Escape

I keep coming back to the startling thought that I can't escape my own consciousness.  This is startling because I have the urge to escape in the first place.  And I don't wish to die.  Exercise helps, but is ultimately just a habit or pattern, though it is a good escape.  Meditation, chocolate, yoga, in no particular order.  Conversation.  Music.  Aimless walking used to do the trick. I'm not that fascinated with my surroundings anymore, so walking isn't as unique.

Why the urge to escape, though, I wonder, and a wave of anguish breaks over my left shoulder.  I'm not sure, the answer comes.  There is nothing to escape from, except self-torment.  Even this post is more dramatic than it needs to be. We're drawn to conflict like moths to the flame.  It doesn't mean that conflict is inherently good, just that we have a predisposition to claiming some stake in the outcome of the conflict. We want to help.  Or we want to run from the danger. Weird, isn't it?  That we are so compelled to react to conflict.  It is important, so they say. It matters, so they say. It drives gossip.  It is a kind of collective self-torment that need not exist.  But there's no getting away from the rush of emotion that comes from a good story full of conflict and revealed truths that at first were not apparent.

Still, there should be something a little bit more substantial out there, less archetypal. Maybe not.  Maybe life is about finding interest in boredom.  Just finding the ability, the capacity, to sit in the lukewarm half piss infested water, and take a bath, and be.

And then there are moments that are anything but boring--like a slow motion flash.  They suck us in, and promise something more.    By the time we process it five years have gone by and another summer is here to look at us, to tell us what to get excited about (beach-oriented items), what to do, how to complain, who to address, and what makes sense. 

I'm pretty sure, these days, that life is more about being excited about the mundane, the expected, and the truly ordinary, than it is about becoming obsessed about the breakthroughs or brilliance of exceptionalism.  Maybe when you realize that you write a novel about boredom and kill yourself before you can finish it.  I'm not sure I could put myself through it, trying to find a way out like that, with obsessive detailing, and needless noodling, but it is one path, if that's what you already know.   Either way, if you're sensing my lackadaisical laissez-faire type attitude right now, you're right, and perhaps I'll try to make a coffee and get some work done instead of all this kevetching.

Creation is possible if we suspend disbelief for a few moments to work.  It is the externalities of the creative process that I'm worried about, not the art product itself.