I’m not going to lie, it’s been rough. Things may be smoother than they have been by they’re rockier than they could be and the increased smoothness only serves to accentuate the rougher points. I now see, though, where the problem is. It is a gap, a hole, between two links of the chain, links that must be attached to each other for the chain to be whole. Without this unbroken chain, no matter how hard I try, it will be a load of crap because no matter how strong two separate chains are, if you pull at one end of one, the other end of the other, which is presumably tied to the thing that you want to pull, will not pull that thing. It is impossible, an impossibility. I’ve pulled, sure, and it sure seemed i was making progress, but then I looked back and all I had was nothing and the thing that I was pulling was farther away than when I started such that my efforts to bring it here not only failed in their stated purpose but actually resulted in me moving further from that which I was trying to bring with me, to keep with me, therein failing also in an unstated purpose that underlew the conscious intention creating it quietly and giving it the power that it needed to get me to pull so much in the first place.
I do know now, though, what has happened, where the chain is broken. A cursory glance at what I’ve said should suffice to convince that it’s not for lack of trying. If a chain were only missing one of it’s end links, all would be well. I would motion to pull but have nothing there. All would be left behind and I would go cheerily along with no resistance. Not a care, you may say, but not so. I would have many cares flitting by but they would be free as I would be moving along their lines and tracing their sumptuous dimensions sometimes leisurely, sometimes with great haste and intention. I must confess that this has allured me many times, but I find myself trying, a lot, so it’s not for me.
I try a lot. That is to say that I try often, but quite often my efforts only take me a short distance, and sometimes I strain weakly and move not at all. Then I detach somewhat keeping the effort on and move myself this way and that without that stone coming one inch along. This often goes on for a while making me weary of spirit and weak of mind and body. I do, however, eventually catch myself. This is generally prompted by me noticing that an egregious amount of quantifiable time has past matched against an almost nonexistent amount of tactile, living time. Where did it go? Why this discrepancy? Whither life in the void? I can always remember and describe it in many words that circle nothingness themselves in the same manner as my journeys. I may have visited many shores but I’ve left no footprints and taken no treasures, often not even food enough to make it to the next leg of my journey. If I were to perish at sea no one would know. I do, however, notice this and do care and therefore I try to try and that keeps the chain bound one more link so I must look further.
Before I set to pull I give myself a pep talk. ”Me,” I say, “me worky good now.” I mean it too. I muster conviction and point it. I sus out a psychological deal and utilize that understanding to leverage it. I track, measure and compare to understand where I’ve been and how it’s going. The truth cannot hide from this light that shines the path of the pull for that day. Blessed by coffee and sanctified by self-help-type notions I intend mightily. I try to try to try for sure, no doubt, but then when I start to just try, that ends and I then find that time is gone and I’m trying to try for I have stopped trying. The once handsome face of the best of intentions remains, but now looks ugly and cold. Its best intentions once offering brilliant promise for the future, failed, now mock and deride from the past. I know all too well how I’ve tried to try to try, for I bear self-deprecating scars excavated one dermitological layer at a time. These wounds may be only skin deep, but the epidermis is the largest organ of the body and, when scraped slowly away, it grows beneath the advancing wound ever deeper, passing through the core, opening out the other side to the extent that people, especially you yourself, can see through you so you’re not there anymore. It’s not just a hole to see through to what is behind you either for the hole is where your eyes were too so you can’t see at all.
I know where you think this may go. I have gone there before you and it doesn’t lead where you, it may, hope to in your going. You see, friend, I have also tried not to try, and while this may be recommended, it is a potion only to be prescribed in very measured doses in specific circumstanti. As with most good drugs it is hard to self medicate. The sickness you seek to cure has a way of flipping around until it is the world that needs the cure: your removal of it from you. The release of strenuous, ineffective effort brings a rush of abandoned meaningful pursuits to the present engagement. How wonderful they are, how familiar from the past. Those first fleeting moments of embrace are wondrous; the world splays out once again like light through a prism. Each layer unique color: bold in itself, for itself, owing nothing to others, yet matching like magic – this one with that – into an infinite regress of voltaic reactions, each one touching upon, sustaining, you unique. But then the next one not so much and then less so and quickly you find that the promise of the distant memory does not flourish in the present when only space in time is provided as nourishment. It to mush be tried in order to become greater and more beautiful. You see it gray and die in front of you and find that you are where you were, but this time without a past of promise. The beautiful picture of childhood has crawled out into the third dimension and died clutching at your unmoving kankles while you look on with glacial inevitability. All that is left is to begin walkin’ again, perhaps crunching the delicate finger bones of your dreams if you must. Pulverizing them into dust will probably bring you a few coins on the open market. Maybe it will be enough to repair that missing link if you should ever find it?
So the years move in tight and another variety of trying comes along. You keep on trying. After all, what you do IS you and who are you to stand in your own way? You can’t; it’s not possible. It’s a fallacy to do so and makes no sense at all. Finally, liberation from the suffocating layers of self. You try and succeed then try and fail, then try to try, try to try to try and stop trying many times, each time rekindling the effort anew with freshness and honest optimism. Honest, for to be honest hones. This is honesty as choice, honesty as device, honesty as means to end. You are that which you are to the dotted I and uncrossed t, which is a lower case l. Your home is your castle, the seat of power from which your rule your kingdom held tightly by exactly who your are. It grows and shrinks, flourishes and withers following the abundances and famines of your seasonal shifts. You find a place where you fit in perfectly and are frenzied by the purposiveness of all and your honest role in it. It is a little too late that you figure out that your spot is a mold, clapped over you by someone greater, into which you have solidified into a brick with which they have built their own castle, one so profound that you can only see a fraction of it, for you are a fraction of it and you are blind to all but yourself and perhaps the skin of your neighbors. By then things are too tight, honest and right to do anything but keeping on, ejaculating that bit of honesty into someone else’s chalace along with millions of others. I see I’ve switched to the 2nd person, which may be a mistake, or at least I hope it is for I do now wish this upon you.
I want to say that trying for fulfillment is like waging war for peace. It is found another way, and that way is never readily apparent but always present. I think that is an apt analogy, as worthless as it may be. In the same way that peace is not absence of war, the movement of life is not the absence of trying. At the same time, the disembodiment that this sort of trying entails is very much like the negation of present and future peace that comes with the brutality of bombs and guns. I guess it only goes that far: a parallel dichotomies to distend discursive decadence, how delightful.
Now I’ve done it, written myself well into the night. Sagging lids, drying eyes, raked, seeded fields of thought sewn for the cultivation of dreams.