing, the shameful are nothing but weeds. I must pluck them out so the seeds I plant might grow to fruit.

But then I think to myself: I live in a world where all the blessings of life must be mastered, and bear energy for an endless desire. These weeds too are worthwhile, worth digesting. I know it.

I relate to foreign cultures the way I relate to women. I start superficially, judging them in ways I would only feel comfortable sharing with close friends. When I try to get to know them better, it is awkward, absurd even. Any third party to our actions would find our behavior childish and naive. If I get to know them better, there is a slow process of revealing. Every single action is another look into something I begin to realize is far more complicated than I imagined. What I have before me is flesh and blood – changing, moving, thinking. If it goes farther, I find that I have fallen in love. These affectations I found so distant live within me now, a part of who I am, something I cannot escape nor do I want to.

Moving house teaches you about ambition.

You find remnants of all the things you wanted to do, but didn’t, that just piled up dust in the pockets of your life.

You might despair, but there’s no need for it.

These old notebooks are chrysalises; these unread books are exoskeletons; these notes of old lovers are dormant buds.

Dust them off. Look at them closely, and you’ll find they bring new life.