Sticky Thoughts

Taking down a wall
That will not go away;
Grows stronger still and rises high,
A little more each day.

Breaking down the wall
That just won’t go away;
Chip here and there, but though I try,
The wall seems set to stay.

It hides my mind, conceals my soul,
And yet how I long to show
The world who I really am;
Bask in recognition’s glow.

Let in the light,
Let people see,
Let someone know me true;
The wall blocks out,
The wall obscures,
Lets only figments through.

And yet here I am, behind the screen,
Wait for someone to see in,
Past the wall my self’s put up to keep
My heart’s hope from growing thin.

A paradox, it seems, but while
There’s no one able to know
My mind complete, still there’s a chance
To be found when out I go.

And thus the wall protects, and guards my soul,
Somehow keeps alive the flame,
For though there may be failure and defeat,
There’s always the wall to blame.

They say that wherever you go, there you are – “they” being, of course, that inexplicably all-knowing, strangely anonymous yet supposedly unerring font of collective human wisdom from which I would ordinarily try to take any advice with a grain of salt. After all, if they’re anonymous, how do you know whether they actually followed their own advice? Did they live according to their own commonsensical laws? (And did it help them?) If the Wikipedia has taught us anything, it’s to always cite your sources.

Nonetheless, and facetiousness aside, I can’t help but think that in some cases “they” are absolutely right – and this is one of them. No matter where in the world you find yourself, no matter what you bring with you or what you leave behind, there’s always one thing that remains the same, one thing that you can’t get rid of even if you wanted to.

Now that’s not to say that I think a person can’t evolve and grow, or that a new place is little more than a change of scenery. (Certain locales are obviously more conducive to certain lifestyles or habits, for example, or they offer you opportunities – or challenges? – that other places can’t.) I also don’t mean to suggest – even implicitly – that I necessarily want to leave myself behind or get rid of my past …though I guess you could argue that any move, regardless of its stated purpose, involves some form of “escape” from your prior self, whether consciously intentional or not.

In any event, my point is, as I said, not that you can’t change yourself nor that your surroundings don’t matter. It is, rather, that just picking up and shuffling yourself away to a different spot on the globe and expecting that that will change everything all on its own… well, it is, to put it politely, nonsense. Actually, it’s utterly ridiculous. It’s completely insane! And what’s more, it’s also…

…it’s also completely understandable.

Heck, I’ve been doing this for years, moving from place to place with that exact expectation in mind, and apparently am only just now fully realizing the inescapable truth of the little aphorism that started this blog post.

Again, I don’t mean to suggest – especially not to those few of my (also very few) regular readers who know my situation – that this is entirely personal or that it’s borne out of present dissatisfaction: I am, on the whole, happy with my move and am optimistic – if sometimes a bit cautiously – about my future possibilities. It’s just that, with this move in particular, I’m finally accepting that, though location does matter, ultimately it matters far less than what you bring with you.

It’s not the material things, of course, but instead the things that only you yourself can sense: the mental lens through which you view the world, the memories that inevitably color the way you perceive (and remember) your new experiences… even the hopes and dreams that can irresistibly persist even through changing circumstances.

It’s all these things, and more, wrapped up tightly in a relatively small, fairly fragile skull that is – future bio-technological advances notwithstanding – our only truly persistent home throughout life.

And so it is like they say: wherever you go, there you are. Because wherever you are, wherever it is in the world that you choose to rest your head, the universe ultimately only makes one guarantee, only offers us that one X-mark of certainty in our otherwise uncertain journeys.

“You are here.”

I know this will wind up being a very short blog post (especially for me), but then, there’s a lot going on: a move is a big thing, after all. But I’m no longer scared. I’m excited.

Sure, there are a lot of uncertainties, but I’ll try to just take them as they come.

And above all, I’ll do my best to remain – at the center of all the madness, and no matter what happens – the calm at the eye of the storm.

I’m scared.

What I should be is asleep, but it seems my fears are getting the better of me, and perhaps what I need most right now is to express those fears, to use someone – or something – as a sounding board, to hear the echoes of my thoughts in the hopes that maybe I’ll calm down a bit and feel less anxious about… well, about everything, really.

Because I, as I said, am scared. You wouldn’t necessarily know it by looking at me; it’s a fairly quiet version of the emotion, somehow, not exactly the kind that has you visibly gripping the edges of your seat while watching a scary movie. It’s more pervasive, subtle, almost subconscious but palpable nonetheless. It’s the kind of feeling that invades the mind and makes itself at home, entwining itself with your thoughts and becoming a part of your mental process – assuming you let it stick around long enough to get a proper hold. I’d rather it didn’t, but how to make it let go? And how long has it already been there without me knowing?

