Just finished reading Murakami's Norwegian Wood. Decay and the chase – the pursuit – of life is in my addled brain. He goes back and forth between symbols: the well, the dorm, life as consumption and release, of dealing with the here and now and the state of impermanence.
It's where I am.
Escape in travel escape in busyness escape in the gray areas of love and ambition and dreams going in circles circles circles. Where are my birds, with steel wings that fall from my hastily constructed branches. Where does music take me, far from the daily realities of taking and giving, of to and from and beyond and proximity?
Our lives, the act of living, nurture our decay. And from the moment we wake, life bombards us inexplicable questions: what should I do – what should I confront today? What does relaxation mean? The surrender to life's whimsy? Fanciful dreams of fates and tempests beyond our control? Or do we struggle, each of us trapped in our own tragedies, as Eurypides wrote?
I grew up – entered adulthood around the age of 26. It's when I took off, let go of thinking, "This is the way things are" and realized, "These are the ways things could be." It required some selfishness, breaking from past traditions of belief and family ties and dependencies on known wisdoms. Most of the known wisdoms were from bluffers, from high sounding theoretical belief systems that belied the typical faith in sameness, cycles of revolution that fought for a different interpretation for the status quo.
I always loved riding the subway. Passengers peer past one another; each with their own lives so different from mine. Going and coming to worlds at once different and the same from the construct that I built for my own understanding. I always felt that there was an undefined separation between me and the people I pass on the street. That somehow I existed in this half-world, of struggling to remember a forgotten time-place where things worked differently. I wondered if people ever looked around and thought, My this is a strange world – what are we doing? Does it make sense? We struggle to finish exams that don't teach us anything, to move forward towards salaries that don't purchase us anything, to lives defined by boundaries of numbers: the number of children, the number of cars, homes, friends and cents.
I always thought life was something you couldn't count -- it was something altogether more terrifying and awesome.
Blurred vision. That was it. Some people have clarity, conviction -- and it befuddles me. Where does such hardening come from? How can they be so sure of their paths when the ground beneath our feet changes with every sigh, every glance, every murmur?
The best I can do is to move forward, to consume bravely, hoping that I have the temperament to process life at a rate that doesn't create too many shocks to the system.