Some thing(s) stir in my mind repeatedly, but my mind is no melting pot. It’s not like these thoughts all come together and meld themselves into one congruent stew of a brewing mind. No. It’s as if you’d be making a beef stew with ingredients that obviously don’t belong but will be eaten just for the sake of it… asparagus, neckbones, corn … things that stick out. That’s how these things occur in my mind and reoccur and reappear here with loosely tied resolutions. By loosely tied resolutions I mean often I try to sum up these thoughts with quotes. I have a quote for everything, and if I don’t, I’ll find one. They do the trick here, but so often I look back and realize that some quotes no longer leave me with the feeling that I’ve had an epiphany just from reading them. A few of these I wonder why I even wrote them down, because now I re-read them and think, that’s not true; I disagree. Still I love quotes. I don’t normally commit any to memory because I’m incapable of quoting them accurately for the most part … still they fit in the puzzle pieces that are these entries and so I shall plug a few more here tonight in my everlasting quest for clarity in the key of D.
I was reading Time Magazine and came across a Salman Rushdie interview. At some point he comments about his books and how they are “about the intersection of private lives and public affairs,” which I found to be nicely put. I know what he writes about, but I can’t say I’ve ever read any of his books – he was in Bridget Jones’s Diary though. Anyway, he went on to say something that struck me and thus went straight into my nothing book:
These books of his “ask, in a way, time-honored novelistic questions of: To what extent are we the masters of our fate? To what extent do we make our lives, and to what extent are our lives made for us by forces beyond our control?”
These aren’t new questions by any means, but for me, in my current state of mind, they are questions of growing importance, and I felt immediately as if I had work to do on myself.
Surprisingly, a quote instantly came to mind – completely and accurately remembered: “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love,” by Johann Goethe.
Humph, I immediately sighed. I must be a damn amoeba. I feel neither shaped nor fashioned in any sort of way. That made me chuckle and then I thought about those false feet they had … pseudopods. (I honestly think my brain could be a serious contender for most volumes of absolutely random, useless information. Yes I know I just used this so-called useless info, so I’ll say that I am grateful that this page generates usage, but still, I’m a contender.) I wondered if I was making any false steps with these feet. This led me to ask myself even more questions, some minor (Were I really an amoeba, which algae would be my favorite to eat?) and others were major (The only way I move is to stretch out some pseudopods, but where am I headed and why?).
Essentially I told myself, it’s time to re-evaluate, Danita. Much has changed over the course of this year and I think I’ve been keeping myself busy so as to not really think about it. Perhaps there’s been too much going with the flow, so I ask myself more questions.
(Yes, Miss Rachel, on at least one level you are right, I’m in de-nile. A-mazon, huh?)
Am I growing? “We find comfort among those who agree with us – growth among those who don’t.” I’ll admit, I love me some comfort and had been comfortable for quite some time, but lately I feel anything but, and I’m not entirely convinced just yet that this is a good thing. I’m led to think that in light of that quote, obviously that just means that I’m growing, but because I’ve spent so much time just livin’ and chillin’, I really don’t know what I’m doing. (This is most obviously illustrated by the rambling and bumbling nature of this post, but anyway…)
Martha Washington said, “The greatest part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not our circumstances.”
This I think is a crucial part to how I’m functioning, because I wrestle with that quote like I’m pondering whether the chicken or the egg came first. Are my dispositions not a direct result of my circumstances? Am I reacting when I should be more proactive? (More chuckles as I recall Alicia Keys’s cornball statement on that Proactiv infomercial.) Do I need to be more proactive? For what reason?
I think (sigh) I am waiting for Godot.
Most of the time I hear my dad’s voice in the back of my head in an ever-flowing stream of “advisories” to help me live my life:
1. “Never hurry, never worry,” I say to myself as I propel myself to work, again as things come up at work and once more when I fight any feelings of guilt as I leave work thinking there’s always something else to be done. However, that last one is usually followed closely by #4, but that depends on the day of the week (you know how I feel about Tuesdays), the hour that I’m actually leaving and whatever happened during the day.
2. “Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut, and you’ll learn something” I hear whenever I see someone suspicious, and I do (in spite of myself) in brainstorms.
3. “Woochie, if you can’t think of something smart to do, think of something stupid and do the exact opposite,” I hear whenever panicked in situations of the social variety, always with mixed reflections later on.
4. “Three pigs in a bucket and a bad mutha fuckit,” I mutter, seethe and exhale at an increasing rate that just flat out alarms me. I am slowly turning into both of my parents – a two-steppin’, head-shakin’, finger-snappin’ thinker internalizing everything slowly and deliberately like a pack rat building a mansion out of memories.
The Dilemma. It’s in my nothing book. I saw it in someone else’s and thought, I need that. I realize now that I wrote it down thinking I had checked off the majority of them, and I think I have, but again, where has that gotten me? Nevertheless, I include it here, along with a running commentary of sorts in my favorite new device – parentheses.
To laugh is to risk appearing a fool. (Oh my. Check.) To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. (Check. I’ve done it in public TWICE when Mufasa died so I’m good there. That song, That’s What Friends Are For, gets me everytime. And nowadays, anything I see that reminds me of something that my mom likes makes me ache.) To reach out for another is to risk involvement. (Ouch. See a scratched out check mark on that one.) To expose feelings is to risk rejection. (Ouf. There is a dot hinting at a check mark that cannot be completed at this time.) To place your dreams before the crowd is to risk ridicule. (True. I star this one as I’m working on this right now. You’re reading it in a sense, actually.) To love is to risk not being loved in return. () To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure. (Gulp and add a heavily bolded check, circa February 2005 there, along with a pat on the back.)
The quote goes on to say: But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love. Chained by his certitudes he is a slave. He has forfeited his freedom. Only a person who takes risks is free.
Chained by his certitudes he is a slave. I love the rhythm of this sentence as I say it aloud. It carries an authority that strike me. And then there are chuckles. I am a house slave. I’ve said this several times to several people before in completely different contexts, but it applies here I think. Were I to try to answer Rushdie’s questions for myself honestly, I’d be forced to say that firstly, I am not (yet) master of my fate, although I do hope and believe that that is possible. I’m also admitting that my life is being made, I am on autopilot, and there are times when happiness is feigned, misery is seduced by nervous laughter and feelings are lost in a simmering stew that needs sifting.
By the way, the name amoeba comes from the Greek word amoibe, which means change, which maybe means that I am growing after all.