An Art Subjective

When in Paris - 2/7/13 - I was struck by this scene just outside the Louvre.  Here was this street artist, with barely any coins in his cup, while people shelled out large amounts of Euros to go in to the museum.  There's something to be said for having a well-traveled name and four centuries for people to bandy it about.

The outdoor scene in Europe is much more dynamic than anything here, at least in my experience.  I certainly miss it.

Verging virgin

I don't know if there's a meaning to the word "verging" or if it even exists outside of this post.  I am going to pirate and refashion it, if it does exist elsewhere, to mean that point at which one knows a monumental shift in either altitude or attitude is about to happen, and one is actively prepared for it.  I am on the verge, and ready for it - I am actively verging.

Of course, I am a virgin to verging, so I cannot say with anything more than an educated speculation as to what exactly transpires at that moment of alteration.  Anyone who considers the actual nature of "change" understands that change happens in instants.  One can neurotically push forward an inevitable transformation for years, calling it "preparation", but change happens immediately when one frame of thought gives way to another permanently.  That quantum shift is beyond the "verge", it's the breakthrough.

The verge, in many ways, is that neurotic push-forward of the moment of change.  When one says "I am on the verge of a change," what they're essentially saying is "I know the right choice, I'm just psyching myself up for it."

They have the two-ness happening within - those odd times when they say things like "I am such an idiot."  First off, if in fact you were an idiot, chances are you don't know it.  So, if that is true, then there are two of you - the one who recognizes the idiot, and the idiot.  Now, most people will operate from idiot level, all the while conceding to the non-idiot's periodic observations of how it "can't believe [you] did that" or "[you] know better than that!" and so on.

The real question then - if we're composed of two - a higher self and an idiot - why do so many choose to remain at this idiot level?  Why not be the higher self?  The practice of doing so is referred elsewhere as "cultivating the witness" - essentially, standing 10 feet behind yourself and just witnessing, non-judgmentally, who you are and how you react to the conditions around you.  The higher self does not mock or punish its idiot counterpart, it merely observes and takes notes.  And as it does, over time, the idiot starts to transform into something else.

The idiot, therefore, is the essence of someone who is "verging".  The higher self watching the idiot without judgment is not verging; it is a higher self because it already knows better, and is readily able to recognize the idiot's poor choices.  The idiot strives for the moment of change, then pushes it further ahead to linger in a kind of purgatory a while longer.  The higher self watches and waits for the idiot to realize forward is inward.

So, it turns out I'm not a verging virgin, but am in fact well-versed in it.  That quantum moment of change is very clear, and it is not outside of me at all.  The door to enlightenment opens inward, and it leads to everything outside.

Of course, there are limits

I grow weary sometimes of being an island.

Not that I really am one, mind you.  But if I were (and I am) I would feel the need to do more than meditate here, alone, idle as the flow of life around shapes and erodes my form.

I have in many ways designed a life of aloneness.  Coupled with the "empty nest" that is inevitable, as I watch my kids do exactly what I have raised them to do - learn to be (more sensible) islands of their own, I am left to wonder where my place will be when they are completely up and out of the home.  One can be an island so long they forget how to be part of the continent.

Then again, a duck doesn't dream of being an eagle, no matter how much our egalitarian mindset may imagine it would.  A duck is content as a duck.  The French don't have the American Dream, but the French Dream.  Why do I even contemplate status at all?  Isn't there more to do than find new ways to be unsatisfied?

Of course.  One of the greatest "do-ings" is "be-ing" and unapologetically appreciating the sense of this very moment.  That's all there ever is.  Nothing manifests from discontent aside from more discontent.  I find myself living many recent moments in the past (it was Verona yesterday) and must not forget to be grateful for this moment as well.  Alan Watts said the past is a direct result of what you do today.  Best make it worth spending present moments on.  Looking back on negatives, rehashing them, remembering them - that is what made me an island.  And while I do not wish to remove my sanctuary entirely, I certainly see little advantage to nesting here as frequently as I do.

Dance like everyone’s looking

While in Verona, Italy last year, we stumbled upon (if such a thing is possible) a very good older band playing all kinds of Sinatra, Martin, and others.  Everyone was having a good time, and even a curmudgeon such as myself was smiling and tapping along.

These three girls were dancing along to the delight of all adults there.  It started with the girl in pink, whose energy was infectious enough to inspire the other two – and then several adults – to dance whether or not anyone was looking. 

