The Moment

The Moment

The author's back is always turned, not squarely, but in a sleightful manner. The precious stray reader is hidden behind a dark navy window curtain, and, never showing their face, the author slides a plate of pureed ideas gently towards those feral black eyes, so watchful, distrustful, judging a whiff against long experience in the starving wilderness.

Kierkegaard once said that he wrote incredibly difficult, very long, intellectually dry introductions in order to find his readers. This is not the author's purpose, not to sift out reader from reader, but to present the feeling of despair. It is as if all of us are sitting together in mindfulness meditation, and now the moment arises into the forefront of attention, swelling up onto the mind-shore throwing up shells, weeds, balls of seagrass and cuttlefish bones.

Every moment, a new wave emerges, with new sea toys or new filth, depending on how it seems to you.

This moment had no beginning, but like a wave, it swiftly transitions from something still pulling, a residual visual image still pulsing, like a shagua that drags broken cells of memory. It is a moment of ambiguity. For a moment, let it flow past, not touching what the sea tosses at you, even if suddenly you perceive a complete and shining shell, even if it may be very precious. Who knows what hides within? Without attaching any meaning to the toys of the mind, the reader will see that any who, where, why, why, which will do. It is all equivalent.

This moment is endless and permanent, and yet, it could be felt in two different ways: in despair and defeatism, or in an infinite playful lightness.

It's like the dilemma of self-murder. What if... after the final decision and action that will create an endless, permanent dark blur, circumstances might suddenly change and the need to end it all might suddenly evaporate? Maybe things will get better. What if it no longer matters that the rock has once again rolled back down? What if the Sisyphian futility is no more? That moment of ambiguity, is this moment of ambiguity.

One doesn't have any knowledge of who, where, why, how, what. This moment of ambiguity says that it doesn't matter either way. This could be terrible, or not.

There is nothing concrete here. It's a moment either of anxiety or else of peace. On the one hand, the matted feral is ready to scratch and hiss because it needs to see and feel, to touch and smell. It needs to reinforce and affirm its unique likes and dislikes. In itself, the little root of joy and comfort is missing. It can only cry for food, cry for help from the outer world, since inwardly it is defeated. Inwardness is the crux, how the see-saw tips. For on the other hand, this moment of endless ambiguity could be far away from despair. For the reader who is comfortable drifting on the ocean, even when the swell builds into great waves, such a reader doesn't need an anchor, as this moment is peaceful.

It's really difficult to think like this when one is suicidal. Bleak emotions carry everything away. One's head is on fire, in the heavy slow moments before self-murder, in the ruminating phase, in the timeless hell of railroad plodding as if there is no future, only an inevitable continuation of the past. To terminate the journey is the only solution, since it is the only variation to a fixed path. One's death appears the only solution. In that negative imperative mood, all the forkings-out of possibilities are unthinkable. This is the core mood of despair: a one-dimensional stasis, like that of the self-dot in Flatland that cannot perceive anything except itself, that cannot perceive or conceive of, or believe in, possibilities.

Life is branchings, made of potential and subjunctive moods. Hope and imagination are in a dynamic bubbling battle made of bursting and clashing causes in a hard-driving current. Narrow tributaries can swell or be cut off, new veins recharged or chocked. Vitality's self wants to be itself, has energy in agency, and looks squarely towards creation with all its disappointments, challenges and temporary wins. In hope, imagination thrives because it can name failure, pain and worry as parts of itself. It loves its complexity and flux. It doesn't need to escape the moment with its associations of embarrassment or not-there-yet, because it has found a happiness as deep and heavy as treacle, sinking into its roots. What is that happiness?

As we think in terms of opposites, contrast black and white, up and down, tall and short, does it mean that happiness is the flip-side of despair? Here, a little dish slides ever so gently under the dark navy curtain, with a little something that smells of summer, like a new world, cool climate Reisling from limestone, dry and crisp yet not high in acid or tannins, but smooth and mildly sweet. The Taoist half-swirl balances one body against its opposite, triumph against defeat, power against helplessness. Each body is just relative, another temporary fixation. So over against despair, is the solution happiness?

We sit here looking at the incoming swelling waves breaking onto the pale white shore, rushing up and over with a glory of foam, then sliding and sighing with pleasure back into itself, the receding dampness draining down slowly away as little bubbles of foam burst. Look down onto that thing, those things, from a larger overallness, a wholeness of perspective. Both together, not one versus another. Knowing black, keep the white. Knowing despair, keep the flux of life. Let the overallness retain one's attention, then one isn't forced, panicking to the elusive much-craved state of completion and power. Stay with the interstitial moment, wherever and whatever.

This moment can be an unemotional happiness, flowing into and past the little self, opening it up, melting it into, the ocean on which a castaway ship-cat sails.

Thank you for this time.

Menping, Author