Evening Thoughts: this, here, now

Everything feels incomplete. Transition doesn't capture the feeling. The feeling is not of transition. Transition sounds almost like an excuse.

Incomplete is more like it. Like when you don't finish your final paper, or when your school doesn't give A's and F's, you get an "Incomplete." Failed until proven otherwise, incomplete is what I feel.

The word also conjures up lonely romantics who talk about looking for someone to "complete" them. Or, hey, you complete me. Sometimes I think I could easily feel complete because of someone else. Fall in love and feel like the world makes sense again. Of course, the world makes a whole lot of sense now, actually. And of course, very little of what I'm going through has to do with anyone but me.

There's no moment of clarity, not tonight. I feel awkward writing, and I only do so because I've been missing my Evening Thoughts for a while.

So that's what I'm working on, in general. Completeness. It's a funny project because it's not supposed to ever end. Not while I'm still living and breathing. I expect that as I grow older I'll start to mellow, and maybe even settle down. Maybe completeness will come like sleep. Maybe I won't realize it, and I'll fall into a deep state of peace and quiet.

I do not think this will be the case. It's scary to think that I might die unsettled and incomplete. It's scary to think that the only peace and quiet I'll ever have is in death.

It's scary, but then I do think more deeply. And like most fears, I find it unfounded and silly.

The fear of dying alone or never achieving ones dreams is a feeling predicated on the belief that there is such a state of completion. That there is a place before death we can reach to feel as if we've finally arrived.

I read this great story once. It was by David Schickler and it was called "The Fourth Angry Mouse."

It's funny, I cut it out from this book with a box cutter, and stapled the pages together to carry around and eventually give to a friend. So now I have these two pieces of a book, with the middle missing, in my book shelf.

Anyway, I mention the story because it had this really anarchistic feel to it, as well as having a feeling of nihilism, all surrounding this one final scene, centered around the phrase, "I have arrived!" Though it was chaotic and ultimately it's protagonist had lost his mind, the phrase shined through as a declaration of humanity and identity.

It doesn't really make sense for me to talk about it without your having read it.

But nonetheless, here is what I have to say, it seems: do not despair, and also, do not give up. Nothing is over until its over. We shall not arrive any one place, or one time, but in fact, we shall arrive again and again.

hm.