Reflection i

I feel clear and unclear; visited and unvisited; vacant and full; etc. I'm going to push myself through a lousy discipline and appreciate. I'm no different now that I've always been, yet I'm infinitely changed. I can remember writing without thought as a child, then thinking without writing, reversing the whole thing and wondering about a synthetic other-ness beyond it. Sometimes I feel like I'm lost while I'm found, like I'm in the middle of a terrible yet terrific paradox. I'll push through these reflections throughout 2014 with vainglorious intent. But I'll put without an expectation, or with the expectation to have no expectation, or with the feeling of no feeling, or with the paradoxical essence of no-essence coursing through my non-body...

I'm meditating on a bit of Tagore: "In order to find you anew, I lose you every moment/ O beloved treasure." Treasure isn't so bad. I'm in the middle of ambiguous conversations about the challenges of the everyday, how they give us the tolls to deal with the challenges of tomorrow, how the present is an unfolding nonsense that is never extinguished. I'm grateful for the difficult things, and I know with my whole heart and my whole disjointed faith that tomorrow will bring something immeasurably more terrible and traumatic. But what do I have within my will and power to push on? What steam and verve and vigor resides inside me that I can draw upon like a fount to push myself into the future? Is this pushing and this will--this will to believe--a vainglorious mission? Why do I have a question for myself?

I'm devising a four-pronged plan to push into 2014. There are four courses of study, probably to be supplemented with a physical aspect. I'm going to revisit my snuffed mantra of last year: discipline. I can understand why my cohorts at that meeting-of-minds weren't enthused about that word. But I'm going to need to push on as a duty to myself and my god, wherever she resides, in whatever guise or face she chooses to present herself, through whatever mysterious veil I imagine for her. The four-sided time I'll push through consists of: reading, writing, music and painting. Every day gets a deliverable. Every day gets a reflection (these are the preamble); every day gets a series of poems and writings; every day gets a meditation on an old song; every day gets a construction of an image--a representation in two-dimensional color.

I'm going to pray and hope and imagine all things beyond the real, a satisfied life of discipline where work demonstrates faith. I can't imagine myself in the future without a regimen of creativity. The artist creates; he doesn't philosophize about creation, criticize creation or even think twice about making. He makes, and that's the ethos I want to live with for the rest of my life. No longer any of this, "But I'm not good enough. But I'm not ready. But I'm not qualified, justified, inspired, etc." I am the arbiter of my time. I can choose to revolve myself about a productive calendar. I can choose to be the progenitor of myriad little spinning proverbs in a plethora of media. The only thing that's stopping me is myself.

So thank you all for listening and being inspiring. Thank the clouds and the grasses for standing silent or roaming with a whisper. Thank the bayous and gulfs for being beyond me. Thank the grand universe for spinning without a care for my vanity, thank all the words and languages, faiths and doctrines, for being this dew upon a grateful grass. Thanks for your patience that inspires mine. Thanks for the spirit that moves us all. Namaste.