If our childhoods are analogies for our adulthoods, then my symbols are toys.
I loved, loved stacking the Lincoln Logs together into fantastic houses with cantilevered balconies and secret chambers. Or I'd set up the entire PlayMobile zoo complete with grass as fodder imported from the yard. I'd build ships from wood scraps with my Dad and position MicroMachine humvees and helicopters in strategic locales.
Then I'd walk away.
When the normal child turned puppeteer and animated their creation, I left off, unsure how to proceed. What should the Humvee say to the Helicopter? Who should inhabit the balconied cabin? To where should the ship sail?
Attempting to slip inside my childhood mind, I find I knew how things should be -- I could see that clearly and entirely -- but not how they should progress.
Then adulthood. I publish websites and wander away for a month or two years. My novel's characters bore me to death, but the overall form intrigues me -- I've got a house for them, but they refuse to move between its rooms.
I've developed a Self with skills, ideas and general understanding but nary a concrete goal to pursue or destination to seek.
My friend Trevor posed the questions to me, "What do you NOT want to regret when you're 90?" and, "What do you want to be doing in 10 years?"
I'd rather he'd have asked me to solve the travesty of Industrialized Food. That's a question I can answer.
I'm in Sartre's rowboat (or was it Nietzche's?) on the infinite, vacant sea, with two oars and an indefinite period of time to row. It's not a bad rowboat, and the oars are sturdy, but which direction is progress, and where does it go?
Isn't this just a well-written way of admitting that we can all be kind of flaky sometimes?
ReplyDeleteNot how I intended it at all. I hoped to convey the ease with which I create form, and the difficulty I have filling the form with content.
ReplyDeleteI have two websites up now, Crowdable and Six Minute Story but struggle to produce content for those.
I've made it 20,000 words in my novel and know how the story ends, but filling that plot with character development, dialogue, appropriate conflict, etc, intimidates me.
Same for my life: I've built a Self (form) that I like. I like who I am, my talents, ethics and ideas, but I can't figure out what to do with them. I don't know which direction to row on this meaningless sea.