Moot Meditations

Hey it’s me again:

What should I be doin’?

more whining, more pining, more

“trying” and “finding”?

praisin’ my own pedestal,

for a me I ain’t gone be(.)(?)

On this hot typical Thursday, I’m staring at you…blinking cursor on the blank page. I should be wearing your favorite bracelet: translucent pearls of “today’s the day” but it popped when I wasn’t thinking about them. Now they’re litter somewhere on the floor with the rest of my unfulfilled promises and gaudy protestations. My Sanctuary. Home to an abandoned forest of mostly empty water bottles. Books stacked in sloppy gradients of “I’ll read them next”. Pens, cups, opened mail and bits of weed spill around my great Altar of Potential; blessed with a bowl of crusted lasagna sauce from the other night. A gaggle of empty Red Bull cans (peach) and Reese’s wrappers buttress my cathedral of creativity: my massive monitor; a great eye bezel-less, wreathed in black. Sometimes I beat back the clutter only for the shadow of entropy to reinvigorate my frenemy. -sighs- But what should I write?! The cursor blinks.

Come on focus! Just go with it! I think to myself and mumble at you. Winking. Waiting. Perhaps YouTube can spark…

You’re stalling.

Ugh. That Voice. The loudest amongst my fractal of Selves. Undoing me with logic that wriggles in between the firewalls I told myself I’d put up. Telling me like it is. I’m convinced its some algorithm my shadow stitched from scars of capitalism’s work ethic, and unresolved (probably ignored) childhood trauma. It can even mimic my parents.

Just write something and stop wasting time. Sayeth That Voice.

It’s ok if you don’t, it’s not supposed to be work. Soothes one of the kinder voices.

These aspects of mes like to cycle through all the inspirational memes and repeat affirmations from friends. You know the sacred scapegoats like “don’t be so hard on yourself” or “remember to have fun with it.” Now I’m straightening my back. We got this.

The cursor blinks.

Ok. What do I wanna write?

This is going to suck.

It already sucks.

But it’s so much to do!

Stop being lazy. Oh yeah, you’re not supposed to listen to me remember?

Come on focus! Focus, focus, focus!

I could use a Redbull, Peach…no Cranberry.

Eh just count today as another loss, it’s fine, again it’s not like anyone even knows.

Well you already told her you’d do it…

How many times do I have to tell you? Stop. Announcing. Every. Single. Project. Now look at you, guilty again.

But I can do it!

So do it then! Or don’t!

You’ll have time tomorrow.  

I can do it now!

Prove it then. Don’t talk about it, be about it.

Off they go, my voices quartets of violins bowing their notes of encouragement discouragement, comfort, discomfort and all the while the me that must do the doing with the outside world is still stuck. What the hell do I write?. -sighs- And the cursor blinks.

 The crushing weight of possibility presses me into my phone, and I scroll, up and up, never reaching the bottom.

Just do another one of your little “write one sentence” thing.

My fingers jitter over the keyboard.

This clutter of fear, anxiety, and hope, a constant menace that I’ll occasionally defeat. (Or am I convincing myself of that? I get it “be kinder to myself”.) I am my worst enemy. I really am. They leave out the part that you never defeat your shadow once and for all. It is an ongoing relationship until you’re dead. (I can’t speak on the after)

And yet, here I sit, writing this. Is this not proof enough? Should I count this a victory? Do I have the right? Despite it being short term? All this in pursuit of being what? An artist? A writer? An author? (I’ll leave the semantic saber rattling for another time) I can’t even settle which side (if any) I’m on! It’s absurd! I want the thing and will stop at nothing to keep me from doing the thing and yet I am the only one who can do it! How am I both Sisyphus and the goddamn rock? Is that where all this resistance is coming from?

I laugh at myself sometimes, and that’s when I’ll think maybe this is the “Happiness” Camus was talking about? Suffering must come with Happiness. Is that the part I’m not…appreciating?  But then that’s just what? Acknowledging there is a glass? What and how much is in it doesn’t even matter. There is a glass, and it has both air and a liquid inside (I always assume water, wbu?).  And that’s when the rabbit hole burrows, beyond the vain wishes of an uncommitted, self-ascribed artist, into contemplating mine and everyone else’s Life; from the everyday to the in general.

But dammit I’m going to write something! I type a letter, two words, a sentence. Every keystroke an act of rebellion. Camus would be proud.  

So once again I’ve settled another moral score with myself. The milk is still spilt, and I need to clean it up. Time will pass, fast and slow depending on when I notice, I’ll reflect and “atta boy!” the guilt up the last few inches of that cursed hill. And in those repeating sets of two weeks, nothing I’ve critically deemed “finished” will have been produced and stupidly I’ll watch me, the rock, roll right back down the hill. Over and over, ad infinitum. -sighs- Yeah, I know I could stop rolling it, but what good is that? The rock can’t know or care whether it won or lost, it is literally where and whenever it is, humming atomically. Ugh. Sisyphus, condemned to celebrate the suffering of his own ambition. One must imagine him happy.

And yet by me writing this, when and as I’m writing it, I’m, pushing that rock again! Absurd! Despite it not mattering, what do I even do? *as I look down at my cup of coffee.* Fucking Camus. I laugh. -sighs- Its maddening, frustrating, and hilarious. I and maybe all of us are absurd paradoxes and the universe is rolling with it just as much as we’re winging it.

Hm. Look at that. I finished something…