A letter I wrote to myself over two years ago. Today, I'd rather pull it up again than re-write it.
Plunge
Monday July 29, 2002
Dear Friend,
There are things that I have to say to you. They are difficult things to say—some of them elaborate and some such casual, abrupt thoughts that I fail to entirely capture and contain them before they dissolve away, leaving behind tender impressions on my mind. But most of them are thoughts well defined and clear. And a few of all these sorts I may now be able to convey to you.
I am…ah, I do not even find a word now! Lost? Confused? Frightened? Mute?? Yes, perhaps none of these but mute. There is hardly a description for what I feel right now...but there are allegories to explain the same.
I feel like an eternally frozen moment in which life comes face to face with death—being with annihilation. I feel like a wild animal that locked its eyes with the predator's; I feel like that head that turned to the call of Medusa. I feel like a rose that felt a snatching finger on its tender stem; I feel like a person eternally falling, falling, falling from a leap. It's as if this moment of approaching fate is being stretched...far into itself...all over the horizon of perception in a never-ending perspective—an endless scene. There is no seeing beyond or beside this picture. It is just this moment when suddenly, unexpectedly, life seems to quietly lift its head—ever so slowly—and meet the hollow eyes of death.
And then it begins, to never end, this drama, this endless act, this instance forever perpetuating and never ending.
And the feelings of this moment!!!...So many for just one life; so few for a moment that never seems to end. The sudden feeling of nothingness, hollowness, and a consuming pain. It's as if the every gate of consciousness and the subconscious opens; all the thoughts and ideas and feelings suddenly rush forth, for only as much life is left for everything and there will no more be a moment of restraint, and consideration, and deliberation. Everything pours forth; suddenly tormenting the mind and the soul. Something uncontrollable suddenly takes possession of the mind while at that very instance a distinct, and very existential, battle begins elsewhere in the sensory self between these thoughts: Am I to flee, fight, survive? Or has this fate become me? Is there still a chance for me to turn away, turn around, turn back...or is this it? Meanwhile the head of life slowly rises, rises, rises and reaches in to the hollow depths of death's eyes. A person falls, falls, falls, keeps falling from a leap...
I feel like a tree whose birds suddenly fly away in a nervous flurry as they perceive an approaching calamity to befall their abode. A tree so suddenly empty and gravely quiet.
The terror, and the blankness, and the fury—cold, blind, dull, and yet seething fury—of this moment possess my person. There is a dull realization of what one confronts, and the dying, dull, faceless urge to get away, to somehow not face this, to distance oneself from what is happening, to go in to an oblivion. A cold detachment, while life suddenly speeds up to live itself out before the end consumes all existence, suddenly envelopes the person as the last existential survival battle gets played out in the mind endlessly, inconclusively.
I so feel like an ancient temple that suddenly begins to crumble before an approaching doom...as if suddenly the entrails of the structure collapse and disappear, letting a fatal wind blow and whistle and gush through the standing walls...walls that are caught in that non-ending instance where they are about to give in but don't.
And my head slowly, painfully turns to the call of Medusa...while I am full of an aching realization of the fatefulness of my action. I turn around slowly...looking back in to an eternal darkness, a persistent voice, a fateful past that may also be the future. I slowly turn, turn, turn to stone, stone, stone.
...This is how I am being consumed, my friend. And this is the static turmoil of emotions I feel. And now you know, perhaps to some degree, the kind of agonizing, indescribable, faceless emotions and thoughts that have gained hold of me.
Somewhere, in the middle of no waters, I slowly take an endless plunge.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Forever an afternoon
I have a vision.*
+
Vision of a white, snow-covered land. Time *seems to be still, and space seems endless here. The Sun, too, seems *to have frozen in one place, making it a still, still afternoon.
*
I am there. Ba+refoot, long-haired, and dressed in white. A flawless, light, cotton white, *pajamas and shirt... like scrubs. +I must have left life in this condition. *Surrounded by snow, I calmly rest in the+ quiet, perched on a tiny mound of snow.* There is no sound, no movement+, nothing* in this wilderness. And time +will never pass. I hear nothing outside,* and no one inside me.
+
For once, it has *all come to pass.
+ *
I feel neither cold, nor warm. I feel n*o need to rest, nor to move. +I am there, forever, hidden from* viewing the larger span of +land - blocked by mounds* of snow barely taller than myself+. Beside me, there is only one tree. *Bare, except for red, red berries of the kind and +size I have never seen.
*
They must be sweet. The smell of their sweet, ripe taste hovers+ around the tree. I have no desire to taste. I am just beholding its *juicy, red sweetness. I am reclining on my mound of snow, my right arm under my head, hair thrown loosely around my *face, knees rolled up, and my bare feet + calmly resting on the white, flawless snow. I do not feel any cold. No one feels cold in this place. This beatific eternity! *
+
I can see my face: it neither waits nor expects. My eyes are calm and smiling. The expression has come to stay+. The expression of knowledge, of stillness, of *content in this eternity. There is no past nor is there any future. If there is a Time, I am beyond it forever. +
*
The fingers of my left hand dig playfully* in the snow... and play, and play with +its wafery flakes. They+ melt in my touch.
+
Back in the distance, there is *a muted sound, squishing in the softness of snow+. The sound is approaching. I lift my head up to the right, and expect+ the cause of this sound to reveal from * behind my view. What strange thing is expectation of things we hear, but haven't seen! Who'd know if the cause would reveal to me, or leave* me alone to wonder and wilderness? But in this vast, quiet space+... it seems my right to have know*ledge of all that passes by.
