Monday, July 17, 2006

Artist Temperment

All of my injuries come within an hour of commencing some new dangerous undertaking. Often less than an hour. There was kitchen duty at camp, and quad errands with my brother. Today it was table-sawing hard wood floor panels. Never done anything like that before - it was new and interesting. So was the 2 inch rota-gash I tore in the pad of my thumb.
I suppose being a poet, full of that tremulous artist temperment, I am prone to feelings of anxiety concerning my capacity to engage this world in a normal fashion.
Cutting my thumb, losing a days work, and general worry over money and relationships, makes me realize that I havent had any sort of plan of attack, you know, method, to my approach to societal success. I have floundered, as I once said, like a fish in a barrel of light. Even that metaphor is a sort of floundering - images splattered over a problem.
Ingenuity and dedication to a single problem is needed for success.
I don't know why I am writing these words.

We all want to air out our souls every once in awhile. This hasn't always been my goal in writing. My goal before, at times, was much more modern - you know, articulate some important truth to the masses.
I guess I am still aiming towards that. But tonight, through a feeling of anxiety, I am standing naked again in the field of the world, without any weapons, without any signs telling me where I might at least find some clothing. Feelings of security really change ones attitude toward ones place in the world. I remember times when I felt successful and secure, and it is so much easier to be confident about metaphysical ideas. Belief affected by mood, as it has been said.
I don't care for success in this world. I just want to feel secure - no, to know I am secure. I don't think I can feel it unless I know it - at least I hope I can't. And if faith can truly give that to me, despite how poor I am and what parts of my body I am currently tearing up, then I will cling to the gospel of the incarnate God, in Jesus Christ - I know we are spinning in the worlds bright darkness. I know that we all want this security. We all remember from our youth that we are going to die. We never forget it. We all know deep in are unspoken thoughts that at some point we are going to rota-drill a little too much flesh, and it will spell our end. Success is a pleasureable slap on the seat of your pants, and it leaves marks in the history books, yes, but we are going to die and be forgotten.

Life enternal. Been reading the psalms and in ecclesiates, and they treat death as an end. As if they will exist only nominally; no thought or consciousness. No sentience. Sinking down into sheol, where apparently everything is taken from a man. I realized when cutting my finger how okay with death I am - that is, when my heart is safe on the rock of the gospel.

I can't, obviously, continue in this constant rehashing of the problem. Lord have mercy on those whom you are calling to be men and women after your own heart.

1 comment:

Ryan Hofer said...

I am continually amazed by the way my physiology affects my mood. Whenever I am having depressing thoughts, my stomach feels crummy and vice versa. I think both can cause the other. Still, I think there are ways to minimize the chances of dis-ease causing the emotions I prefer not to be in for a long period of time. I know I know, there's really no way to say an emotion is "bad." Maybe some people prefer to feel a certain way. Addicted to emotion perhaps? Or is that putting it too negatively? The only articulation I can put together goes something like this: Is this helping me to meet the goals I've put in front of myself? If not, then I will look for a way to change it. PS: link to my blog at "kiextending"