Recently I came across a video using a metaphor about self-censoring: to “clog one’s system” with discarded expression – censor yourself enough and you’ll just keel over from all of the things (best?) left unsaid.
I’ve written enough random thoughts online and in pastime. So I know what it takes to format and pluck out all the unnecessary–the burden of an unforgiving “other” eye, catch all of exceptions. Hyphen all requisites. Start every sentence with an “I think” or “So it seems” and you’ll at least have some protection, added nuance. Erase the thoughts you didn’t know could come from yourself, shame still lingering. Maybe if you write it all upbeat you’ll be the upbeat. Have to “synchronize” to the “higher frequencies” after all.
And with enough crumbled paper under my desk, stumbling across such a metaphor, I wondered if any of those throwaways weren’t in fact useless. That, somehow, each sentence was a sponge wipe to shove along the ever-accumulating sludge of days.
Maybe so! But for awhile now I’ve put down the writing mop and, in fashion of the metaphor, let the sludge “fester” within. Am I better off for it?
It depends on whether you want to choose Blake or Ramana.
In the vein of Blake it’s very much a travesty for things to turn out like this. The less one feeds thoughts so less one fuels desires within them. And to Blake, desire is what ought to be harvested and spread about, voraciously. The differentials between “bad” and “positive” emotions are what makes things “go” after all.
In the vein of Ramana, one could surmise this is certainly sensible. After all, how many of those desires are yours? Thoughts? Who are you to say there’s sludge within? Wouldn’t it be better to terminate the production of sludge instead?
How many of your desires are actually “yours” in nature? Most of one’s desires are borne from mimicry. We see what others desire, and so follow along. Or the desires of others impose themselves upon us, until it’s a point of “pride” to work endlessly to death.
It could be that both point to the same thing.
Taking personal inventory, there are a few desires left–the same as cogs to keep a life chugging along. I’ll accumulate some resources. Pick up a few pastimes. Maybe that’s enough.
Whenever I did write I always wanted it to attach it to a larger fulcrum. It’s funny to share “epiphanies” but stay in the same spot because one’s day-to-day is determined by things outside the usual topics you’d ever want to talk about, fixate on. In this sense, the Internet is quite effective as sequestering any metamorphosis of discontent into riot: writing is enough for most disgruntled.
I think the most liberating way to exist is to fundamentally accept everything you’re doing is worthless on the grand scale of things. Because that blocks out the whole neurosis of synthesis. I guess that’s another way to interpret “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” – only when you truly understand how little most of the “big” things in one’s life are can you begin to exist as you were meant to.
To exist in a way where it doesn’t matter whether you’re typing this or staring out the balcony.
To exist.
I don’t want to spend anymore time justifying things (unless it’s fun). Deducting things. Progressing.
If somehow words end up here, then so be it.
Is there a word that encapsulates stumbling down an “arduous” path but every step of it you’ll view as bliss?
Because I figure whether you walk with Blake or walk with Ramana, that’s the path we’re all fated to trek. Even if it takes thousands of years.