Hello again lovely readers. As some of you may have picked up from the title of this post I find myself in something of a 'good news/bad news' situation, so I'll get the bad (perhaps bad is a bit harsh...unseen and suddenly quite important would perhaps be a better of putting it) out of the way first if you don't mind. Lubbock Texas... the name conjures up images of redneck swine, thoughts of Bud-swilling, gun-toting, bible-thumping, cousin-fucking idiots, and it seems that may be where Nathan's foreseeable future - his next step on his educational path - lies, since Rice is out of the picture for the time being. This leaves me in the position of choosing whether to stay in Houston in a home I love and a well known comfort-zone, or to relocate with my husband who I also love to a place I've never been filled with 'people' I wouldn't be caught dead with. The Evangelical overtones of the place alone is enough to send a fun-loving gal like me running for the hills. I've no business with such "good, God-lovin' folk" as those, and I'm sure they'd want nothing from me. Besides I might be turned into a pillar of salt as I left dear Houston, but enough of this fun. Nothing's certain yet, and the music program there at Texas Tech is supposed to be great, especially for tenors. I've survived worse for longer, I'll survive whatever becomes of this mess.
Now that the majority of the 'trepidation' bit of this post is dealt with, as well as the outer more tangible thoughts of the post, it's time to move on to the 'impetus' leg of our little verbal jaunt. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's thought of what their motivations are, their drive and reason - I just obsess about it more than most, probably due to the fact that I have the leisure of spare time for such inward reflection and questioning. Still despite all the thought and worry and hours of silent introspective hell I've gone through, I feel as though I'm still a stranger to myself, to my heart and its goals. I feel I don't at all grasp what it is that makes me go, what end I really strive for. I feel that I'm not aimlessly wandering through life, but that I'm on my way to some important function, though what I can't remember.
I find myself often torn between experience in and of itself, and the morals I learn from said experience. I can't tell which I live for - the lesson or the teacher. I'm not sure I ever could tell, but somehow that rift has been becoming clearer and clearer to me each day, as if I were approaching some fork in my path, and I can't for the life of me say which way I should go. Is it knowledge or sensation I seek, and which would better me as a person, or better serve those around me? Both seem to have a certain selfish bent that frightens me, I already find myself fighting an conceitedly egomaniacal nature on a daily basis - what would this determined newly motivated self seek or serve? Experience for experience's sake or insight and education through occurrence, through learning? This question has long weighed on my mind, and now as this impending change seems to swell and loom just at perception's edge it weighs heavier still.
The question of motivation was more of a novel, hypothetical thought in my stagnant, unchanging lifestyle - a moot kind of 'what if' of no real consequence. With real change - real inexorable experience rearing up on the inevitable horizon my idle wondering has suddenly taken on a more serious note, something with potentially dire or at least life-altering residuum. A choice is approaching, and faster than I'd have liked, though I suppose most decisions of this nature come about quicker than we'd like - which is to say in our lifetimes. One way or another - for better, worse, or unknown eventualities - a fork in the road lays fast ahead, and I don't know which way to turn. I guess that the trepidation bit was a bit more embedded with this worry about impetus than I thought. I guess there really was no good news I had to add here, other than the possibility for hope in any uncertainty. In the unknown man lets his worst fears and greatest hopes exsist unchallenged, and until I set foot down some path or another there is only a comfortable ignorance. But Shrodinger has to open the box and see if the cat's dead, and whether I'm in it for the lesson or the journey itself, I will have to face new places, new people, new experiences - one way or the other. The sleeper shall awaken.
They say that 'love is the dance of eternity'. How appropriate to mention where exactly the steps of said dance occur, or where they will fling us next.
ReplyDeleteConsider instead, that there is no Lubbock Texas, nor a Houston Texas, nor a United States of COMM--America. There is your life, and the lives of everyone around you, spun into an intricate web. Each 'string' of life produces a pitch when disturbed, and creates a certain harmony with other 'strings'. In the lamest of examples, look to your Rebab. In an ideal circumstance, playing a note on the gut strings will produce additional sounds by the sympathy strings.
Such is a parallel to our lives, and the events that take place within them. Nathan decided that it is in his best interests to go away for a time, and that rings to you a dissonance. It would throw your 'string' out of tune, and there are two distinct ways to revitalize a harmony. You could tune flat and stay here, creating the space of an Open 5th between you two, which rings quite plainly, but safely. Or you could tune sharp, and follow. Not physically, but spiritually.
One of the biggest draws to Christianity to the faithful and the 'faithful' is the idea that there is no place where you walk alone, regardless of what your eyes see or fingers feel. That some spiritual entity walks beside you to keep your eternal company. It is that feeling that draws them near. So in the same fashion (as tacky as it looks) that they do, your choices are similar.
No it's not easy to look at the one who your eyes have set on the hardest, only to see them as imagery in your head, but it's something you should experience and torment over. Not for the sake of experiencing it, but learning volumes over the power of a relationship. As you have said, you will have to experience brand new things regardless of your choice. But never once will you need to walk them alone. After all, we experience things in a discordant harmony, you and I.