Making lists again. Microplots towards some imperceptible future. I know it unseeable, this future. I’ve seen it, through the miraculous horrors of hindsight. You can never really tell what’s coming next. At least not by very far.

But there they are, all bullet pointed and led by dashes. These schemes I continually hatch, minute by day, by week, by lifetime. Though the latter set usually resides in the cavernous recesses of my heart and mind. But mundane tasks to grandiose propositions- they all get written out in sticky-notes and longer lined pages. Most never to be completed, only replaced. A few things from former lists no longer appearing, be it by conquest of the task or some other diversion. And the intentions of future lists not even at the point of mental conception yet.

Stay tuned for more exercises in futility.

Yet, for all this thinking myself something more advanced than my ancestors, I still spent much of the day mindlessly moving rocks. Not even metaphorically. I mean quite actually picking up rocks residing in one area and relocating them to another. As though the last three hundred thousand years of evolution were all for naught. Still simply operating on the find rock, pick up rock, move rock, find more rock method. Menial in meaning and yet a partially fulfilling peace gets harbored each time. Though certainly not in perpetuity.

I suppose I’m still distracting myself from a seemingly unescapable grief. And though it has subsided, it is still massive. And every few thoughts through time, a specific sadness arises again. If thoughts are even able to be confined by a thing as simple as time.

Still, that cannot be the only topic of engagement left in these. After all, there is more to life than what is lost, right? Right?

There isn’t really time to be idle. There hasn’t been, even if I have been idling about on a regularly occurring manner. For while I feel unable to determine the next step forward, the whole world is still going and growing and changing around me. Interconnected and instantaneous, and yet so void of what truly matters in the communication habits of this species. Despite any adoption and adaptations that might have been had and are yet still to occur, we are not a digital species. The interfaces for our minds are not universal. They are circumstantial and personal and prone to all the chaos that rides along. Meaningful connections made and unmade, over and over again.  

And within all these connections with other individuals and conglomerations, we still sit inside our lonely skulls. Monitoring output, when possible, and filtering all the input through id and ego shaped and styled lenses. Again, when possible. But all of it, as far as we can tell, is but a guessing game we play through the stand of our own perspective. They can be massively educated guesses, supported by claims of first persons on the outside. But as no one else ever really gets to see exactly the inside of your mind, neither are you able to penetrate fully what lies behind the eyes and idea machines of others. Even if you were to be specifically told, that still requires the prerequisite of trust, which isn’t an automatic occurrence, and a damn hard renewal when broken.

That is the struggle, though, isn’t it? The difficulty in making a reality between the self and all the other not your particular selves. The impossible insight to accurately see beyond the surfaces projected to the secrets of the kind similar to those that you know you keep for others. All those failed readings and misconceptions. All the tales told and sold both inside and outward.  

Like when you cannot see that a see you later was actually a final goodbye.

But, we all struggle with reality, from time to time. Which is a funny enough idea, considering reality is the only thing most of us have truly ever known.

The struggle varies, but mostly, it would seem to me, between the unbelievability of that which is real, and the committed belief to that which is unreal.

And who is to say who is ever right in these oppositions? You could ask somebody else, see what they say. But even if you believe them, it might turn out that both of you are wrong in some newly formed confederation of fools.

I guess abstract seems to be my plaything this evening, at least for a little while longer. There weren’t a lot of notes to work with before sitting down. Suppose my mind is a bit void, though, it never really is. But as far as what I deem fit to go on about here, ideas seem to be falling short. Best not to force it. Blood from stones, and whatnot.

Might be that I’ll get back on that typewriter later. Haven’t touched the thing since I wrote a letter to a dead guy. Should climb back upon those keys again. Get some unadulterated flow into the mental chaos, being as most of what I write over there is protected by the secrecy of never letting anyone else see them. See what I mean about those limits on perceiving perspective? Even this ramble has a mask, albeit an honest one.

I’ll wrap up on an idea that’s been floating about the abyss of my thoughts this week. Full disclosure, it is a line that your humble narrator strung together on a whim in midst conversation with two old friends as we sat about late-night at work, talking about all the things men in our employ often do. It stuck out because after it was said in passing, but was repeated back to me by both of the other individuals. Seems it struck a chord with them as well.

You cannot desire what is, only what isn’t.

Given that desire is a relatively blanket term, it is vague enough to be pretty universally applicable.

But the very idea of desire means the ache or yearning for what is not held currently within mind and/or body. And it isn’t to suggest that there isn’t a peace that can be sought within what is. There most certainly is. But desire wouldn’t be applied. It could be contentment or acceptance or reliance on the state of personal and current affairs.

But desire is something else. That want for the ungraspable, or the intangible. The drive for acquisition in all the forms such wants might take. Often preconceived to mean ambitions along the lines of romance or success, that is not why it has hovered so heavily in my thoughts. Not that the other two are absent, it is just that something else pulls at the tendrils of my existence more aggressively.

I think of the desire for the impossible. To reclaim losses that are permanent. For futures on paths closed, permanently, even if only recently. There is a want for things that cannot be had. Things that are lost. People that are gone.

I’m not claiming I know what to do with such desires. I most certainly do not. Just acknowledging that they are there. With nowhere else to go at the moment, it would seem. Something that might simmer over the embers of eternity. Or my personal eternity. Something I am sure, someday, will run its final course. But not this evening. And not any time soon.