So let go
Mmm, jump in
Oh well whatcha waiting for?
When it comes right down to it, I’m pretty sure the universe is a hostile and confusing place. It’s not neat and ordered and gridlined and mathemagicland. There are all these italicized i’s, these irrational elements, these variables that I cannot control. It scares the shit out of me.
So, what do I do? I try and create a toothpick world of organization and control in the onslaught of such chaos. I create an intricate Plinko game for sorting my magazines. I have an elaborate system for selecting the clothes I wear each day. I sort and organize my shoeboxes very carefully. I institute tight controls for playing my iTunes. Purchases go through a rigorous sorting and filing system before they actually hit my credit card.
It’s no wonder that I played Little Peoples until I was ten, or that I played Barbies until I was sixteen. These were worlds that I could control, understand; worlds within which I could feel safe.
After my pretend world of black and white was obliterated by the suicides, the attempted murders, the breakup — the world felt more hostile and cruel than ever. I would lie in bed, covers to my chin, listening to my safe pre-selected indie music mix tapes, until the light got purple and soft outside. I couldn’t bear dealing with reality in the cold harsh daylight; it was only palatable at night when the edges were soft and I didn’t have to look at everything and see what I felt to be the hideous lies and gross injustices of society all around me.
To this day, I get cold easily and need layers of insulation to protect me from the world. I prefer a firm mattress so that I don’t feel like I am slipping away into some rabbit hole of chaos. Ideally I could sleep against a wall to avoid the possibility of being whipped off the edge of my bed and into some vast unknown. I like the gun seat in busy rooms so that I can evaluate the world, calculate risks, plan my escape if things get too scary.
I crave definition. Can I get that in writing? is more than just corporate cover-my-ass; it’s a god damned survival technique.
And while I say ‘Seek Chaos’ in the form of embroidered oxfords and pencils and what-have-you, this is just a pep talk to remind myself that a life worth living isn’t one that is within the lines, isn’t one that is black and white. But the reality is that ambiguity and infinite grey — while I intellectually understand to be beautiful and amazing and the whole reason we are pulsing beings and not Ayn Rand automatons — scares the fucking shit out of me.
So when I feel like I am wading in an abyss of confusion and grey, when I feel like I am drowning in chaos and the stuff of non-quadratic life, I flail about and try and grab on to anything that will help me make sense of it all. Like a Johnny One Note, I’ll read through journal entries or old emails or look at photos ad nauseum in order to construct an elaborate mathematical proof that sounds something like:
Yes, this is reality, this happened, you were there, your understanding of the world is correct, the rug is not about to be pulled out from underneath you, A+
For a girl whose name means unpredictable, it’s a god damned miracle I can get my ass out of (my firm) bed every morning.
At the same time, the people whose life forces tunnel deep within me are those that disrupt the order of my universe and lawlessly disregard its makeshift rules. They metaphorically toss the magazines onto the floor, make me wear the same outfit four days in a row, confuse the fucking shit out of me and send me spinning quickly into the deep end of the pool. I try in vain to hold on to something — Chris, give me your hand, tell me it’s okay for me to be drowning — and usually it just makes it worse.
When I am trying not to choke on the water as I gasp for air, I am frozen in the moment and feeling completely alive and marvelling at the wonder of it all. I break through, I’m ascending some ever-rising land mass that lifts me above the banality of my Tron-world, my heart rate is 230 and I see a brilliant blinding slice of the infinite possibilities of the universe. It is dizzying and spellbinding and breathtaking but then I falter, I lose my footing, something generally mundane happens and my tenuous grasp on existing outside of the toothpicks gets lost.
I go spinning down down down and search for the black and white, knocking over and tearing down and ruining the rare and beautiful moment and insight and feeling that I was able to achieve in that moment of successfully seeking chaos.
I want to get back to that place, that rush, where I can confidently seek chaos, where I am brilliantly dazzlingly alive, where I don’t give a flying fuck if dwell and Budget Living are in the same damned pile. Where I am not trying to fast forward or foot on the gas to the bottom line, the QED, the last page of the book. Where I am not trying to squish and reduce everything into neat orderly black and white 01010100101001001s. Where I’m not trying to choke everything that is beautiful out of life in order to satisfy my own weakness and inability to deal with the unknown.
Here’s to confidently advancing in the direction of that place where parallel lines go out of their minds and intersect, where 2+2=5, where I slip into the deep end of the pool and I like it.
Yeah let go
Just get in
Oh it’s so amazing here.
