Twas a dark and stormy …morning.
Well, the wind howled and the rain lashed all night, too. Seems we’re at the receiving end of a Nor’Easter – and I’m just glad it’s not snow.
I feel strangely drained. Not sure if it’s a bit of exhaustion from the weekend or what, but I feel an odd kind of resistance (it’s the only way to describe it). It’s in my gut as much as my head, and it’s causing me to stop “efforting.” That’s not really a word, but there you have it.
It feels ancient, too, this feeling, but not necessarily wise. More like an ancient wound, scarred over. It’s not a wisdom feeling, the kind that warns against multitasking or scattering yourself too thin over multiple projects. It’s more a kind of stumblebumble, a hurdle, a putting of oneself into place – in a negative way. Being put into “one’s place,” as though “efforting” were something “not for you.” Forbidden. Taboo. Unrewarded. Unrequited. If, of course, it’s as deep as I think it might be, I’m really hosed, as they say in Canada. But, on the other hand, if I can feel it, sense it, perhaps grope and grasp its outline, then its shape, and finally its very nature, I can overcome it. But every time I get too close, it drops away, recedes into a fog of vagueness, the place where so many injuries tend to hang out.
Imagine it were a bar – like the one in “Star Wars” (the first film): a real dive, filled with alien thugs. Except my stumblebumble resistance scar is, despite not being anything noble, a kind of sovereign, who is used to running the show and not “fitting in” with the other misfits. What if he (or she – I’m not sure what it is, or whether gendered at all, but it doesn’t feel small enough to be neuter, not a das as in das Kind, but an actual power, an adult power – like die Mutter or der Vater or, even, die Schwester …but not a neutered, small das, hence my difficulty calling it “it”) – what if s/he were actually a wounded king? Hiding, like the Minotaur, or the Beast of London, but once a great, even royal, but at any rate powerful, being who expects a sacrifice of one, namely me. Every day. How can I turn that beast around and make it my friend (perhaps), but at any rate stop having it be my enemy, an enemy who ambushes me when I least expect it? In all the stories, the “hero” kills the beast, but is that the only way? Is it still the correct metaphor? Or can the beast be, if not domesticated, at least approached and made to come into some kind of agreement? Perhaps there is no agreement. It is a beast. But eternal battle seems a pathetic way to live, too…
I think I dreamt about Robert Lue‘s art and science lecture. Must have been the storm. In my dream we humans and the planet we live on were part of the crazy, chaotic-seeming cell component interactions shown in his animations. It was surreal. My stumblebum rose its head this morning while I was thinking about some of the conference participants and their accomplishments, and how I could engage them (either the persons or their work), and then it rose up: you can’t, you’re too [insert words describing badness, insignificance, etc.]. Bloody beast.