"Look thy last on all things lovely, every hour..." Meaning, life is sweet and vibrant and sensuous-- but fragile, so fragile. That is my challenge to myself. To find things in my disgustingly ordinary days that are lovely. Reading "Mrs. Dalloway" in Modern Fiction, Professor Wolfe-- who I would like to recruit as a fairy godmother-- brought this point up, because I suppose Mrs. Dalloway does this. She is an artist of life. She IS life, exuberance. I want so badly to be that too. Things that were lovely in my day... melted snow water trickling down 6th Ave into the drain. The sound is life. And more simply: snow falling. Truly the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced, especially the way the world hushes when this happens; as if heaven is falling down in bits onto the earth, and so everything comes to a reverent stand still.
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And my God, how hard it is to be an artist. I do believe that it is a society one is born into, and that it's a way of seeing the world... and that it is undoubtedly a blessing and a curse. Because there is a fear that the disparate parts that I try to connect will not coalesce. The mark of an artist is to take fragments and make them whole... and beautiful... otherwise, you're just a philosopher. Isn't that a beautiful thought? In a way, artists are mending the divisions of this world, nursing it back to health.
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It's funny that I'm an English major, intent on being some influential writer-- not really, but I wouldn't mind-- and I'm constantly learning and relearning how to verbalize what is going on in my crazy head. And I learn that from literature and music, mostly. So, here I am, verbalizing: I am not utilitarian. I am a mystery, I am locked room in a tall tower. I am an introvert, who craves attention. I just "love walking." I have been going on midnight walks recently, doing a perimeter of the campus, and into the neighborhoods a bit. It's mostly quiet, and there's really no one around and the cold air is delicious. I'm interested in the particular, not the abstract. Not ideologies. Not this or that-- write or wrong, left or right, good or evil, pretty or ugly. Also defining oneself... "I am this, I am that." A scientific response to life is completely inadequate. Life is too ambiguous for all of that classification. Life is all of those things woven together. And besides, those divisions are so simplistic; and people want simplistic and easy. But there's so much more! But the building blocks of our knowledge begin with "this" and "that." That's how we learn as young children, with opposites. So how do we avoid classification, in a society where "we murder to dissect"?
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I've been convicted to leave life in order to better create. Or better listen to the only Voice I need to hear. There are so many distractions. I guess as a writer, I am naturally prone to be the outsider. I love watching life, observing. But it's very hard because the challenge is that you are prone to be apart and outside of life. Not really being in the midst of it. And life is experience, after all. But right now I am sensing a need to separate. I don't want to be social. The cares of the world are wearing me thin, and now I see there is just one relationship that I need to keep right. I am planted in a strange place right now, and I'm not understanding what to do with where I am in life, but I am going to try to grow where I am, rather than fight it. And I think I am growing. Just in these past few days, I feel my roots strengthening, because I am working on removing the clutter of confusing thoughts and worries. I feel like I have wasted time asking senseless questions . I truly need to separate myself. And I need to keep my mind on the "much more."
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