It's funny how you answer yourself when you least intend to. The other day, you'll remember I was writing about cheating. Why we seek out new things, new people, and it was long gone from my mind. Just now, I was making lunch, and thinking about something entirely different.
And it came to me.
So fucking simple. We say it's the thrill of the chase. Maybe. Right now, I'm thinking we want to fall (in love or lust, as you will) with new people for the same reason our heart craves new adventures, for the same reason we, artists, choose to explore new avenues of self-expression. It's only partly the novelty of the thing. It's the dance in the face of death that is this insane ability to fall in love with a new thing, a new art, and a new person.
It's the brief moments of first falling for something or someone where you think (and more importantly, feel) like you're where it's at. Your life, your boring, mundane, routine life is where it's fucking at. Isn't that elating as fuck?! It's that dance before death, the subtle wiggle of hips that accompanies inamoration that convinces you you're immortal. Because what you love, and how you love it, this fresh, new, wonderful feeling can transcend time. Your love of something beautiful, in its fierce authenticity, needs not die when you do expire.
And you fall in love. It's paramount to fall in love, heedless, with complete abandon. Not for the person themselves, not for the object of your love, but for the sensation. The feeling it leaves you with of being able to take on anything, even death.
I'm falling in love.
With things. With people, too, I'm constantly falling in love with people, and in that, as well, I'm playing around with temperance. There is so much nuance in love, to love, particularly if you steer it away from the immediate, obvious carnal pleasures.
You can love people, new people, in such a myriad of ways, and if you can steer between all the anxiety and lust and conflicting, terrible thoughts that make up 80% of the human spirit, it can fill you up, that love, in a way nothing else can.
I'm also falling in love with things. With practices. With art. I've always been in love with art, to be fair. I've always been in love with words. For me, writing is as natural as breathing. It's no cutesy poetic affectation. It is easy. Worryingly so, perhaps, and I worry I've grown a bit tired. By my estimates, by year's end, I would've written more than 600k words this year. Probably a lot more, but math was never one of those things I knew to fall in love with, you know? :)
Maybe 700k. I 'm just estimating, because there's far too much to go back through it all. And I've loved it all. And I've grown tired, so of course, I thought I'd write about that, too.
As in love, you grow tired with the things, the practices you love, the art that fills your spirit. Tired and a little, a little lacklustre. Wishing for an adventure. To try something new. Be kissed in a way you never thought kissing was done before, I don't know. Something it is you're missing.
And just as you're there, trudging on, feeling your little tired heart in your tired chest, something strikes out of nowhere. An idea. A thought. An artist who "does art" in a way that sends a tingle of excitement into your toes. And it's amazing, it's crackling, it's love at first fucking sight.
and you desperately want to pursue it. to track down its source. to let it embrace you for a little while, as it sees you, as you stand now. New. Unburdened by your many words, and your till-now past.
You want to be seen for the first time. You want ideas that excited and scare and challenge you, and make you think you're not all that. You're not worthy. That maybe you can't.
That's right. You want someone to make you feel you can't, just so you can spit in their eye, and say, yeah, I fucking can.
Falling in love with a new thing, finding a new way to express yourself is... terrifying. Writing this makes my guts churn, but it's familiar, writing, so I can talk about the fear openly. Finding that is also exhilarating.
It's Christmas morning. Even on shitty, rainy mornings like this one, here.
It's the best day in the world. 'Cause it's filled with promise. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. What you could, and what you won't. And you're promised to nothing. No one, no audience in the dark expecting great things, just you, and your soul, and your story you kinda wanna say.
So, clear your throat. We're about to begin.
As I say, it's a realm of a lot of uncertainty and questioning, so there's not too much, naught too clear to be said about it, but I'm excited. And I wanted to share.
I am...now...here...happy.
There will, in time, be more to say, hopefully. For now, I'm focusing on Book 2 of my trilogy, which is coming out December 4th. Lotta words to go yet, before I sleep. :)
See ya around. Thank you for stopping by on this rainy Saturday afternoon (is it? Where you are?)
This kinda fades with age, or at least it has with me. What I care about now is finding someone I love, but also who I feel both excited by, yet comfortable with (luckily I have found this woman). But that thought that there might be 'something better' that needs seeking out, is long gone. And quite honestly, I am much happier with this mentality.
Conversely, I completely understand that feeling of falling in love with multiple activities - scuba diving, wilderness exploring, wild swimming, travel, and writing - are all things that I love in my life and I know it would be pretty terrible without them. In fact, I credit travel combined with scuba diving and reigniting my creative outlet through writing with saving my life. Before I went on a backpacking trip that was the catalyst for me to learn to scuba dive and start writing again, I was on a rapid decent into more and more severe self destructive depression.
Turned out for me, that person saying I couldn't DO was me, or rather the personification of my depression. Always telling me everything that happened to me (or the way I felt) was someone else fault. But getting out of my comfort zone solo travelling for the first time meant I had no where to hide and no one else I could blame... the irony being that those thoughts (that depressed self) lost all power as they had nothing to feed upon.
I agree with your sentiment... feel the fear and spit in the eye (maybe metaphorically😉) of anyone who says 'you Can't' and tell them 'I fucking can.'
Good luck with the 2nd book you're writing @honeydue 👍
I've always loved love. The whole concept of love. The fact that it's beautiful and beyond sublime when we look beyond the other carnal and banal part that most people focus on. I'm learning to love more these days. Maybe it's a person, I'm not sure. But I think I'm beginning to open up to the wondrous possibilities that love brings.