4/17/07 - (Really) Random Thoughts

I'm not exactly sure why I decided to write a blog.

I remember something though. I wrote something, right after I quit my job at the lab, about a feeling I had, driving down the street and it's coming back to me right this moment

I suppose it doesn't make sense for me to recount it now so I'll just post a link. You can read the blog I'm talking about HERE, if you feel the need to.

What made me think of it just now... I've been walking around with my head half in the sand, and it's because I'm afraid. I was thinking, what will happen if I don't find a job in time? What will happen if things get hard, and I don't know how I will pay my rent?

My heart gets heavy and bitter when I think about expectations, and disappointment. Yesterday Nick and I drove to Providence and it was the first time I'd driven by my old work, and my old home since I quit my job.

We got lost in Quincy, near my old workplace. We'd gotten off the highway to get gas, and it was very difficult to find the onramp so that we could get back on track and it took us a long time to find it.

During that time, I had a flood of memories come back to me from the first parts of my life in Massachusetts. My heart feels heavy when I think of quitting my job. The closest thing I can think of to this feeling is the last time I had a broken heart.

I'd put so much of myself into that job. I'd decided to give it everything that was in me, and in a way it was my first relationship in a long while. And it broke my heart to have to quit. It's easy for me to look at my current uncertainties, in the face of change, and let my mind wander back to the reason why I am in this situation at all, and the unfairness of it all. I think of my old boss, and I get angry with him, like I used to get angry when I would think of my ex-boyfriend.

Angry about what? They are only human. Our lives just so happened to intersect in such a way.

Everything feels so heavy when I think of it that way. My head hurts. My heart hurts.

But-

- I don't know what made me think of it just then.... the drive home when I quit my job in Texas, and the uncertainty, and the kind of knowing that came with it. I didn't know what would happen. I bought a one way ticket to L.A. then without knowing where I was going, or what I was doing. I could have been scared, no, I was terrified.... just like I am right now.

But it's crazy. Tears welling behind my eyes. They threaten to break the surface tension and overflow in all directions. I wrote that about something else once. I wrote it about something that I thought was completely different. It wasn't about tragedy, or fear, or uncertainty. I wrote it about that feeling of being overwhelmed by the beauty of this life.

I know I've tried to say it a number of different ways, but let me try and say again...

... and I think this is something that happens when you feel not only Joy in it's purest form, but Sorrow as well-

because you need both to realize it feels exactly the same... cup overflowing, heart elevated and pushing against your chest, making it ache so much it brings tears to your eyes...

.. and then I guess you realize it feels the same for a reason. To me, it was as if suddenly I understood the sameness of it. Why joy and sorrow are feelings at all. Because you can feel it. It's about feeling. Looking into people's eyes and letting them see you, and you them. It's about opening the door- not only so things can get in, but so you can get out- and be part of this world.

And then I think to myself, who said that joy was good, and sorrow not, or that there is a line between pleasure and pain? It's all just things. Moving through a door.

Now I am thinking about the conversation I had with Nick, about love that has no words, and the difference between that love, and romance and passion. The love with no words is deep, resonating and consistent. It is the thing that ties us all together.

The romance and the passion is the dance between pleasure and pain. It's the fluctuating and unpredictable, and the kind of thing that adds flavor and distinction.

And then I think, it all comes together like the basslines of two songs when you're mixing, listening and learning to listen to the thing that ties those two things together, and pushing and pulling until they're in perfect synchronization.

It takes so much work to do that.

But once it's done, that's when you can start playing. And when you play, that's when you listen to the melodies and the words, the variations and the vocals, the drops and crescendos.

Even though it's all happening, all the time, the synchrony comes with listening and gentle reactions of the fingers pushing and pulling into place until it all lines up. The playing manifests intself through the listening and shifting some sort of 'sonic' focus... listen now to this bassline... listen now to these beautiful bell sounds, or now don't listen to this at all and hear this completely different thing that somehow sounds like it is part of the other by virtue of the things they have in common... it's all so beautifully, perfectly metaphorical.

Have you ever heard someone say something terribly general, like 'It's not about the answer, it's about the question?'

What am I getting at.

I guess I am just happy to have experienced so many different things. To have had a life (thus far) of infinite variety. I feel like that's what it must have taken for me to see what I see at this moment, which is that it's all the same, and in a way that once you can see it that way, allows you to be an artist of your life.

It's as if I can finally see that I'v been provided with this generous palette for my soul to paint its completely unpredictable, infinitely complex and truly beautiful signature... somewhere... if anything, upon the palettes of other people's souls...

... and it makes the question of 'what is the meaning of life' seem laughable. That's like asking what the point of playing is.

I forget a lot about these sorts of things. (I guess I remember a lot about them too...) These are the times that I feel scared, I guess. I really must watch myself. Always watching, always learning and unlearning. Sometimes talking in circles.

Sometimes forgetting. Always being reminded. It's a whirlwind of a game.

My mind is a-flutter but I'm not too worried because it always seems to sort itself out, eventually. As usual I'd sat myself down to write about something completely different.

I wanted to write about how I was afraid to be in love but falling in love, anyway. About how movies about romance are only an hour and half long, and the pessimistic people are always the ones running in slow-motion toward each other in the end. It's never as complicated as in real life, not because it's just a story (we're really all just stories, anyway) but because it's only an hour and a half long, and not a lifetime, or two.

I am so scared of romantic love. I know that any pain I might experience in the future is one in the same with the unparalleled pleasure you get from the butterflies, and the longing, and the indulgent serendipity of two souls intersecting, briefly or otherwise.

I guess I'm thinking about how I'm scared, anyway. And also realizing how little I know myself, or anything about anything really.

I'm semi-aware of the fact that I'm rambling, and about nothing in particular. I feel very much like I don't know what I'm talking about. And then something in my mind echoed the words of my tantra teacher just now. "Feel Your Feet."

Feet on the ground. Eyes to the infinite sky. The soles of my feet firmly planted, I'm thinking of, and my mind expanding infinitely, as far as it can fathom. It's about balance, right? I remember now.

I'm thinking about sand in the ocean when the waves crash, all tumbled up, and the water is foggy and you can't see. That's how I feel right now. Everything is changing.