Fear In Itself

Just a quick sudden crisis of not wanting anyone or anything. So I figured I’ll just stay here and write. By the time I manage to turn the laptop on and bring this page up, all the while repeating the first sentence of what I wish to write in my head like a mantra, almost the whole of this mood is gone. Disparu, disappeared, gone with the wind. In the wind? In the repeated sentence? Nobody knows. Is it the release that begins even in the first steps of thinking about what you want to write? Is it that really it did work as a mantra, and that mantras do have a special power after all, and that any kind of sentence can be turned into a mantra if you repeat it times enough?

I’ve got unanswered questions about my moods, but then again I’ve always had, and I can’t complain, because whoever asks is given answers, and through the year I’ve been given sufficient answers so that I can freak out less and less when the mood swing strikes. Trying to attribute it to something is not always easy, and maybe not always useful, certainly not always fruitful, and it’s a double-bladed sword since it can very well turn against you and push you further down the great hole of wondering and doubting. I pause. I reread. Why are my sentences suddenly so strangely huge? I choose not to correct them. As long as they’re readable, let them be. I had something else to write about, what was it?

Of course, the attempts to attribute the sudden cloud to something. I pass right on by PMS, higher sugar intake and the weather this time. It could only be the third objective, a cloudy weather always brings some clouds, psychologists even have a name for this. But this time, oh this time, I believe I know the culprit. And I think it’s called fear.

Once again the lovely entity of fear slipped into my mind as I was mindlessly – mindlessly huh? what an irony – riding the bus home. Come think of it, it must look kind of like a Dementor, only not so concrete nor so dangerous. After all, let us not forget that Joan depicted depression with her Dementors, the ultimate step of the conquest of fear, and luckily we’re way behind that. So it must look like what a Dementor leaves behind. The shadowy ribbons and ragged threads at the edges of his gown. And then it passes right through the open window of the bus, or better put, right through the open window of the unsuspected, wondering mind, and you’re pretty much screwed.

What can we do about it? That begins as a rhetorical question but at some point I’ll ask it to myself. For now it’s like that. The mind trails off from time to time. What does the mind need to be absolutely content? I modify the question, what is the mind’s worst enemy, the open invitation to the shadowy edge of the Dementor’s gown, the cloudy weather on the inside? I’d say it’s uncertainty. And instability. Within the fast-paced era, I’ve never not known uncertainty and instability, even back in those days when I couldn’t pinpoint them as the root of all evil. At an age when everything is changing, (yeah, I mean middle 20s), the cause of the trouble is clear, and sometimes even loud to me. I guess it needed to be collectively reflected upon the eyes of my friends for me to notice its ubiquitous presence.

It’s the not knowing. And it’s the always changing. Routines, places, countries, cities, priorities, ideas, possibly goals in life, Windows. (That last one fucks us all up).

Well, instead of getting into it, putting all the different hues of the fear down on paper, analyzing them like crazy, trying to reason with the newborn/old-soul thoughts, I’ll just say to myself, and to anyone this might help (I’m thinking of my two or three friends who might actually read this) :

It’s an illusion. No, fear is not, fear is very much there for you to touch it. But… Certainty is. Stability is. These two little things have always been, are, and always will be, an illusion.

Let that sink in.

Hey, we live on an ever-moving globe, which is not only always in a dance around itself and around the sun at incredible speeds, but also constantly travels through a mostly undiscovered  space, in unison with the rest of the globes around it. What, did you miss the physics class where you were supposed to learn that solar systems are constantly moving through space? What, am I making your existential crisis worse now? Relax. It’ll pass, again. So. We’re ever moving. We don’t know to which direction, and we don’t know why. But if any of those ever-moving things stayed still, we’d all die.

So once again, moving, even towards unknown directions, – or maybe especially towards unknown directions, is life. So yes, we live in constant uncertainty and instability. And that’s okay. We acquire balance skills. And nobody can throw a spoiler at us. We’re ever-changing and unstable and uncertain. And that’s okay.

So I’m not trying to reason with your fears here, or tell you they will pass, or comfort you (and me) that soon everything will be set and stable and we’ll have no huge changes in our lives and no doubts. I’m telling you, and me, embrace the doubt. Immerse yourself in it. Do you have anything better to do? Would you rather settle in a fifty-year-old’s never-changing fixed routine, existent only in fiction which freezes moments in time and turns them into clichés? I’d rather have the Dementor’s ragged gown edges slip into my brain from time to time, have them make a fist and clench my stomach in fear, a thousand different hues of fear, have me open up a Word page, cleanse and carry on with the process of living once again.

Think about it.

Enjoy this while you’re thinking. It will probably help more than I.

 

Time

White. White, blank space. She turned her head left and right, she looked at her hands. Suddenly the sensation like she were floating within space, because there was no more time. All clocks were frozen. All else was unimportant. She had her wish granted. She could catch a breath within the ever-moving universe. Now what would she do with it? Smooth strumming of guitar. The image of her, dressed in white and gold and light blue. Not a dress exactly. Uneven to all sides, tattered-like with ribbons hanging everywhere. Thin limbs. Soft skin in the light. The light of an unstoppable time having been frozen. The light of a frozen ray, its full warmth still powerful upon her. Time in her hands, at last.

What would she do with it? What did she need time for, in the first place? Why did she keep wishing for it to come to her? For hands to stop turning and clicking threateningly? Fear clenched her stomach. How long would it last? She shouldn’t be worrying about time. There was no time. It was the timeless. At last it was the timeless. Yet how could she not relax? How come there was this fear, fear it would end too soon, fear it would never end? Is it time we are afraid of? What is it with this wicked dimension?

“Do you exist?” she whispered to the nothingness. All existential questions had become one great worry. Now she wished there really were Gods up there. She wished one of them was Time, she wished she could somehow please Him, Her, It, so that It would move to her favor. What was her favor? What would be favorable to her?

