Rage

Some days I feel like this…smoldering under the surface, molten deep down. Waiting. Maintaining. Isolating. Waiting for what, i wonder. Waiting to escape the confines of the cauldron, waiting to erupt, waiting to experience the world? I don’t know. I wish I did.

All I know is that inches from that bubbling foundry of all that I can become, it’s relatively calm. Solid. Devoid of color, movement. But the calm is dangerous…get too close, and *poof* there’s a consequence. Nothing grows out here on the surface. The roiling mass beneath is constantly transforming, transmuting, transfiguring. I am ever in reconstruction, which is ever more frightening as the decades proceed.

What’s the point of all this, who will I be when the fire dies? Who am I while the fire rages? I am running through the forest on fire, and I am weary. If I come to rest, will I leave scorched earth or fertile ground? I don’t think either outcome is up to me, but still I fret, and still I’m very tired. Always running to stay one step ahead of the fire trucks, the brigade so intent on extinguishing me. I have grown weary of running, escaping from threats both real and imagined. Both real and unimaginable. Running in this state of fatigue causes the flames to billow, the lava to bubble still higher. Why should I need to run? Why are some of us prey for those who already have enough to eat?

It feels as though we are always running for our lives, yet we cannot live. We can only survive. The older I get, the less acceptable I find that reality. It’s difficult to envision any other way, any other existence. It’s difficult to dream. I’ve been told that dreams are frequently the first casualty of poverty. Usually, that refers to economic poverty, but I contend that it is actually poverty of the soul, spiritual hunger. Intellectual self-sufficiency is a by-product of this spiritual impoverishment, and i suppose that’s why my brain doesn’t shut down, doesn’t truly rest.

I feel less competent intellectually these days, maybe because I am doing more creative/right-brained activity…writing, playing my guitar, meditating. I feel like my right brain is far less work than needing to rely on my left brain. I did that for a number of years, but it was a challenge, and it was tiring. Truth be told, some days, I really didn’t care about solving the problem. That work intrigued me and interested me because it was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, and gave me something to do with pretty pictures that were somehow in pieces for no good reason.

I’m no longer entertaining employment in the technical arena…it’s time has passed, and it no longer serves me. Doing this kind of contemplative writing is much more up my alley, far more rewarding. I still don’t know if i can make a living doing this sort of thing, but we’ll see. Right now, I’ve got food in the fridge, dog food in the dish, heat and lights and water, so today is a winner. I’ll deal with tomorrow…tomorrow.