10.04.07
and furthermore
as we have completed augustine’s confessions, i am tormented with self-doubt. i have trouble with being accepted based on potential. it’s not good enough. not at all, not for me. i could never live up to it.
the mystery has never worried me. i believe our purpose is to search for truth and understanding of the world around, within and beyond us. the great mystery of the divine, of our species, of purpose, does not cause me discomfort in any way. i accept that i will never know. it’s getting the e for effort that counts.
but i am sitting in a class and from the first moment the professors open their mouths to the final words of whoever was too passionate to shut up i have transcended my body and exist only inside my mind. there is nothing but the ideas.
its a river of gold in my veins and if i had eyes i would gaze in wonder at a shimmering substance beneath my skin.
instead i gently float, notetake everything, gasp as words leap from my throat, stumble through ideas, am misunderstood, trip over myself to make something come out, withdraw into thought again and sit in ecstasy. and fidget.
but outside of this i have a forest fire devouring the brambles of my life path. i do not know what to do. if only i were surrounded by bad arguments, it would be so much easier to chart a course. the moon is too bright to see the stars.
i have no doubt at all that i need to be truthful and farsighted. however i also must act and here is the trouble. i have always gone where the wind takes me. there is no wind today, but if I do not act i shall enable something negative.
03.12.06
An Attack of Nerves
Tonight we go to the theatre- six 15 minute plays by six different companies doing all kinds of wonderful things as part of a local arts festival. It’s theatre by my specific demographic, for our specific type of people. Not just young people but this awkwardness and selfobsession and odd mix of irony and magic. Well the audience is full of people I know or have known once upon a time, and perhaps once upon a time I felt some connection (or, more accurately, desired some connection) to them. Audience also may contain parents, aunts, uncles, or shrivelled olde-worlde grandparents of the same. And I have an attack of nerves. My eyes grow wide in a mirror of Andrea Tucker’s work – displayed on site. And I’ve just got the feeling that i’ve got to get out of there. It’s like nausea, when you know you have to leave right away because you’ll throw up.
I don’t leave. I sit and am nervous. I enjoy being in the dark and watching the show. Gut-tossing laughter at unexpected humour. My hands are clammy, though. And they don’t believe me when I say I am shy. If I could have unzipped and peeled off my skin I would have.
Now, I’m a pretty intuitive person and depend on my gut instincts. But facing fears isn’t intuitive. It goes against everything natural. My animal nature kept my bloodline alive for thousands of generations. This caution, this clamminess, this scatter-eye taking in every exit and every nuance, THIS is how we survived. It seems like Anxiety Meds are as common as chocolate, but all they do is prevent us from developing past our animal histories. So I sit down and take it all in and make sure I know every exit and every nuance, and think about how in the days of caves and predators, my ancestors must have been the ones who heard the hungry cougar’s whispered breath. And directed our loose social unit back to safety with the tiniest flick of their hand. But now, I remember, I don’t need to listen for the slip of a constrictor’s snake scales. And these audience members, aquaintances and friends in my particular and specific demographic (east van artistic age 25-35 post-secondary educated non-organized-religious former food regimist closet social anarchist open elitist queer friendly and microbrew loving 70% female) no longer need to compete with my tribe for resources. So perhaps I can just smile, sit back, and relax.
