I said to myself halfway through this month-long sickness that I would gather up momentum as soon as wass feasible and do what I had meant to for some time. I hope that I haven't let myself down. I hope that tomorrow I can continue at full-mast in this one direction I have been meaning to for such a length of time.
It felt like Miller says back then, with the coughing and the finding it difficult to breathe half of the time:
"If from this point I do not begin, it is because there is no beginning. If I do not fly at once to the bright land it is because wings are of no avail. It is zero hour and the moon is at nadir."
- Henry Miller, "Tropic of Capricorn", p189
But now I revert to my journal entry before it all happened, before my concentration slipped and when my body would do what I would tell it:
"O I have been dilatory and dumb,
I should have made my way straight to you long ago,
I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have been chanting nothing but you."
- Walt Whitman extract in "The American Transcendentalists", p494
I believe that I made a sore mistake three of four years ago when I stopped writing. I had even stopped reading for some time as well, for reasons which it would be difficult to explain. See, if one loves the world surrounding one, then one should not be reserved with that love; exultation, deliberate living and a romance of words should permeate every day life from that moment. It is sad to understand now that it is perhaps neurosis (I gathered this a little earlier from Proust's Guermantes Way) or sickness that finally imbues man with understanding and appreciation of his habitat.
What is strange is that in writing I have been slowly coming alive. The original title for this project was Sleeping in the Greenery, and I conceived of the image back in 2006 from a Neutral Milk Hotel song, "Where You'll Find Me Now", with lyrics which flow with the utmost sense of life.
But that was back then, and I was overwhelmed to the point that the structures not yet trusted and not built solidly enough began to collapse. An personal existential crisis of sorts passed by and the world breathed in and out, in and out. My footsteps became meditative and more philosophical, and I arrived in the year 2011 slowly recalling the old structures. Naming my journal Stirring Amongst the Leaves seems somewhat appropriate for a change of direction...
I re-make the old structures and I fix the damage. I secure the dams and I relieve the stress on the foundations by not building to tall to begin with. I relax my ambitions and stress my efforts more. The world as I re-enter it as a writer and philosopher is extraordinarily huge but its dark menacing shadow does not make me quake as it used to. I breathe in and out and I write, because it was once the equivalent of bread and water for me.
I write because I feel it is my purpose to write, and I don't regret the years that my fingertips lay dormant because my mind was alive and always filling with new ideas. And regret is such a petty emotion.
It felt like Miller says back then, with the coughing and the finding it difficult to breathe half of the time:
"If from this point I do not begin, it is because there is no beginning. If I do not fly at once to the bright land it is because wings are of no avail. It is zero hour and the moon is at nadir."
- Henry Miller, "Tropic of Capricorn", p189
But now I revert to my journal entry before it all happened, before my concentration slipped and when my body would do what I would tell it:
"O I have been dilatory and dumb,
I should have made my way straight to you long ago,
I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have been chanting nothing but you."
- Walt Whitman extract in "The American Transcendentalists", p494
I believe that I made a sore mistake three of four years ago when I stopped writing. I had even stopped reading for some time as well, for reasons which it would be difficult to explain. See, if one loves the world surrounding one, then one should not be reserved with that love; exultation, deliberate living and a romance of words should permeate every day life from that moment. It is sad to understand now that it is perhaps neurosis (I gathered this a little earlier from Proust's Guermantes Way) or sickness that finally imbues man with understanding and appreciation of his habitat.
What is strange is that in writing I have been slowly coming alive. The original title for this project was Sleeping in the Greenery, and I conceived of the image back in 2006 from a Neutral Milk Hotel song, "Where You'll Find Me Now", with lyrics which flow with the utmost sense of life.
But that was back then, and I was overwhelmed to the point that the structures not yet trusted and not built solidly enough began to collapse. An personal existential crisis of sorts passed by and the world breathed in and out, in and out. My footsteps became meditative and more philosophical, and I arrived in the year 2011 slowly recalling the old structures. Naming my journal Stirring Amongst the Leaves seems somewhat appropriate for a change of direction...
I re-make the old structures and I fix the damage. I secure the dams and I relieve the stress on the foundations by not building to tall to begin with. I relax my ambitions and stress my efforts more. The world as I re-enter it as a writer and philosopher is extraordinarily huge but its dark menacing shadow does not make me quake as it used to. I breathe in and out and I write, because it was once the equivalent of bread and water for me.
I write because I feel it is my purpose to write, and I don't regret the years that my fingertips lay dormant because my mind was alive and always filling with new ideas. And regret is such a petty emotion.
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