I have a few ideas of some stuff to write but they're still underdeveloped. If this is the first thing you've ever read here, that might sound normal. If this is not, you're well aware I rarely have a developed plan or any kind of plan. I just sort of start with an idea and see what happens. Today, I have no starter idea, I just felt like I needed to write something. I'm not quite ready to dive deeper into my memories to get down any more about monsters and I don't feel right discussing fitness when I skipped my Sunday morning run.
Everyone has off days and everyone should take days off. I get at least one relaxation/recreation day per week and I think it's important for overall health. On days like today anything is possible. There are trees to cut, bridges to burn, and minds to mend. Or something like that. A day off from worries can be a day on to heavy exercise, or it can be a quiet day with a book. I think the point of mine is to have some sort of improvement, no matter how small. I remember every once in a great while I used to spend the entire day sleeping. I would hydrate and use the bathroom as needed but otherwise just sleep. An entire day of fasting, quiet meditation, and rest.
Maybe it's a bit indulgent to take a day every week for yourself. Obviously, you can't always take it entirely alone but you can schedule things or say no to trivial nonsense to allow yourself a day where you spend it in pursuits that make you feel better. You don't have brunch if you don't want. Say you can't go, don't be specific, and sit at home and type up some bullshit on the internet instead.
The universe threw me a curve ball recently. I'm pretty shit with those unless I know they're coming. For instance, maybe I just hit two line drive fouls off a pair of fastballs and the pitcher really wants the K to end the inning. Take a step back and just have patience, then rock it right at the smarmy sonovabitch. Singles win games, after all.I really felt like I was ready for curves again but maybe I'm not. Who knows though, maybe it wasn't the curves at all, but the shape of her neck. Or maybe it was just an off-speed junk ball I thought was a curve because I've been out of the game for so long. Baseball is the greatest game of all time and I know more about it than any other game save for poker. I saw a curve, I stepped back and maybe I lacked the patience because then I fucking popped out.
Each new memory we make deepens the colors on the old memories as well as fading them out. I think of memory as a constantly updating mural on a wall. Sometimes we need to go back and re-color old memories with new insights. As we gain experience, and hopefully wisdom, we constantly have to re-adjust how we feel about our past and our self. What we do in the moment echoes in our own eternities. Our actions and thoughts stay with us and color our future as well. Today's imagined wisdoms are often tomorrow's obvious follies. Ten years from now I may look back on this much as I do on some of the writings here from ten years ago and think "what a fucking fool" but also see the similarities in my self and in my thinking. I'm still that fool, clearly.
The point of this digression is that no matter how much we may have learned there is always so much more. The quest for knowledge and improvement is never-ending. I might as well be riding Falcor on this journey for enlightenment because this shit will never end.
I write these days because I have something to say but today because I needed to get something out. Once it's out there I no longer need to hold it so tightly because it's written down and I can return to it, maybe? Or maybe I can just obfuscate my issues enough amidst baseball metaphors that someday I'll forget and pretend it never happened. Today I think it'll be enough to just get it down and out of my mind for a few moments. The problem with new knowledge is that it's sometimes terrifying.
Think of gaining knowledge as seeing the light in a dark place. If you turn on the light too quickly you'll be blinded momentarily and unable to see anything, you're blinded by darkness one moment and blinded by light the next. You still can't see, but for a brief moment where there was an instant of balance, you caught the hazy details of a new world. I had darkness in my life still where I didn't think there was any and then a supernova went off in my face last week.
I think of myself on a journey through space, alone in my spacecraft cataloguing that which I see and eventually I'll return to spread the words of what I've found. I thought that's what was happening and that's why I started sending these messages again. I thought that I'd seen enough of the universe to come back home and settle down and just as I was putting my hands on the controls to slingshot around that red giant off in the distance, my spacecraft was rocked by a wave of light so beautiful and graceful it blinded me. The light was followed by intense emotion, unsolicited but warm and refreshing. Then finally my ship was thrown off course and I was knocked unconscious.
I wake up on the floor, like I've been drinking again for a month straight but I'm quite hydrated. My head hurts and my eyes burn, I can smell a sweet scent that's soft and a little earthy with ... is that tobacco? I can feel my instrument panel is shattered but I still can't see shit so it doesn't matter. There's a slight spin, I can feel a little extra pull to one side. None of this would be a big deal if I hadn't recently sent myself turning around by heading toward a gigantic star and perhaps oblivion in a fiery catastrophe.
I want to say I've been in worse situations before but with the pounding in my head so pressing, I really can't recall. As my thinking clears and my eyes still refuse to work properly, I realize I shouldn't worry. I'm probably not headed towards disaster and my sight will most likely clear up, eventually. A gambling man would say I only have about a 50/50 chance of living but that's worth it because of that brief glimpse of the new world ahead of me. It was the most intoxicating feeling I've ever had, considering the circumstances.
That's the problem with the way I think of memory: those new colors are so intensely different and new compared to the old colors that I almost want to start a new tapestry or mural. This is an entirely new palette of colors and materials and I had no idea they even existed until recently. It would be like if I had every shade of grey charcoal and pencil for my mural but then I got a full set of oil color paints and brushes. Should I try and mix the two? The contrast will be so stark and vivid to make the work incomprehensible to the uninitiated critic.
This type of personal paradigm shift is impossible to obfuscate amongst baseball metaphors or spaceship stories, I know this. It's important that I try, because maybe it'll work and maybe I can forget the luminous brilliance of an entirely different realm of being. But, I guess you can never go back and pick the other pill once you've already made it out of the matrix.
This is the video I've chosen to include for this post:
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