i wrote it 15 minutes before i had to leave the house so as not to overthink it but i think it's still pretty decent.
I tend not to think. Once I realised It was keeping me up at night I stopped and life has been a great deal simpler ever since. When working, thought is a hindrance. It slows me down. It presents me with options, and options need consideration and the flow is broken and momentum is lost, thought being branching pathways, and multiple possibilities, questioning and probing and doubling back. What I aim at is the maintenance of a speed fast enough that no options present themselves and consequently, no choices have to be made. A single direction, onwards, upon the only possible path, and one foot in front of the other.
It is something of a gamble, or an act of faith, in that we have to trust the next word will be available when we need it, arriving just in the nick of time. And in truth, this is precisely what we do in conversation, without forethought, the words tumble from the mouth, without premeditation,
there when we need them. This spontaneaity allows us to surprise ourselves, to reach a destination we hadn’t been aware of setting out for, to discover a new image, or a new idea, or to articulate a feeling we hadn’t realised was inhabiting us. We very often don’t know what we think, or what we feel, or even what we know, until the words give a shape to it, externalise it and set it down for us. At that point it becomes real and objective. We are able, working in this way, with the attention poised, to speak what was hitherto unconscious within us. It allows us to give expression to the forces that converge upon us, that act within us and act upon us from outside ourselves ‘
not searching for what is eternally true, true for all time and across times, not chiselled into stone or engraved in metal, but written upon the water and carried in the wind
seeking a fidelity to the moment, working with the energies available to us, and sensitive to change, to what rises up in us, what nudges at us, and gnaws at us, each fluctuation of desire, each gust and flurry, dart and drift and lull, squall and cross-wind, pressure and temperature
our changing faces, the condition of lung and gut, the local mood-colouration, what is at the forefront of the mind, and what is further back, in the obscurity of the dark
working with the exigencies of place, the influence of the surroundings, the light, the air, the landscape or the room, the configurations of star and planet and fortune, the press of people about us, their preconceptions and their desires, and our own response to these things, our own shrinking back or pushing forward, our own contractions and expansions
working with the materials we have at hand, and accepting what we are given, so that if we don’t access, as we very often don’t, an ease and assurance of flow, we can make a virtue of
what is snarled and tangled and turbid
even what is hesitant and uncertain, what is timid and needs coaxing without affecting a suavity we do not feel
but always speaking what is there, at the moment it becomes conscious
just as good communication depends upon this act of hygiene, saying, I feel this way, I sense this, I want this, I fear this,
knowing that if we wait too long, what was true, is now false, the local conditions have changed, the sun has gone behind a cloud, and the heat gone from the moment, the words turn to ashes in the mouth.
