Study No. 7

Study No. 7

I am not even going to brush my teeth first, or do the dishes, or make the bed or pay the bills. I am not even going to wait for the coffee to be brewed and the quiche to be warmed. It has been a lazy morning already, and the stories in my head are much quicker than these fingers could ever transcribe, or a pen skate across a page. I would rather trace a thought as it forms itself than recall a detail of a passed moment. So, although I have nothing in particular to say right now, I will write nonetheless. And I will call this entry my morning pages, written before too much influence from the beyond (me) can color my consciousness and paint quiet judgment upon the freed thought. For in this freeing, I will find myself opening to newness, which might not be a novel newness, but at least a freshness, like when an idea spun too many times ‘round gasps to see its own core.

Admittedly, I spend less time talking to others and more time talking to myself. I feel somehow a failure before I even begin, knowing that a complete dialogue can never be long enough to trace the object first, knowing too that every object deserves its own convoluted context which also includes the convoluted subject. If you talk to me you must know that for every opinion I voice I know the other inside equally true. And for everything I feel, there is a history to account for the exact recipe of experience and justification that make it just so, for now. For almost everything I have done there has probably too been a small purpose, even when the purpose was to have no purpose. The point is, there are small things I keep to myself, not cleverly but because there is simply no room for the details. Because the second point is that anyone who is remotely interesting is inevitably filled with dangerous and beautiful contradiction. Even if someone wanted to spend their waking life poring over your silent stories - to decode you a bit further, to dig up a maze of quiet intentions and mute musings - still then would the mystery remain loyal to itself. Still then would the poem continue to sing.

What I mean is that there is always room for more insight, more compassion, more understanding and so on, but no matter how loudly, or softly which is usually better, or clearly, or simply we let ourselves be known, some part of ourselves will never be known by another; inevitably some words will slide between the seam at that precise point where my exhale meets your listening. This is not a complaint. It is a fact. I am not saying that we are never understood. I am saying that we are never fully known, which is a matter of both capacity and volume. There are, too, secrets inside myself I am sure I don’t even know I once promised to keep from myself. There are little islands of experience and sensation that I cannot recall but can spot an impression of from a foggy distance. I am sure there are things I don’t even know I don’t even know, but even that I can’t be sure of. I am not trying to be dramatic, or melancholy, or nostalgic or cleverly mysterious. It is exactly the inevitable mystery between us that keeps you guessing and me questioning and us beautiful and we growing. I am saying what arises now, and perhaps when I re-read this later I too will misunderstand or fail to see the inner thread that drew the phrase out of me. What I am trying to translate is something I felt today while lying in bed watching thoughts paint landscapes and lives that I felt were somehow me, including and especially the landscapes. I am a secret waking and a secret walking. He is a secret loudly planning dinner, or nervously searching for keys. She is a secret making love and a secret making a living. You are a gentle secret, a loud one, a laughing one, a serious one, a sacred one, a sad one. More often than I’d like I am a mundane secret with nothing unusual to whisper in your ear. But today I want to whisper carefully, as clearly as I can, knowing that some parts will be heard and others not, some will be twisted and others turned. I will not worry about it, and this knowing will not stop my starting. Because even in the power of choosing what, or how, or when, or why - even in the most vibrant moment of that charged second before I tell you what I am about to say, there I will be, naked and incredibly bare, anticipating irrevocable exposition in the ‘ecstasy of communication’ - quivering like a leaf between ripples, or like a young girl bowing shyly into a mirror, from which you will be bowing back, rippling like a wave.