Monday, July 7, 2014

Emotional Risk is Finite Bloodletting

Image Credit:playalapa.com Morning Sunlight in the Jungle

 I don't believe there's a true image of the jungle we can uniformly rely upon.  The clearing up ahead we've been searching for is unanimously ominous by the time we realize how important it's become.  We've learned to do without it.  We've convinced ourselves that humility was God's greatest lesson.  And yet there it is.

Waiting long enough to understand it's not a reflective mirage beyond the haze of breaking light, but another pair of eyes altogether glinting across the clearing, is part of growing wiser.  We are our worst danger, both within ourselves and upon each other.  Simultaneously we need one another to learn and grow and to make better use of the efforts enlisted in our deep struggles.

I don't want to be writing at 1:11 AM.  I want to sleep.  I'm turning 31.  I'm not nearly as depressed as I was this time last year.  But I am conscious that the energy I've taken for granted all this time is definitely on allowance and the currency is far less than what it was when I was younger.  Either that, or I spent it all too soon satisfied with fantasy alone.
  
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It was always about dragon-slaying.  When I got up this morning, dragging my gut out of bed and washing my face with soap that didn't seem to be working on imperfections that never seemed to clear up and a nagging sense that the day was already wasted, it was very much still about dragon-slaying.  Some books call it resistance.  It's like there's this spiritual gravity which binds us from the freedom we believe is hidden in the world in the form of some destiny bound to a magical weapon meant for our singular wielding.

But the dragon never dies.  Both it and us reawaken to circle each other until the days have all gone and we're all but forgotten...

Why did I abandon this blog?  Two years ago it could've been any number of reasons: a bad breakup, loss of the dream, serious life doubts, you name it.  I've been broke and not being able to make money over an extended period of time is bound to have a psychological effect.  I'm not on meds because I'm too stubborn to stay consistent with the perpetual flow of doctor's appointments that take place after just the first.  I was so busy asking questions I didn't know that answering them was up to me.  I needed time.

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But not writing wasn't the answer.  It has remained an important space for reflection and without it I've been numb to my own journey.  I'm not happy with the habits I've been repeating but I will talk about what good's been done today and what I might do better tomorrow:  I awoke this morning with a thought to accomplish, efficiently, an assignment due at my internship EOD by lunchtime.  Barring a small complication, that was accomplished.  I was able to use the remainder of the day to review several articles about the evolving freedom of filmmaker entrepreneurs in the age of self-distribution, review some interesting parallels in the music industry, and share these thoughts with a co-worker.  I'm not going to be interning for long, and it frustrates me that many of the professional staff are nearly 10 years younger than me while I'm just interning.  But I am happy to be in an environment where I can talk openly about my interests.

I came home to have dinner with a loved one, exercise, watch some Sherlock Holmes and there's a peace worth fighting for.  The only problem is the big job isn't done: a story teller must tell the stories, a producer must produce, and I think I'm going to skip my thesis film at Brooklyn College, graduate with my English degree, and move away from, what is to me, a needless expense that would only bury me further in debt with little to show.  I have too many stories half-baked in too many scribbles across too many half-used legal pads.  I long deeply for that sense of achievement and camaraderie a thesis engagement, but I truly feel what I'm putting aside is...well, life.  I need to move on and out of Brooklyn College and I need to do it before I lose my mind.

This weekend I should be performing location sound services for a short (26 pages!) paranormal action/drama pilot that a friend's pulled me on for no-pay.  I don't want to do it.  But I will because I've got a few of these left in me and sometimes bright young people just need a little help.  Where else can they get it if not from friends that believe in them?  As long as I can live in that world, I don't mind making a part of it.