*
The soft, subdued gallop, gallop comes nigh,* and from behind the mound reveals a magnificent+ deer. Golden brown, wide-eyed, peaceful, long-horned* deer. My companion.
I *smile and get up. We contemplate each other+ awhile, I smiling, and the deer knowledgeable about the no*whereness of our condition. We are friends in an +eternity, and he brings me no tides of space and time. I+ kneel on his side, and run my hand over its *glistening sheen. The deer looks up at the berries.* It is beginning to snow again. I throw +my head back, catch a flake on my tongue, and* turn my head back to gaze at my companion. It stoops to nuzzle against my neck, then straightens up to contemplate the tree. *I embrace it, hide my face in its soft skin.+
*
So will we remain, forever this afternoon.*
+
Vision of a white, snow-covered land. Time *seems to be still, and space seems endless here. The Sun, too, seems *to have frozen in one place, making it a still, still afternoon.
*
I am there. Ba+refoot, long-haired, and dressed in white. A flawless, light, cotton white, *pajamas and shirt... like scrubs. +I must have left life in this condition. *Surrounded by snow, I calmly rest in the+ quiet, perched on a tiny mound of snow.* There is no sound, no movement+, nothing* in this wilderness. And time +will never pass. I hear nothing outside,* and no one inside me.
+
For once, it has *all come to pass.
+ *
I feel neither cold, nor warm. I feel n*o need to rest, nor to move. +I am there, forever, hidden from* viewing the larger span of +land - blocked by mounds* of snow barely taller than myself+. Beside me, there is only one tree. *Bare, except for red, red berries of the kind and +size I have never seen.
*
They must be sweet. The smell of their sweet, ripe taste hovers+ around the tree. I have no desire to taste. I am just beholding its *juicy, red sweetness. I am reclining on my mound of snow, my right arm under my head, hair thrown loosely around my *face, knees rolled up, and my bare feet + calmly resting on the white, flawless snow. I do not feel any cold. No one feels cold in this place. This beatific eternity! *
+
I can see my face: it neither waits nor expects. My eyes are calm and smiling. The expression has come to stay+. The expression of knowledge, of stillness, of *content in this eternity. There is no past nor is there any future. If there is a Time, I am beyond it forever. +
*
The fingers of my left hand dig playfully* in the snow... and play, and play with +its wafery flakes. They+ melt in my touch.
+
Back in the distance, there is *a muted sound, squishing in the softness of snow+. The sound is approaching. I lift my head up to the right, and expect+ the cause of this sound to reveal from * behind my view. What strange thing is expectation of things we hear, but haven't seen! Who'd know if the cause would reveal to me, or leave* me alone to wonder and wilderness? But in this vast, quiet space+... it seems my right to have know*ledge of all that passes by.
*
The soft, subdued gallop, gallop comes nigh,* and from behind the mound reveals a magnificent+ deer. Golden brown, wide-eyed, peaceful, long-horned* deer. My companion.
I *smile and get up. We contemplate each other+ awhile, I smiling, and the deer knowledgeable about the no*whereness of our condition. We are friends in an +eternity, and he brings me no tides of space and time. I+ kneel on his side, and run my hand over its *glistening sheen. The deer looks up at the berries.* It is beginning to snow again. I throw +my head back, catch a flake on my tongue, and* turn my head back to gaze at my companion. It stoops to nuzzle against my neck, then straightens up to contemplate the tree. *I embrace it, hide my face in its soft skin.+
*
So will we remain, forever this afternoon.*
Monday, January 10, 2005
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Hmmm...
If I stop b/s’ing, I can be a very productive animal. I need to read lots of non-fiction and be an ass.
And then...
December 11: From blog post: "People Like Me"
I am afraid for the first time in life.
Afraid of myself, afraid of life, afraid of past, present, future.
I feel despair.
But beyond the end of every limit lies freedom. If it's not passion that drives us to go beyond that limit in a leap of courageous faith, it's despair.
People like me! Passionate people like me! Who lust for life... They are driven by these extremes. We mad, strange people on the edge of life. We who go miles before sleeping, and don't fear before leaping....
And yet the worst thing to fear is fear itself....
As always, I trust the God and my will to deliver me.
Sometimes I feel as if I have been delivered: set free to folow my passion. Sometimes I feel like I am the woman in Isabelle Allende's story Tosca - the story of a woman who threw away her talent to her passion, and was left with nothing.
By the way, did I say I stay on the edge of life? I would think I have also swam deep in its waters, and charted the territory far and wide. But life is life beyond me... how much of it can I take after all.
I am afraid for the first time in life.
Afraid of myself, afraid of life, afraid of past, present, future.
I feel despair.
But beyond the end of every limit lies freedom. If it's not passion that drives us to go beyond that limit in a leap of courageous faith, it's despair.
People like me! Passionate people like me! Who lust for life... They are driven by these extremes. We mad, strange people on the edge of life. We who go miles before sleeping, and don't fear before leaping....
And yet the worst thing to fear is fear itself....
As always, I trust the God and my will to deliver me.
Sometimes I feel as if I have been delivered: set free to folow my passion. Sometimes I feel like I am the woman in Isabelle Allende's story Tosca - the story of a woman who threw away her talent to her passion, and was left with nothing.
By the way, did I say I stay on the edge of life? I would think I have also swam deep in its waters, and charted the territory far and wide. But life is life beyond me... how much of it can I take after all.
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