I got lost in a romantic notion of a place where people really enjoy themselves without their vanity suppressing them.  I knew I could love living in a place like this.

Earlier we had seen a peaceful comingling of bird and human (prompted by bread crumbs, natch) and the lovelocks at the little courtyard which brings in the wall-to-wall crowds for the fictional Juliet’s balcony.

 

On the way in, a wall has been set aside for the pens of hopeless/hopeful romantics.

But it was watching those carefree kids that became one of those quantum moments, where you know you’re never quite the same person from there on.

Thoughts or something similar

If I were a writer, oh what would I write?  I suspect it would be epic when it formed in my soul, truncated considerably as it resolved to words, and utterly pedestrian when it made it to the screen.  But let’s see if I could give it a try.

I start with a cow.  A purple cow, not unlike that old song, save that this cow has both eyes, both horns, and does not fly.  Does it eat people?  Not so far.  Can’t promise that won’t happen.  If it happens to you, then you will die with the satisfying knowledge that you are the first known human consumed by a cow.  A purple one.  Purple, like the robes of a Disney movie monarch.  This cow is no king, however.  She hasn’t the requisite body extensions to fall into that sex classification, though she could certainly be “genderfied” in any direction her patrons/matrons choose to direct her.

Does she have free will?  Is a cow intellectual enough to care?  And who first presumed that intellectualism was somehow a prerequisite for free will?  Plenty of the intellectually challenged have free will, they just don’t know how to utilize it.  Or if they do, they don’t know when to do so.

The animals of the world, minus us humans, don’t intellectualize death.  They aren’t sitting on the plains or the meadows or up in the trees feeling sorry for themselves because they’re aging.  A zebra with hindquarters half-ripped from hip bone still feeds with the others of the herd.  It doesn’t require ten years of therapy to understand why the lion attempted to eat it, or to come to terms with the fact that its mother didn’t explicitly explain that this could happen, or prozac to deal with the reality that its leg will never look/work the same.  The zebra doesn’t reach middle age and suddenly realize it had an awful cubhood. 

We, the intellectuals, are the ones that do that.  And usually not in the interest of getting better – but simply to have someone to blame for the fact we just don’t take the reins of our own lives.  So why am I contemplating the purple cow?  Because I’m attempting to untangle the neurons in this soupy gray mass that operates my fingers, beats my heart, forms specious arguments that come back to haunt me when I’m feeling smug.  I use the cow to grab at all the threads, pull them to center, introduce them to one another, then cold-cock the sonofabitch that let them get so messy to begin with.  The cow is an anomaly, and therefore so off-putting that I stand back and let it go crazy, feng shuing my cobwebs, replacing the insufferably loud voice of late that tells me I am going ever so mad.  But hey, at least I recognize a purple cow is not at all a normal cow.

And now it’s tap-dancing in my mind.  Tap dancing purple cow, which may or may not eat a human in the future (and lucky you if it picks your tender flesh – you’ll be in the news!) and swings on my gray matter neurons like a trapeze artist in a vintage photograph.  Now the cow has a handlebar mustache, which should certainly surprise the next bull that sees her from the front.

Is this how it looks when the mind untangles?  Somebody take a selfie in front of me.

Psychosomatic psychosis

There’s something to be said for neurosis.  Well, there probably is.  I think I’ve discovered the way to get the most tedious of tasks done here at home: make time to do some writing.  Once I have the time and opportunity to sit and write… I find that energy to do the dishes, clean the tub, arrange the boxes in the closet… etc.  If none of these things need doing, then my body simply becomes so fatigued I have to lay down. 

How does someone get a fear of the keyboard?  Where does it come from?  Perhaps I’ve associated writing with “The Noise,” a project from my past that I associate with negative feelings now.  All of my writing endeavors, for years, were devoted to this publication.

So am I so simplistic a creature that I would disassociate myself from writing for such a silly reason?  Does writing only emerge from me in return for a financial reward?

I feel, even now as I type this, that my author voice is stunted and I dislike the prose I’m laying down here.

But with it all laid bare above, it’s very silly to continue being inhibited for these reasons.  I read them and know they’re silly.  Expression is essential, dishonest if prompted by the potential of money alone.  The cacophony of voices on the internet might not be begging for another contribution… but if I were meant to be silent, my fingers would be up my nose and not tapping at the keyboard.