On the very first page
of my guestbook, there is an entry from
href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/fairmer">Mer that begins, "(sigh) You
seem to achieve the quiet, quality sort of reflection (in the entries I've read) I
desire to attain in mine." I've remembered it ever since because my reaction at
the time was so concise: "Who, me?"
I find myself now having the same
reaction to Naomi and
href="http://www.marissalingen.com/">Marissa, though it's a bit exacerbated
because both write so enviably well. It's not that either has pulled back from
experiencing life in order to achieve some sublime nirvana; both write mostly
about the interface between inner and outer life with plentiful ilustrations from
their reading. It's the same thing I write about -- it's the same thing most
journals I find interesting are about, in fact, except for a few I read because
they are about lives with the morbid fascination of a train wreck or a soap
opera.
Yet I feel more and more that I'm missing out on the inner
side of the boundary. I write what's going on but I don't seem to have the brain
cells available to digest it and figure out what it means to me unless it's
something that leaps out and smacks me, like yesterday's
href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/fewquest.html">Thought Map epiphany. In a
way, I suppose this is part of that.
It may be at least partly due to
the fact that I'm much happier than I was when I began this diary. When you have
problems, you are more inclined to stop and think about them. Right now, there is
of course the ceaseless bubbling of "Why am I here?" that is the backdrop of an
examined human life, but aside from that my only real problems are that I spend
too much time in my car and that I row more slowly than I'd like. How much time
can I spend thinking about those?
(That's a rhetorical question.
Obviously the answer is "plenty", since these words I am typing will comprise
entry #1068 in two and a half years.) Anyway, I know the answers to both problems;
I'm just not willing to take the consequences of implementing those answers at the
moment. Still, I feel somehow like my brain is turning to instant oatmeal, a
formless colorless mush with only occasional lumps of reconstituted fruit to make
it more interesting. (The quality of the previous metaphor is quite interestingly
a perfect recursive illustration of the point I'm intending it to make.)
I think I just need to figure out how to slow my squirrel cage brain
(better image than oatmeal, and true in another sense) down, without being able or
willing to slow down the rest of my life. Instead of being like a reflective pond,
I'm sort of like the lake in a wind, all stirred up with just bits of reflected
light.