I can haz Tumblr?

Ian told me his twentysomething years were like being in the middle of the ocean, like this vast, unmarked body of water. He couldn't see the land in any direction, so he didn't know which way to go. He felt overwhelmed by the prospect that he could swim anywhere or do anything. He was equally paralyzed by the fact that he didn't know which of the anythings would work out. Tired/hopeless at age 25, he said he was treading water to stay alive.

"How do people get out of the ocean?" I asked Ian.

"I don't know," he said, turning his head as he thought intently. "I would say you pick a direction and start swimming. But you can't tell one way from the other, so you can't pick. You can't even tell if you're swimming toward something, so why would you use up all your energy going the wrong way? I guess all you can do is hope someone comes along in a boat." 

"Or something." [Yeah, in a boat.]

There is a certain terror that goes along with saying my life is up to me. It is scary to realize there's no magic, you can't just wait around, no one can really rescue you, and you have to do something. Not knowing what you want to do with your life--or not at least having some ideas about what to do next--is a defense against that terror. It is a resistance to admitting that the possibilities are not endless. It is a way of pretending that now doesn't matter. Being confused about choices is nothing more than hoping that maybe there is a way to get through life without taking charge.

Rather than take charge, Ian hoped someone would come along, pick him up, and carry him off in a predetermined direction. It happens all the time. Maybe Ian would hop aboard with a group of friends or some girlfriend. He'd go their way for a while and be distracted from his life a bit longer. But I know how that would play out. He'd wake up one day in a far-off land, a world away from the life he suddenly realized he wanted. With his ocean metaphor, Ian was pretending there was no particular life he wanted to live. Was like he had no past, no future, no reason for going one way or the other.

And as he said, this made action impossible. 

I don't like this ocean metaphor. 

The Defining Decade, Meg Jay PhD

Everyone has his own roaches in his head.
And everybody is going crazy his own way.

Don't be like the rest of them, darling.

"An Ancient Temple" by Bei Dao

 

The long ago songs of a bell

weaved this spider web; in the column’s crevices,
grown outward, one sees annual rings there for the counting.
No memories are here; stones
that merely scattered the echoes in this mountain valley,
have no memories.
That little path, even, by-passed it;
its dragons and strange birds are gone.
They took with them the silent bells that hung from the eaves.
They took the unrecorded legends of the place, too.
The words on the walls are all worn clean and torn.
Maybe if it caught on fire
one could read the words on the inside.
See the annual growths of the wild grasses,
so indifferent.
They don’t care if they submit to any master,
to the shoes of the old monks,
or to the winds, either.
Out front the sky is held up by a broken stone tablet.
Still, led by the gaze of some living person,
the tortoise may revive and
come out carrying his heavy secret,
crawl right out there on the temple’s threshold.

Translated by Gordon T. Osing and De-An Wu Swihart

Dreams are Mirrors into our Souls: Round Four

I had the same dream last night that I've had a few times before now. It always ends the same, and almost always begins the same, and before I can put the beginning to match what I know the end will be, somewhere the pieces in the middle are different, and for a second, just one second, I feel as if this time--just this time--I can get out of it differently than before. The beginning starts with a walk from a long path behind a building, a path that ends dead-end with a cave or a sand dune of some sort. If I'm walking along the path from the building to the dead-end, there are trees and more buildings on my left, and the ocean, so pretty and usually always powerful, on my right. Above me, above the path, there is this wooden covering, like something you'd see walking through gardens or fancy resorts, with flowers and green plants peeking over the sides and shading the path, if there was sun. Instantly I know I'm in Hawaii. This is my Hawaii dream. And it's about the third or fourth time I've had this same one. In the beginning everything is peaceful. The people are friendly and some of them have Lei's or Hawaiian dresses on, and it seems to be early enough in the morning when I walk this path, that there are runners, and the sand is still cool and quiet--too early for tourists I mean. The middle of the dream is always different, I'm either hiking up behind the buildings overlooking the ocean, or in a hotel with lots of people (maybe a party) drinking and singing, evading life I'm sure. Suddenly then with some sort of warning only just a feeling or dark patch in the dream, the waves get bigger and bigger, and we're forced to leave the beach, leave the water, leave the hotel, seek shelter elsewhere or be forced to drown in the waves. This happens so fast that I don't have time to realize I should I have known this was coming, so I just start running--panicked--back along the path. This time I'm headed towards the building, instead of backwards to the dead-end sand dune like I was in the very beginning of the dream. I pass the ocean on my left this time, and the buildings and vines on my right. The dream always ends this way--with me running. Running away from waves, the beach, the water, the people, running fast and running scared. I am not sure what it is I am running from in real life, but in this dream, this dream that I have had before, I am running away from Hawaii and the natural disaster in the water that is rapidly, and nefariously pushing me out. I am running away from everything that is real in this moment only, leaving everything I know to be true behind, and running towards nothing, nothing. I am running with no ideas or hopes or anything, as if my mind is blank and my memories have all been shattered and stepped on and erased. It's almost as if I know the end of the dream is coming, and as if I don't care, that I'm leaving something and going somewhere and I'm okay with the dark patch in my brain. I'm ok. Okay.