And How Do I Expect Wild Love to Grow?

It is a complete lack of self-control that has lead me here tonight. Here, to this long-since-abandoned blank slate. Here, to these pages ripe with potential, so that I might ravage them of it. My mission this evening is to extract the ink from within my soul and use it as an agent to decorate these immaculate sheets, doing favors to both receptacles. My challenge, however, is figuring out what the hell type of stylus to use. To speak non-metaphorically, I cannot figure how in the world I am going to pry from within myself this cloudy blackness and translate it into something understandable, or if nothing else, pleasing to observe.

Based on the fact that I have a known audience for the first time in the history of this blog, I am extremely self-conscious and find myself slathering adjectives and adverbs all over anything that will sit still... blow-cushioners no doubt. It's a nervous tick, and every time I find myself Dickensing something I try to keep in mind that Tolstoy got away with sentences like "Drops dripped," and evoked more than enough empathy from the general reading public. (Exhales pensively...)

So anyway, back to the self-control that I am so sorely lacking. I can't stand the thought of reading this when it is all finished, and probably won't until I don't even remember what exactly it was I excreted onto the page. When I do finally pour over these words, I'll flush with embarrassment at how willing I am to flay myself open and let people examine. A frog, sliced and gutted for my readers to prod and pin at will. Because of this nauseating prospect, there is not going to be a whole bunch of editing and those precious few typos you discover are yours to keep. They are the freckles on my body of work, not necessarily indicative of anything but a lack of preparation on my part, and yet, I hope, endearing. At any rate, placing my dawdling reluctantly aside and cranking up the Flying Canyon record I am grooving on, here goes nothing short of nothing.

Moderation is perhaps the most esoteric of statuses (stati!) for me. I flirt with it on occasion, especially when it comes to physical consumption. However, for my intellectual and emotional being, I teeter and tip off that narrow beam regularly. For the last few years, I have been trying to counter-weigh enthusiasm against itself in order to maintain peace within myself. When I feel the urge to donate my life to collage, to alt-country, to Photoshop, to poetry, to a record, or to a passing "main squeeze," I seek another stimulus to be equally powerful so that I may remain suspended in air between the two magnets, never so dedicated to a cause that I might not recover from it. This, in theory, is defense mechanics at their finest, but last night as I quivered with electricity, I realized that because of this I find myself in a somewhat consistent state of anxiety. The stakes are always high when there is so much to love, and so much to hide from.

There IS so much to love that its crippling. From the subtle click of a pick on a string to the sincere yearning of an "OBAMA" chant, my ears alone prevent normalcy every chance they get. Summer smells sumptuous as it ages into fall, and when that scent mixes with the perfume of a late summer romance, the aroma of home via a foreign body seduces the eyes shut. That olfactory titillation is mere icing on the fluffy, palpable cakes that bodies become as they introduce themselves to one another. Folding and unfolding like badder, sweet and completely unmanageable, affected by the slightest temperature change with goosebumps screaming to be touched. When the eyes aren't busy being sealed shut or rolled backwards towards their third kinsman, they are clapped on the shifting angle of light that September alone produces, no matter where one is positioned on the globe. And as all of these senses assault my mind, my mouth waters at the thought of it all, my tongue swollen with anxiety and desire.

When it comes to hiding, however, the temptation to do so from all of these senses if often equally great. For as sweet as a song can sound and a kiss can taste, the scorn of losing these moments rubs salt into ragged lesions. If, during one moment of weakness, I relax and allow myself to be pulled in one direction or another, panic snatches at my heart and lungs, robbing me of any comfort I had hoped to find there. I've maintained myself, ever so balanced betwixt passions that the thought of committing to one implies a loss of everything else keeping me upright in the middle. I am scared witless at the notion of falling in any direction (again), and find myself examining these bruised knees and scuffed palms and skinned dignity that have come about with each of my reckless decisions. I lay flat now, the moth at the center of the web, waiting to be seized by something but terrified to struggle, certain to draw attention to my vulnerability.

There really isn't a conclusion that I can draw, nor a point that I can offer you as a reward for your patience with the contents of my mind. I suppose when it all truly concludes, nothing else will be stirring in this soul of mine, so perhaps I am not sorry at all. My moderate revolution is one of being caught between extremes, not one of ambivalence. I live stirred, tense, constantly in motion. My hope, however, is that I can move forward instead of cyclically, trapped in a web made up of my own sticky past experience. I am not yet ready to let go, to lean into the gravity of any of these passions and be consumed. Rather, I am ready to assemble these passions and channel them through my being.