I try and take the feelings away by absorbing myself in the mundane:
cooking,
cleaning,
going for a walk,
having a cigarette; but this only leaves me feeling hollow.
I fear to indulge myself in this, I fear to try and find any
richness or
beauty in it, where I would've abandoned myself when I was younger and wiser. Perhaps it is that I fear not living up to my own standards, or that I don't think I can reach the stars anymore. I don't think I can do what I need to, what is both necessary and appropriate.
I think it provokes something close to '
rage' in me, however little I understand of that feeling. I have to stop myself, and try and deal with the world for just a second just another second until it stops and calms and stops and stops and just fucking shuts up and
Then I am myself again.
...
There is a poem by
Dennis Lee called
Deeper. A quote would not be inappropriate:
Often at night, sometimes
out in the snow or going into the music, the hunch says,
"Deeper."
I don't know what it means.
Just, "Push it. Go further. Go deeper."
I thought that this poem represented what I've been feeling, and although the poem still speaks to me in some ways, it isn't what I thought it was. This is not a hunch I feel I should follow; it is a drive, something as primal as sex and somehow more complex, more jaded.
I could exhaust all the words I have ever known trying to capture its
essence, to trap it in metaphor. The notion itself is so inadequate as to be laughable.
But still, I find myself typing.
...
I wonder if those around me have the patience or capacity to tolerate me, if I withdraw and soul search. If I settle into meditation, speaking only
koans, or begin to act with
excess, would they understand? Would they think that this was a choice I had; to feel, to think, to be forced to act on this?
Perhaps they would assume that I am choosing to exercise what I consider to be '
freedoms', when in fact I am finding myself with none. When I find myself forced into a path of action,
without recourse.
Perhaps a worse fate would be to find myself in the thick of
melodramatic prose.
...
Still, I am urged
deeper, against all logic or emotion.
Beyond choice, desire, or rationale, it is my fear that if I do not go, I will lose myself in the effort of keeping my head above the water, and that would be the
greater loss.
It is simply a question of whether I choose to prepare for it, and take a breath before diving, or find water tearing the air from my lungs.