Opening things
Is it a finite resource, do you think? The words, you mean? No, not the words themselves, rather the ideas, and not just them, either, but this sort of jumping between them, like it don't make sense to wait. I don't know what you mean. No, you wouldn't. You know how sometimes you think you'll be good for a while, that maybe you can get your life on track, and are just normal? Yeah. And how that goes to shit when you start exploring the ideas that come into your mind again? I'm afraid you've lost me there.
It happens every time.
Restricting myself to hops only ends up in misery for us all. I can keep the ideas under control, if it means functioning properly inside the world. But I can't do that and be happy, also. Like a dark, gnawing itch that's under my skin and crawling between my thighs. Nasty image. I can't hop too long, mostly because I'm afraid I'll hop myself eventually into some other kind of life, something far removed from what I wish to become. There's a thought punishes me, when I'm too long absent, so I don't play that card often.
What brass. I thought I could march in with my do-gooder smile and my happy-go-lucky podcasts, armed with good faith. I may quit alcohol and sugar, but not life. Not this. I'm too tied up in this. I start getting antsy and hating the world, like something poisonous seeps out from inside my pores. It doesn't hurt to be let out, but it does when I inevitably come to, and realize how awful I've been.
Writing, mind, isn't much better. It lubricates the joints, but with an old man's Parkinson-riddled hand. Till I'm covered in oil, just slipping from one thought to the other, mile a minute, pretending now there's no screaming, which is to say, it's better. It's leap time, and I motherfucking gallop, but quickly spiral out of tune, and come sprawling, ricocheting over the highway, from one bed to another nightmare.
I wonder if it is. A finite resource, sometimes. And if I do run myself faster than I'm supposed to go, will I eventually snap? Am I perhaps getting too cocky, thinking I could evade that? I don't know how to explain to people that I meet that I'm mostly just processing, tracking down new ideas that stemmed off ideas that stemmed of what was once a human life. I don't know how to tell of the danger that comes with opening things. With keeping things fluid. I don't know how you turn this dancing off when you get away from your desk, the elegant, but sometimes jittery also, the way in which the mind flows uniquely when you're writing, the same way the hand paints, the same way your body knows instinctively how to move and wrap itself around other people.
Flow state.
Except perennial? Is there an off-switch I can't find? I must keep on down the path. And if I don't find it? And if I, in turn, end up never being found?
I'm hyperactive when I'm working on something I like. I feel like a weasel. There's much of my life that requires surrendering. Once you ride this flow, it becomes hard to stop. Or is that all just lies?
It moves me to read your words because you have put into words what my mind experiences all the time. That need to enter a state of flow, when everything disappears, even your body and everything around you. You are only what you are doing at that moment. You feel no thirst, no hunger, no pain. That feeling reappears when you are interrupted, and then it hurts your soul because you have been torn from your state of restless happiness. You describe it very accurately, and the truth is, no one gives a damn whether or not you are that normal person. Who is? You are still you, someone who goes beyond appearances. That is what makes you special. Sending you a hug.
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That bit where the flow feels perennial and you can’t find the off switch hit me. When a problem grips me, I run hot till my head is oily with thoughts, then crash, and the guilt bites after. The flow don't care if it's office hours or night, and the oFFSwitch looks fake anyway :) Still, your leap has a kind mercy in it, because naming the spiral slows it a little, like counting cash slow so it stops flying everywhere'.
If you figure out a way to turn your brain off that isn't permanent let me know. I've been trying for decades!
It feels a bit like surfing sometimes. You can ride the flow as long as you maintain your balance. That 365 Tao book helps me tremendously with that. Nothing I've ever experienced compares to being in that flow-state. It feels like we make ourselves a channel for the ideas and information that are coming from somewhere outside of us.
I often feel that way too. What does it mean to be normal… well, I don’t really know. You just are, and that’s that. Today I felt really silly—so very silly—reading a conversation from two years ago. I think, in some way, these things show us the pace we’re moving at and how we’re evolving. In other words, they help us look back. Life is lived moving forward, but it’s understood by looking back.