I sit before you now, a tangled mess of head and heart. Knots and weaves of both my own design and of forces so far beyond my control, one might think them other worldly. I was told, from both outside and inside my own skull, that I must attempt to unravel some of that here. You’d think the knots of my own making would be the easiest, being that I am the designer, but I’m thinking it may be much to the contrary.

I mean, who can even remember how we got into this mess in the first place?

Another week of pretending that I’ve got my act enough together to make some coherent semblance of thought appear on the page. Bold enough to even think something profound may emerge. Sometimes, even fooling myself, if no one else. I used to be a decent actor, after all. Maybe I’ve forgotten that I always place myself on stage, even after curtains were drawn long ago.

Doesn’t matter though. Onward, anyway, even into all the nothingness that might reside ahead.

     I’ve been thinking of constrictions. Of limits placed upon us, by ourselves, by others and by the utterly indifferent universe we had no choice but to be born into. I think of time, our greatest shackle of all, and of timing within that construct. And of all the moments I may have gotten the timing right, inescapable is the idea that so much of it I have gotten wrong. And no amount of wishing or willpower can undo certain acts, unsay certain things, or wring out a thought or feeling once it has taken root in what for lack of a better term, we’ll call a soul. So easily can I fall into the mind of what isn’t, or what will never be, again or at all to begin with. I don’t imagine that I am the only one, though I’m sure there are those that are spared of such thoughts. This world is in no deficit of idiots, after all.

     That is the vague fight we all have though, isn’t it? The desire to fight against the constraints that hold our lives bound to places, people, to ideas and emotions. Ever seeking a liberty from the want that rifles through every aspect of our beings, leaving no place for each first-person perspective to hide. Never being able to think myself out of my own way, so very often. Maybe you do that, too.

     Do I never learn from these lessons taught with such aggressive difficulty? So stubborn, am I, that a life gets wasted in inaction guised as stupefying wonder?

     I suppose I’m being a bit harsh. After all, had I not overcome a certain stubbornness within the past few days, I might not have been able to sit and click away at heavy thoughts with trivial ambition, as I attempt to this evening. At least I know I can let go of my pride enough to recognize a medical emergency when I see one, even if I remain so unbudging in pride and stubbornness in almost every other aspect of life.

     But with the more immediate peril now faded away, again I am found with the old inexplicable ache that has followed me through all my days. My constant companion. And the dichotomy between ambition and obsession, and which end all or any of my aims actually end up on. As if this life were so cut and dry. Enough has been seen to know that nothing is so black and white. That a life lived honest and earnest, must always admit the grey areas that occur in a fluctuating perpetuity. And never mind those duller shades, it is all the color of existence that happens between the polarity of that spectrum. Black and white are for obituaries, and even then, I have my doubts.

     I wonder what it is about tragedy that I find so irresistibly beautiful. It’s not an enjoyment of it, certainly not. The pain I have felt in this life, and continue to feel, can be disheartening to say the very least, if not entirely devastating. But I also acknowledge that in those moments of pain, that a simple understanding of the human aesthetic becomes so unadulterated and clear. Even if still incomprehensible. Or especially so.

     After all, there is nothing like a broken heart to make the simple beauties of life shine so exhaustingly bright. No sight like a sunset through eyes engulfed with tears. Or the deafening silence of empty streets after every conceivable attempt has been made, and all failed anyway. Or how wonderfully addictive, even if toxic, a memory can become when the truth of its passing is so obviously apparent and accepted. How laughter once gone can drown out all that still remains. Or how a set of eyes can seem to wish you’d say something, and in silence you choose to remain, thinking of some great benevolence you continue to serve in denial of oneself.

     Yet, I wonder whether it is away that I run, or towards something? Or not even moving at all. The illusion of motion roused by all the world passing me by, while in static placement I remain.

     Not fool enough to believe in divine purpose, but uncertain whether I possess the strength or agency to make some further way of my own. Is this as far as my story goes? The rest of my many days just more of the same?

Hindsight would have me believe that I have never previously been so filled with doubt as I have been of late. But I know that only appears as truth through the rampant waves of my own occasional, if not willing, ignorance.

For there are still chances to take, even if unbelievably stupid. There is still hope, even if totally illogical. There is still life, even with all this doom and death. There is still love, even if never the kind that you’d wanted. There is still love, even when loved ones are lost. In that latter case, it is only the love that remains after everything mortal goes about its mortal ways, down the coil and into oblivion.

And I must believe such follies, lest my point and purpose here be totally in vain. I believe that words can arise from my singular sentience and mean something far beyond the conception with which they were created. The idea that stories and songs and such, my own and others, live far past what any human being could expect from a biological lifetime. I know this because I have some of them. Crystalized moments of immortality when I think of what has been left behind by those now gone, and getting more and more gone with each passing day. The acceptance of cold fact and the refusal to admit that is all there is. I don’t know that souls are immortal, in fact I doubt it very much, but I think music gets pretty close to those types of forevers. That the poetry of words in languages living and dead goes far beyond the initial crafter of phrases. That hope can last long past the expiration of its possibility, and within that, those tragic beauties of life emerge in force.

For without the pain, how could we ever truly know how good something was? Without the yearning for more, specific or vague, what else motivates us besides the necessities of survival, which most modern humans actively acknowledge is not enough for a life to feel anywhere close to fully lived.

Honestly, I cannot tell if any of the knots have been untied, or if I’ve only made myself a mess of new ones. But someone said to me today, and it went like this- if it all gets more tangled and you end up tying more knots, they maybe you’ve only made something new. A bracelet, or something visually compelling. Or a hammock, to rest just enough to keep getting onward. Or a net, to capture some elusive force otherwise unwieldy, and yet drenched in desire. Or a longer rope, to pull yourself up by. Or to lower further down, and see just how far this existence business might go.

But whatever I’ve weaved for myself here, I’ll be putting it to use. Whatever use I can find for it, even it doesn’t occur to me now. Even if it only can temporarily tether hope for another day, until a better way gets figured out. Until the wants become reality. Or at least make for better songs and stories.