That’s part of the problem: I’m not sure I recognised my fears until recently, or at the very least not enough to know them as such. But fears they are. And I’m scared.

I’m scared of not finishing the things I start, and scared of not getting ahead. I’m scared of staying always in one place, and I’m scared of not staying in one place, afraid that in thinking I’m moving forward, I’m actually just changing the scenery but not the script. I’m scared of repeating past mistakes, albeit in different surroundings and with different actors, and I’m scared of remaining stuck in old patterns, of not changing myself and my life for the better.

I’m scared too that I somehow left the better path behind me, took the wrong fork in the road – and I’m really scared, one might even say petrified, that “the better path” might be on some other road entirely. I’m scared that the best choices I could make are ones I don’t even see, either because I can’t imagine them as actual possibilities or because the circumstances of my life until this point have steadily erased any trail I might now find myself wanting to explore.

And what if it’s just my fears keeping me from exploring those trails, however faint they might be? Am I really going on my own unique journey or am I just following along where countless others have already tread out of some vague, inescapable desire to conform? For all my independence, for all my quirks and self-avowed individuality, am I still somehow afraid to step too far away from the expected, from the norm? Am I afraid to go too far afield in case what I find out there doesn’t measure up, in case I don’t measure up? If that’s true, I’m scared that I might not realise it until it’s too late, until a combination of factors – like age, prior choices, and the like – have conspired to completely eliminate any means I might have had of doing something about it, of changing direction.

Come to think of it, do I even know for certain what direction I’m going in now? Does anyone? I’ve always had many goals and many dreams, but sometimes – especially lately – that seems less like an asset and more like a liability, particularly when the pursuit of one feels like the abandonment of another. With a great big mental sigh, I suppose I have to admit that that’s likely an unavoidable part of life for everyone, that to “be something,” you have to actually make a choice and thereby give up on being something else… but what if I can’t decide? I’m scared of my uncertainty, scared that my inability to confidently pinpoint my passions, or at least a narrow range thereof, might be preventing me from focusing enough to actually accomplish something worthwhile with my life.

I guess, when it comes down to it, my biggest fear is failing to successfully shape the me of today into the me of tomorrow, all as a consequence of not fully knowing what I want tomorrow to look like – or how to get there even if I did. Should I just keep to the familiar, well-worn path, stay on the course that my life has already established? Or do I go off and cut a new track and hope to find my bearings along the way?

I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that yet, but I’ll let you know once I figure it out.

The fire dies,
The spark has gone,
The embers lose their glow;

The soul gives in,
The mind gives up,
The heart begins to slow.

But Death is not
The culprit, no,
It’s hope that’s burned away

And with its loss
The self endures
The same kind of decay.

The light will fade,
The warmth will cease;
One difference, though, it’s true,

That with the glint
Of future love
The flame might burn anew.

Perhaps the spark
Is always there,
Still ready to ignite

The soul with fire
Of hope once more,
To burn away the night.

Strange, the wind
Blows fast and
Strong, lifting the
Sand from far-off
Lands and carrying
It away to
Distant, lonely shores.

Strange, the waves
Roll quick and
Rough, stealing the
Sand from far-off
Lands and taking
It away to
Distant, lonely shores.

Strange, the water
And the air,
Strange, the flow
Across the world;
Strange, the sea
And strange, the
Sky, their hold
Upon the world.

What a funny thing it is, that a blog can feel neglected.

Or rather, that the blogger feels neglectful, I should say, since of course a blog can’t feel anything, so far as we know. (Ghost in the machine? An A.I. with an online journal? … What a different book William Gibson’s Neuromancer would have been if Wintermute had been blogging his -  or its – way through cyberspace. But I digress…)

What’s the big deal, after all? It’s not like there’s a rule saying you have to write so-and-so many blog posts per month. … Well, unless you’re doing a company blog of some kind and your job depends on how prolific you are with your postings. But for the rest of us, what’s it matter if a few weeks go by without an update? Or even a few months? (Or, for the truly slack, a few years?)

And yet, for me at least, it does matter. It feels somehow “wrong” to have a blog and not use it, to not make sure it stays “fresh” with new posts, whatever their content.

