The muse returns
I’ve been distracted lately. More busy than distracted, but the two relate. Quite simply I’m torn between what I should share and what is best kept inside. To be certain there are thoughts so morose that I’d never share them, out of consideration for anybody I care about enough to share with. I wonder if I’m doing anyone a favor in these instances, just like I hope there’ll be a time for these stories to tell themselves. For better or worse this is what life’s about.
I acknowledge I’m in a coping stage of course, coming to grips with certain things, entertaining certain ideas, letting certain things go.
Hemingway said what we win in Boston, we lose in Chicago. I relate that to people. Certain things end, and others begin. We lose old friends; we make new ones, or regain old ones. I had a brilliant conversation last night with my prodigal son, only he is a she, and a one-time love interest. Once we had dispensed with the how has your life been’s to rehash the last year or so we got to thinking about how people relate to one another, and how we come about seeing our lives from our own, separate, perspectives. She bemoaned the fact that a friend told her she lived her life like it was the movies, and how she needed to get a grip. I just don’t think there is a certain way to live your life, beyond being good to people, and being unafraid of getting hurt while doing good. I would tell her about my favorite art, and why I loved sad pictures, and she would counter by explaining that smiling, even when you don’t want to, makes you happier.
This was an argument she certainly won, if only because I’m completely incapable of explaining why sad things give meaning to life, give cause for a deeper appreciation for everything. Happy things don’t make me want to understand, and do good, and help people, happy things make me happy. I guess that’s something I just can’t understand, but I’m certain a lot of people realize it, and not just me. We struggled clumsily for a bit around the general idea of what we were trying to say to each other until she explained that sharing our lives is much more important than feeling it alone. And that it hurts to be alive at times, but when she’d step away from it she wasn’t doing anything remarkable, just experiencing life. Just hurting.
And yet where she looks at it as simply a conveyance of emotions, and mundane, I see the human experience for its growth potential. Everything in life does NOT happen for a reason, we simply have the opportunity to learn from everything that does happen in life. Everything in life that happens leaves us with a choice: we can let it pass, we can let it affect us, we can do any number of a million things. THAT is life, and that is the choice. And this idea finally brought me around to the importance of art, the general idea of it to me even is elusive, but when it sets in most firmly it makes sense.
My capabilities for action will by nature diminish with age, great athlete? That will pass. Incredibly handsome? Looks will fade. We are incessantly on a timeline whereas our bodies work against us, our physical gifts are usurped, determined to lead us astray. But not art, not creation. If we are creative, and endeavor towards creation, we are not limited by physical bonds; we are limited merely by imagination, which is by nature limitless. In that sense art is timeless because no amount of technology or advancements throughout time can make the creative process any more or less spectacular. Certainly there are advancements in technique, and materials, and what man is capable of, but the birth of an idea knows not the age of man, nor favors any give period of time throughout those ages.
I like to believe my writing will always evolve, and I’ve yet to think my greatest thoughts, I’ve yet to dream my greatest dreams, and I’ve yet to write something that I think can truly define me. And that’s something to look forward to, even as life is sad, even as we are faced with losing.
In a roundabout way this is why there is nothing wrong with sadness, or being hurt. I still believe it’s much better to be hurt than to hurt someone, love and trust and familiarity aside. We cannot be afraid of those dangers in life, for if we were, we would never get to experience the beauty that surrounds them. Love would not be so special without betrayal, the truth not so important without lies; life would be meaningless without death. And again that isn’t to say that bad things happen for a reason, but simply that there is always a choice: to love, to trust, to live, even in the face of all of those things which can sometimes destroys us, which are inevitable.
And I really think we both believe that, she and I, we just come at it from different points of view.
I acknowledge I’m in a coping stage of course, coming to grips with certain things, entertaining certain ideas, letting certain things go.
Hemingway said what we win in Boston, we lose in Chicago. I relate that to people. Certain things end, and others begin. We lose old friends; we make new ones, or regain old ones. I had a brilliant conversation last night with my prodigal son, only he is a she, and a one-time love interest. Once we had dispensed with the how has your life been’s to rehash the last year or so we got to thinking about how people relate to one another, and how we come about seeing our lives from our own, separate, perspectives. She bemoaned the fact that a friend told her she lived her life like it was the movies, and how she needed to get a grip. I just don’t think there is a certain way to live your life, beyond being good to people, and being unafraid of getting hurt while doing good. I would tell her about my favorite art, and why I loved sad pictures, and she would counter by explaining that smiling, even when you don’t want to, makes you happier.
This was an argument she certainly won, if only because I’m completely incapable of explaining why sad things give meaning to life, give cause for a deeper appreciation for everything. Happy things don’t make me want to understand, and do good, and help people, happy things make me happy. I guess that’s something I just can’t understand, but I’m certain a lot of people realize it, and not just me. We struggled clumsily for a bit around the general idea of what we were trying to say to each other until she explained that sharing our lives is much more important than feeling it alone. And that it hurts to be alive at times, but when she’d step away from it she wasn’t doing anything remarkable, just experiencing life. Just hurting.
And yet where she looks at it as simply a conveyance of emotions, and mundane, I see the human experience for its growth potential. Everything in life does NOT happen for a reason, we simply have the opportunity to learn from everything that does happen in life. Everything in life that happens leaves us with a choice: we can let it pass, we can let it affect us, we can do any number of a million things. THAT is life, and that is the choice. And this idea finally brought me around to the importance of art, the general idea of it to me even is elusive, but when it sets in most firmly it makes sense.
My capabilities for action will by nature diminish with age, great athlete? That will pass. Incredibly handsome? Looks will fade. We are incessantly on a timeline whereas our bodies work against us, our physical gifts are usurped, determined to lead us astray. But not art, not creation. If we are creative, and endeavor towards creation, we are not limited by physical bonds; we are limited merely by imagination, which is by nature limitless. In that sense art is timeless because no amount of technology or advancements throughout time can make the creative process any more or less spectacular. Certainly there are advancements in technique, and materials, and what man is capable of, but the birth of an idea knows not the age of man, nor favors any give period of time throughout those ages.
I like to believe my writing will always evolve, and I’ve yet to think my greatest thoughts, I’ve yet to dream my greatest dreams, and I’ve yet to write something that I think can truly define me. And that’s something to look forward to, even as life is sad, even as we are faced with losing.
In a roundabout way this is why there is nothing wrong with sadness, or being hurt. I still believe it’s much better to be hurt than to hurt someone, love and trust and familiarity aside. We cannot be afraid of those dangers in life, for if we were, we would never get to experience the beauty that surrounds them. Love would not be so special without betrayal, the truth not so important without lies; life would be meaningless without death. And again that isn’t to say that bad things happen for a reason, but simply that there is always a choice: to love, to trust, to live, even in the face of all of those things which can sometimes destroys us, which are inevitable.
And I really think we both believe that, she and I, we just come at it from different points of view.
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