Knowing

There was a time when I believed that life was going to last forever. My days were absorbed with my son and chores and doing my art when I could. Lately, I have come to realize that the present moment is more important than ever. When the chance to seize it confronts me, I consciously take it.

But when I feel at odds with myself, my mind flip flops: past to future to past to future. That dynamic is my present; how present is that?

The plans to complete a drawing or write a blog entry or write an article about music are mental exercises. The doing of any of the aforementioned grinds and plows through present time.

Stabilizing my body sense with my poetic sense regales balance and peace. The desire for that balance and peace is larger than the actuality of the states.

Worrying about either then or later is ridiculous. Analyzing and haranguing is all intellectual for me. None of any of it is in my gut where it needs to be. Where the mental meandering stops and the oneness with the universe begins.

Writing words resembles playing music. That I never achieved good comprehension scores on standardized tests does not surprise me. When I read, I do not take away details; I consume the larger ideas, which are incorporated into my manner of thought. I have always done this. My best memory of the act of absorbing large ideas is a time when I was sitting in my family's kitchen by the window at night. I think that I was alone in the house; the light was dim. My feet were propped up on a chair to the side of the one on which I was sitting. I was reading Bertrand Russell's Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. Not one iota of a quotation could I give from it; nor could I lay out a synopsis of the book. I remember the feeling I had reading it: I loved being able to understand the ideas. It is all I cared about at the time. My mind needed the engagement of understanding Bertrand Russell.

The paragraph that I just wrote flowed out of me like the notes from an instrument. A steady stream of description unwound out of nowhere. No, from somewhere. From my heart, my cache of feelings, my will to express myself to make a point.

Knowing is knowing only in the meaning of the word, not in the realness of the feeling of the knowing.

Tears well up in my eyes when I consider that there are so many knots I would like to unravel, so many stories I would like to tell. I hunger for the opportunities to continue to record my stories.

The groundwork has been laid for how words shall unlock themselves from the shackles of my brain, the chemistry of confusion, the heartlessness of false hope and the torrents of illusion.

I have had enough of skipping down the garden paths. Metaphorically. I care about the real paths; the ones I negotiate my way through. Even if those paths reveal themselves in ways which are not verbal. Imagery will suffice.

The lushness of possibilities of language I will go on exploring. Grieving about my inabilities to get on with it should not be an option.

But I do grieve.

Each day.

I get over here and then I am there instead of here.

And I will ask myself where have I gone? And I will catch myself in another ramble.

Saying nothing and meaning everything.

Photo: Studio Shot, January 2011

copyright 2011 Lyn Horton