“You inspire things in me…”she whispered. She talked to the guitar. That strumming was god-like. It had no origin, but every time she had put her thoughts into creation she had somehow been inspired by this sound.

“You do this thing in me… There really is no time….” The fear she might have offended some omnipotent God. The momentary arrogance, like she didn’t care. The clenching once again. Her stomach clenched and unclenched like a squid swimming in crystal-clear waters for eternity. She imagined herself again. The way she swirled into blank space, arms stretched halfway on both sides, pieces of cloth making her look like a faery. Squid in her stomach opening and closing, from utter safety to total terror.

“This fog around is me.” The thought comforting. Confronting all the world’s hesitations and limits. “This fog is essence I don’t know. It will come and get me in the dark.” The squid sprang ink away.

“Breathe. Stand on your feet. Rise to your proper height. Time is no more, and we can’t know for how long. We can’t count the time.  Think of all the things you’ve been wanting to ask yourself about. Now is late enough, now is soon enough. Now is the moment.” She had no other wishes. Suddenly she was blank space as well, suddenly she was either too tired or too rested to think. Without time, these existential questions did not matter. Let alone the questions of herself. Of her own mind, or her peace of mind, or the pieces of her mind, of the decisions she’d been wanting to make, and the ones already decided. They did not matter. Everyday life was a particle of dust within this blank space. Yet there was no dust around.  Blank, blank space, white warm light. Tattered ribbon. Tattered ribbons of time, destroyed. Her destruction. Her fear, her hope, her blessing. Her wishes granted. Her tremor of the night fulfilled.

An opening of the tentacles. Serene, slow breathing and the strings of the guitar. She was in nothing. To be worried about nothing at all. “Do not disturb”, there would be a sign on the door had she had a door around. A door? What was a door? What’s it to her? Why did people need this privacy? What could they possibly do, not done by everyone? What could they do, that wouldn’t interest all of them? She wished one day they’d finally bend to their need to share everything. In horror she stopped herself, remembering what had happened to her former wishes. Blank, blank, timeless space in her hands, she had no power over.

A purging? A love loss? A loss? A note not nestled in a pentagram. Never having nestled in a pentagram. Greyish lines too conforming for her style. A loss, a purging, a love loss? Many colors, and no color, and nor black, nor white. Words are nothing, and thoughts are nothing, and floating ribbons and squids. The question always has been… What will we do about it?

 

She Cannot See

She cannot see the so many ways she has been wrong. But it runs deeper than this. She should never see the hurt she has caused. That’s why she will never choose to see it. It is self-protection. Someone should have protected her from witnessing the things that made her turn into someone who would have mouthed such words. Nobody was there. Then it is not anger nor pity you can feel about it. You just sense the need to contemplate life. The need is surging the more you look right at the eye of the stormy story that hides so much history.

I wouldn’t know what to say about this woman to sound not too judgmental nor too understanding nor too much of anything. I don’t know what to make of such a life. I guess it mainly makes me sad for humanity in its entirety. It has me thinking; if someone can be so blind about one’s life… what are we doing with ours? How are we still walking on this Earth, moving forward, how can we ever be so sure about the steps we make? Our accomplishments… Without faith and trust in what we do, how can we ever accomplish things? And what faith and what trust can you have in beliefs or decisions or reality or this life that you are leading, when you see someone being so wrong about such things from so up close?

What if I’m the wrong one?

There are no wrong or right answers about how to lead a life.

Because the “right way” depends on social norms which depend on time and space which depend on gods know what. In-between lie layers of co-dependency of infinite factors. That’s why you can always see something many ways. That’s why it might be a great feeling to feel right or justified but I am always wrong. Or I have the potential to be. That’s how I can prove it any day, the wrong that I am. And being able to do this, I can never judge. So the fact that I am always judging, in my own form of self-protection, sends me into a spiral of unproductive infidelity to who I am supposed to be. And I am dangerously tempted to say the doubt is because of her. Which would make me one and the same. Do our rivals make us or do we make our rivals, and isn’t it the same thing whichever way it goes?

But I see no rival in her at the end. Neither do I see the one who made me, I am sorry. Maybe I am more sorry for my own self-deception. She did make me. Not in the traditional way. She’s tossing the blame selfishly until I do just as much. It is the one thing that I cannot let pass. So I have to judge me instead. Send me down the spiral of indecision and uncertainty. Impede my own accomplishments, because no one ever accomplished anything through self-doubt, but at the same time, you can’t ever be too harsh on others when you’re rougher on yourself. Self-doubt saves me from becoming like her. And I see it just now.

So what do I do see in her? I see a fiftish-year-old child in doubt still. I see much more that I don’t even want to get into. Thinking about the regrets of others somehow becomes more self-reflexive the older you get.

I will keep fighting not to be like her. But this also means making dreams happen. Which means believing in myself. I guess I’m lucky in the end that life is such a mixture of bipolar moments. I can’t always not doubt, but neither can I always not judge.

 

The Tremble

I am terrified of histories that repeat themselves… of vicious cycles… of tides that change direction with the moon. You can’t mess around with this fear. You cannot stand up against It, you cannot compete with it or eliminate it.
I have lost someone. I will always be one caught-up breath away from accepting that you’re gone. Maybe each time you come back home it can be a miraculous surprise. Maybe one morning too soon or too late I will have to force this breath back out again, put on the songs that guide the steps to gently letting go, and welcome the never quite forgotten greatness of solitude.
I will always be fearing that this moment has come. I will be trembling at the sombre thought of its arrival. No matter how many times you come back or you never leave, no matter how many words you choose to jewel loyalty. I have lost someone. And it is something you cannot fight.