But why? FSM knows I don’t (yet) have that many regular readers, at least going by my (scarcity of) comments. Keeping a blog active is probably a good way to get more readers, of course, but is there another reason?

Is a more active blog more deserving of its existence? Do frequent postings somehow justify its presence in the blogosphere? I suppose you could say that a blog that’s not updated ceases to be a blog, in the strictest definition of the word. On the other hand, I’m sure there are plenty of blogs that – for a variety of valid reasons – no longer get new content (outlived their original purpose?) but that still have interesting & worthwhile posts archived from way back when. Still, I think there’s a difference between a blog that’s been permanently retired and one that just gets unintentionally forgotten; does the blog collecting dust in the proverbial corner not have just as much right to its little virtual life as any other?

If so, then why the guilt? It’s sort of similar to the situation you can find yourself in with friends you haven’t talked to in ages: sure, you feel bad, but as long as you do eventually call (or e-mail, or text, or whatever) and reconnect, isn’t it “all good”? Naturally, a blog is not quite the same as a living, breathing person (though see my comment about Neuromancer above) – and your blog can’t really be the one to initiate contact with you, unlike your longlost friends – but still, it’s similar.

Maybe what it’s really about is that, in posting infrequently, you feel you’re not helping your blog reach its full potential. … Actually, now that I think about it, the same might be said about infrequent contact between friends and the squandered potential of those friendships.

But that’s life, I guess, both for blogs and friendships. You do what you can and try to get on with it, dusting off that neglected thing in the corner and polishing it up even when you’re afraid that – after all this time – there might not be any shine left underneath.

Our Blogging, which art in WordPress,
Hallowed be its name;
Our writing done, the comments come,
And our spam queues please stay barren.
Then give us, this day, our daily blogroll,
And forgive us our absences,
As we forgive those who forget
To read us.
And lead us not into stagnation,
But deliver us from babble.
For ours is the wisdom, and the candor,
And the really great stories,
Forever and ever.
Amen.

Funny thing about the Internet: it’s often a double-edged sword, at least when it comes to using it to feel “connected” to the world at large. It can bring you closer to people and allow you to feel like part of a community, or it can cut you down and make you feel like you’re the proverbial wallflower, unseen and unheard by the chattering crowd.

Of course, it’s all in how you wield it, whether you take advantage of the opportunities it offers to express yourself or whether you let yourself remain the quiet observer. From blogs and photo sites like Flickr to online forums and social networking sites like Facebook, it’s easy to wander, looking at what other people are doing and saying without actually making your presence known.

It can be fun, true, and interesting, even inspiring, to use the Internet as a window into other people’s lives, but at some point that window feels too much like it’s made of one-way glass. It didn’t use to be that noticeable, back in the day when there was a tad less emphasis on the social aspects of the ‘Net, before people were putting their lives online en masse. Now, though, when it seems everyone has *some* aspect of themself willingly posted for all to see, not following suit can be a rather lonely prospect.

A friend of mine recently e-mailed me a link to the White House’s newly updated Civil Rights page and pointed out the addition of a section on issues important to the LGBT community. I read through it, and I have to say, I’m honestly very impressed. And actually, not a little teary-eyed as well.

Now, I know that these are really just words, and that especially in politics words don’t usually mean a thing until something actually gets done, but still… the sheer existence of this section, on a page called “Civil Rights,” on the website of the White House! The website that, to quote a line from one of the first blog posts under its new leadership, will “serve as a place for the President and his administration to connect with the rest of the nation and the world.” The official electronic mouthpiece, in other words. The one-stop resource for all things related to the new presidential administration, its views, policies, and current plans.

And a resource that’s being used, at least in part, to talk about support for things like repealing the military’’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy… and support for repealing the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” and expanding the rights given to same-sex couples to include all of the more than 1,100 federal benefits as well… and even support for expanding adoption rights, in language that can’t get much plainer or more direct: “[President Obama] thinks that a child will benefit from a healthy and loving home, whether the parents are gay or not.”

… Wow. Just… wow. Talk about a turn-around from the previous administration, eh? Again, it may not be “real” in the political sense until the legislation’s drafted and things get changed and repealed and enacted in the proper way – and I’m sure that, even for Obama himself, there are plenty of hoops to jump through – but it’s still amazing, not to mention supremely uplifting, to know – hard as it may be to believe -  that on the actual website of the President of the United States, there is FINALLY direct, unequivocal support for LGBT people and their rights in words that don’t reek of two-faced, patronizing hypocrisy.

Change has come, indeed.