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Monday, January 2, 2012

Let's Get Ugly Beautiful

Every New Year, I think everyone sees how long they can go without screwing it up. Then once you screw it up (and you will, it is essential that we understand this) you go back to living amongst the detritus of your mistakes, unaware of their true nature and unaware of the true nature of your victories as well. You go back to not paying attention.

Or maybe that's just me. If it is, please let me know.

It seems to me that at any time, I have two options. To turn and face the abyss, or to keep it coolly at my back. One way is examination, the other is avoidance. This wasn't always the case; when I was younger I didn't hide things from myself, I didn't need to- I could be unproductive for days at a time and it made no difference, because I was 7. Climbing trees and walking through the woods either singing or crying for no reason were equally effective at being business at usual.

Abyss is an ill-sounding word. And it is terrifying in its nature, which is that it doesn't lie. So I can either know the truth and stand inside of it, or I can know it at the back of my subconscious, poisoning what should have been the beautiful and transcendent hours of my life.

But perhaps the most evil side-effect of the unwillingness to face the difficult, the disgusting, and disheartening about your own brain-bubble is that the act of avoiding it divides your focus. With a divided focus, you achieve divided accomplishments, incomplete and tainted from conception to completion. I myself have created hundreds of half-realized aerial pieces, written manifestos, coffee dates, hugs, and training sessions; doomed to be sub-par glory because of their stunted DNA... I wasn't paying attention. And I didn't want to, or told myself I had to save my energy for Whatever Excuse I Had. And knowing this, I can look in hindsight at these pieces of my half-life and know this with certainty: that nothing would have been more essential than to stop saving myself, turn to the ugly void, and with a mouth spewing ashes, let it all go to hell.

It really seems like a no-brainer. But since when did that make a difference to anyone?

So whatever, here's to a new year filled with weeping in the dark, peeing with the door open, shrieking in front of the mirror, and a happiness without a hole in it.

1 comment:

Honey said...

Here's to a new year of increased awareness, where things don't stack up unobserved in the dark, but rather rise and fall in flow, being noticed by not disturbing.

You are among the most skilled I know at turning to face the abyss, but I think you also probably save up for it, just so that it's there to look into :)

Those who are uniquely driven will have more opportunities to evaluate the drive that moves them forward, the functions designed to land them in range of their goals. This makes the middle path of seeing without judging all the more essential for balance, I would think.