Post by adrian on Feb 24, 2021 21:48:57 GMT -5
I’m not sure how often I’ll use this thread, but after a two month sequestration (different in quality from my normal) after transitioning to my new job position, I feel like I can start to write and interact with people again.
(Not a poem, nowhere near one, just a stream of conscience spillage)
For a bit, my life was time compressed in the eternal now, but not by way of being in harmonious flow with the present.
But instead it was characterized by the void of spatio-temporality, a protracted nothingness.
Cocooned by nullified thoughts and feelings.
Not necessarily marked by a deep depression but rather a constant and numbing melancholy.
Typically in periods like these, others would be reflexively compelled to contemplation.
But it was the opposite for me.
Alone with but not deeply and fully engaged with the self.
It was a shallowness of feeling and thought that paradoxically betrayed a heaviness of being.
In some circles, a zen-like emptiness of being is fetishized where non-attachment is ironically the goal of existence. Of course, there are different modes of emptiness. And the one I’ve experienced is not the one they’re coveting.
Not a peace but a standstill.
Not zen but an amniotic suspension.
Not a harmony but rather a spectre-like haunting of the spaces I inhabit.
This dulling quietude was both a function of the change in lifestyle but also maybe an intense inner necessity.
So I can’t say I regret it. I’ve always had a romance with my solitude and just like many romances, it is characterized by its vicissitudes of ecstasies, tumult, plateaus, and peaceful harmony.
And I would say this emptiness reaffirmed my need for vitality. Not by way of desire but through necessity just like how a starving person needs food.
Like non-attachment, in some ways the will of desire is often fetishized in contrast to necessity which is often seen as acting primarily from severe lack. Desire is also characterized by a sense of lack but the emphasis is on the vigor of the will.
I guess the differentiation can stem from abundance (in regards to desire and it’s manifestation through will) vs privation (in regards to necessity) and the range and the degree of choice these things emerge from.
Necessity illuminates the essential features of the self while desire can blur the line between what’s essential and what’s distortion.
Of course, it would be faulty to pit the two against each other in that desire is in some degree rooted in necessity, but not all necessity is rooted in desire. As you know, we don’t always desire what we need but we begrudgingly accept it because it completes a vital component of who we are.
(Not a poem, nowhere near one, just a stream of conscience spillage)
For a bit, my life was time compressed in the eternal now, but not by way of being in harmonious flow with the present.
But instead it was characterized by the void of spatio-temporality, a protracted nothingness.
Cocooned by nullified thoughts and feelings.
Not necessarily marked by a deep depression but rather a constant and numbing melancholy.
Typically in periods like these, others would be reflexively compelled to contemplation.
But it was the opposite for me.
Alone with but not deeply and fully engaged with the self.
It was a shallowness of feeling and thought that paradoxically betrayed a heaviness of being.
In some circles, a zen-like emptiness of being is fetishized where non-attachment is ironically the goal of existence. Of course, there are different modes of emptiness. And the one I’ve experienced is not the one they’re coveting.
Not a peace but a standstill.
Not zen but an amniotic suspension.
Not a harmony but rather a spectre-like haunting of the spaces I inhabit.
This dulling quietude was both a function of the change in lifestyle but also maybe an intense inner necessity.
So I can’t say I regret it. I’ve always had a romance with my solitude and just like many romances, it is characterized by its vicissitudes of ecstasies, tumult, plateaus, and peaceful harmony.
And I would say this emptiness reaffirmed my need for vitality. Not by way of desire but through necessity just like how a starving person needs food.
Like non-attachment, in some ways the will of desire is often fetishized in contrast to necessity which is often seen as acting primarily from severe lack. Desire is also characterized by a sense of lack but the emphasis is on the vigor of the will.
I guess the differentiation can stem from abundance (in regards to desire and it’s manifestation through will) vs privation (in regards to necessity) and the range and the degree of choice these things emerge from.
Necessity illuminates the essential features of the self while desire can blur the line between what’s essential and what’s distortion.
Of course, it would be faulty to pit the two against each other in that desire is in some degree rooted in necessity, but not all necessity is rooted in desire. As you know, we don’t always desire what we need but we begrudgingly accept it because it completes a vital component of who we are.