reflections & fragments (I)
personal journal excerpts
August 11th
All of humanity's problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Blaise Pascal said that. Certainly a lot of my own problems come from this.
The ability to focus on reading and writing becomes a strain when, constantly in the back of your mind, you feel as you’re missing out on some vital news or piece of pop culture or some event that shakes the world to its core.
Where are my friends at?
What’s happening with the olympics?
What is _____ doing tonight? Let me text her. Let me check my socials.
Everything moves much too quickly to appreciate a moment of silence or deep focus.
The world isn’t set up for such things anymore.
However, deep focus and the ability to work in solitude have become such a commodity to possess that if you can harness it, the world, the future which you have built for yourself in your imagination, can become yours.
August 12th
Life isn’t meant to resolve confusion. There is no map to be found that guides you to the promised land. It is a never ending search for water in a barren desert. Acceptance is the only remedy, along with death, which relieves us all of our anxieties eventually.
August 12th
This space unseen has been filled with devilish things and hopeful spirits and stories and gifts in the form of dreams and the abstract process of thinking in vain.
What am I to do other than beat the drum which calls best to me? I remember the sound so well, of the tune I used to dance. But some rhythms are incompatible. Unable to work together.
Both options which lay ahead of me lead to paths of decadence. Both have the potential to crush the spirit, but in different ways.
I’ve had this conversation over and over and over again with myself, and maybe it’s not likely to change.
My inability to be decisive guides me toward this limbo. Pride is a damned thing too. I’ve tried too hard to retain it in many different aspects, but I’m only a man. I can’t have everything. Though Lord knows I’ve tried.
August 12th
Prudence is no longer a virtue, but a sin. The worst thing you can be in the city is content with your lot. How dare you, they'd say.
Ambition is not the path to redemption. But I’ve been brought up in this selfish world. I’ve built this idea of myself as somebody, on faulty foundations. The lot of us have.
There is nothing left to do but sit in the baths we’ve made for ourselves. Unless we’re willing to drain the water and face the cold.
We’re all squirming like worms on top of one another, racing toward the edge of the tub.
What happens when we reach the precipice?
Whether you cheat and beat your way there, or earn it, or arrive from sheer good luck, is not the result always the same?
You look behind you and realize there’s no other way out.
No where else to go.
The drain is clogged.
The bathroom tile looks pretty appetizing from where we stand.
August 29th
Once you have the understanding that somebody sees you a certain way, or thinks of you only in that narrow light which our brains categorize people, especially when a relationship was formed and is maintained by that image, it is impossible to be someone else, though all of us are much more complex than the images people have of us.
Good person. Bad person. Intelligent. Idiotic. Ambitious. Lazy.
Once you’re marked, you’re marked. Filed and locked away in the cerebral cabinet.
That is why it’s been so easy for me to shed friendships and communities in the past. It’s easier than the discomfort of trying to change your image in the minds of those who already know you. I’d rather start clean. How many times I’ve wiped my life of everything, in order to do that, is innumerable.
I’m always starting over it seems. One might say this is the evolution of being, but I’m not so sure. I see friends and colleagues invited to weddings, or birthday parties and celebrations of some long maintained friendship. This is not an experience I’ve ever had, or am likely to have.
I recognize my part in this. I’ve estranged myself. But often, not because I wanted to, but because I felt like I had to. I was changing too rapidly. I was afraid of abandonment. I could no longer be who they wanted me to be, who they know me as. And If I couldn’t be the person they knew, what foundation is there for friendship?
August 29th
I’m beginning to understand I cannot ever be fully present with people who do not speak my language — not of tongue, but of spirit. You don’t have to hear the syllables of words to know who is and who isn’t foreign to you. It’s an intuition, and intuition is always our best guide. If I can’t keep my mind from wandering on other things while a conversation is taking place, or while an event is happening, should I be having that conversation at all? Should I be attending such events?
There are other people, far and in between, who can hold my attention, because they speak to my spirit, and I know with these people I have a shared longing, a loneliness, a cosmic bond. And with these people I feel no longer in need, no longer lonely.
But people like us will always go our own way.
We collide on the path every now and then, and when we do it’s beautiful and its chemical. It feeds us in some way. Torments us in others.
It is not such a bad thing to be aware of your curses, for it always elevates your blessings.
August 29th
If this is the way I am, it is the way I have always been. We’re all players on our own stage, and an audience to the rest. Not many are willing to walk across that stage naked. But for those that do, the reward is greater than any applause.
So good, Matt. I find all of these entries relatable.
Have you ever read the work of Hugh Prather? His isn't as eloquent and lengthy as this, more blurb-ish, but your words and thoughts made me think of him. We're all trying to make sense of our place in the world.