Reptile brain

I sat on the front steps, watching a lizard run through the links of the fence between my yard and next door's. I have seen him under the steps, the same lizard, or another like him. He always runs away.

I have hours to sit and think, if I want to sit and think, but it isn't healthy. Sooner or later, I tire of myself, of the incessant voice of a monkey who tells me I deserve loneliness, deserve spite, deserve unhappiness. I don't have anyone who wants me to feel good about myself, only small insistent reminders of what is wrong with me.

It's not that I don't think it's worth trying.

***

The moon is astonishing, full and clear. I stop for a moment because it strikes me how bright it is. I don't know what to make of it: we live under a sun so bright that even a distant reflection gives enough light to see by, albeit our vision is blurry.

And someone says somewhere that this could all be a dream, because it's like Zhuangzi said, and when you are dreaming you do not know you are living. But I always know I am not living when I am dreaming. I ask around and people have dreams that seem real, but mine are like disjointed, vague movies. They do not often seem to have any point, yet they are nearly always oriented at a goal.

I dream of success though and I am almost never made unhappy by a dream. Sometimes I have night terrors but they are formless and incoherent, not something you could describe. I know that this is when I have sunk below the part of me that creates pictures, to the part that knows nothing but to react, like a lizard on a sunny day.

That part is terrified but does not know how to live. That part cries out like a baby that wants to be held. Sometimes I hear a child in a shopping centre, screaming at a mother that won't indulge it. I understand babies better than I understand adults, because mostly all I want is for someone to hold me and make me feel as though there is nothing beyond the moment. I wish I could stop trusting it but it is more me than anything I have laid over it and even if I cannot nurture it and no one else will, it will endure.

***

I no longer feel depressed. The tryptophan and B12 fixed that. Now I just feel numb, and it's worse. I feel as though I daren't feel anything and I know that being risk averse has never been good for me. I never put anything into it and that results in only ever skimming the surface.

But when I have, I got burnt, and it's hard to feel that that is not just something about me, and I cannot avoid setting myself on fire.

It's not that I don't think it's worth trying, it's just that no one seems to think I'm worth anything much. And I have too much of me that wants to believe them to overcome. My girlfriend dumped me because I'm not solid, and it's hard to say, I can be solid, when you are to all appearances no more than a ghost.

But I can be solid. Nothing makes me believe I can't.

***

I was watching Lost and I was thinking about the dog in the plane. It would have no idea what was happening when the plane crashed. It would be entirely incomprehensible to the dog.

The dog would have an entire drama happen around it with no notion that anything in particular was going on. I believe the dog prospers though. It seems entirely unharmed.

I am sure there's a moral in that story but I haven't figured it out yet.

***

I believe in you though. When I am out in the cool night and I look up at the infinite sky and know that we are nothing, our lives meaningless and tiny; I believe in you still. Even though I know that you prosper in this world if you see the weakness in others, if you exploit others and you do, to the point that you leave me breathless with the feeling that you didn't think there was anything you should be giving me; even so, I believe in you and can't stop.

I believe you have good in you and it will always outweigh the bad, even if the bad makes me weep with impotence and frustration. I believe you have good in you that could flourish and I love you for it. I cannot help it. I cannot become bitter, even though I feel a shell of bitterness weigh me down; I still cannot stop believing that somehow there is a golden piece of me that will resonate with the gold in you, that you will see it in yourself and believe too that nothing else is worth quite as much.

I know that this is only an outcome of having no idea who you are, how you feel, what you consist in, and no real idea about who I am either. I know it is an illusion, which you have shattered often enough for me to surrender it, but I won't. Even though I know we have no souls, I will believe we do until I have no breath to proclaim my belief in you. I don't know why; I cannot control it; it lives in that part of me, that flickering faint light that yearns for a gentle sigh to make it blaze, which cannot be extinguished, even on a dark night that even the moon, hidden by clouds, sheds no light on.

***

Tomorrow, I am going to dismiss the first three thoughts I have. One for the lizard, one for the monkey, and one for the dog. I will think what's left and you can take me or leave me for it. I will succeed because you are wrong about me and so am I. Most importantly, so am I.

posted by Dr Zen @ 12:26 am