intellectual properties

the monkeybot solution

i’ve been in a fog
like the headlands and the coast
shivering from the impact of the world
i’ve spent days and nights curled up
head tucked under
pulled inside
waiting for the sun

but still there’s a slow fire burning underneath
fueling my dreams
waiting for the time to come
a believer in synchronicity
the alignment of time and place
and those forces you cannot push
or can you?
more and more manifestation seems to be real
and the only solution.
there is not enough time to wait.

what then, of these dreams
do i really want to manifest
what of the fantasy would bring beauty in real life
and not a monster?

as i’m ponding these things, my friend GhostOrchid writes, so succinctly and with much truth, guidelines to remember:

1. There’s always candy. Being an adult means not taking the candy like the impulsive five-year old you want to remain.

2. We want what we can’t have. We also want the things that push us out of our comfort zones while simultaneously never really wanting to leave our comfort zones. This causes us much discomfort and confusion.

This hits the nail on the head (superfuckinghard, too) about the source of my current persisting internal ennui/melodrama. There are so many shiny things glimmering on the peripherals of my life – so many options, so many choices, some of them push farther than others, in various different ways. how much outside my comfort zone(s) am i really willing to go? or is it just that the grass is always greener, and daydreaming of these escapades is actually all i really want, when in reality i know i don’t really want to go there…or do i?

this ongoing struggle between logic/reason and emotional meanderings…..

6. While you can break attraction/love down to a set of XYZ things that you like about someone, or things that fit neatly into your perfectly crafted world, love/attraction is not reasonable nor rational. You can’t live in a monkey’s world with the mind of a robot. You can’t live in a robot world with the mind of a monkey either, apparently.

i find myself trying to rationalize emotions/desires so often – somewhere in the back of my mind there is a voice that tells me the “grownup” thing to do is to make sure the choices i make are “grounded in reality” and not fantasy, e.g. that they are logical moves, not emotional ones, but i am a hyperemotional human, and so am then often torn between following the heart v. following the mind, which seem to diverge harshly; finding a path that lets you follow both…..seems impossible. i know it’s out there though, and maybe that’s what i should be focusing on: the intersection, aka the monkeybot solution.

is this where human adulthood begins – finding the balance between our natural childlike urges and logical reasoning? finding the place where those intersect, with compassion and respect for others? and why am i just now, at almost 32, finding this to be so important?

i think what’s hard for me more than anything is that many people i know who are also finding themselves pondering these things are coming at this from the other end of the monkeybot spectrum: they spent their 20s/youth doing a lot of foolish things, romantically, socially, professionally, jumping from lover to lover, job to job, place to place, following their empassioned whims, spending their youth in the ways we should, like monkeys. i however, spent my 20s in the same job, in the same city, with the same lover. outside of that initial spree of graduating from college and moving to CA without a job and with a very new boyfriend in 1998, i have made most of my choices rationally, based on maintaining security. and now i sit here on a precipice, wondering if i’ve lost that chance, if i’m now too reasoned to behave such a way without so much logic weighing down each moment. one of my friends thinks that middle age is going to hit this group particularly hard, when they look back and see all the years spent in intoxicated hedonistic binges, aka “wasted youth”. however, from where i’m standing, it’s the opposite: i look back at all the years i’ve spent not doing those things, and wonder why and what chances i might have lost.

Filed in autobiographical, friends, personal favorites | Tagged with anxiety, ennui | Comments (5)