Who would have thought that I'd be in Norway at this point in my life?
It seems like a random chain of logic, but somehow, I am physically alive, digesting 200 grams of sweet, sour, and flavor.
That is, I think, what this blog post is about. By some magical and magnificent emotional chord that was played when my life began, I ended up somewhere so unfamiliar, yet so much closer to a desired familiarity than I could have ever expected.
I suppose this is my "dreamer's hotel." The place I'm living in is an ideal, and sort of a cocoon away from the problems I'd faced in a harsh light. I've been unable to avoid all of my problems, but it has brought a clarity that I can manage the things in my life and be more present in my difficulty. I still witness the dark corners of the world, as brought through the internet, but I now trust my experience of the daily life that I live, more strongly than that of the digital sea.
I remember the last time that I was at this blog writing thing, I had started going out with a woman from my hometown. I met her at an immensely busy spot near the lakefront and felt like it was too busy for a chance to feel comfortable, but perhaps a part of me felt insecure around so many people with this person. I wasn't with that feeling then, and avoided it by suggesting a walk to a further off part of the lakefront (that was still a very walkable distance.) I don't remmember if I'd parked around the place where we'd walked to, but that seems to hold up in my memory. I just remember it being overcrowded at one part of the lakefront and only mildly filled in another parking lot. This other part we went to was more relaxed, and clearly the geese felt that way because they'd shat all over the grass near where we went. I think she'd had flip flops on. It wasn't ideal.
I'm getting to this part where, eventually, I ask if she wants to come over, and we get close and intimate and I remember that she'd adjusted her clothes so that I could touch her and pleasure her. There wasn't really any pleasure in it on my part, though. I felt used and defeated, and a bit as if I'd done it as an obligation and not because I was eager to do so. Or maybe the reality of a sexual encounter (or two) didn't live up to the anticipation of it. I'm sure I was turned on at some point, but sometimes I've had the thoughts that the person I'm with isn't the "right" person in various forms of dismissive mental projections, like thinking "Oh, this person has bad breath/they stink," or "oh, they have hair on their upper lip," or "I don't like the way their body is shaped." And it's a persistent thing, though not consistent/chronic. But all of this writing is getting winded--I'm trying to say that I don't think the pleasing of others is worth it if I'm not getting something out of it. I don't think that's how I mean it. I'm a bit tired in writing because I didn't go for the jugular/ write directly.
I mean to say that it's not good for me to please others on the basis that I anticipate pleasure/punishment from them. I mean to say that I have often pleased others with the expectation that I'd receive a return, reciprocated capital P. But that way of going about has been very conditional upon something outside me, and has kept me so low and in dysfunction. I'm trying to generate that love and pleasure from a place within me, as a way to find beacons of that in others. This is my radar signal, going up.
So to tie this together with the digital sea and the concept of the dreamer's hotel:
There's a mass of information in the real of the digital, but only a small part of it is worth the attention, and it takes time to cultivate those seeds. To flood our senses with information is to deprive the kernels of truth, and to dismiss our individual experiences for a "collective experience." Collective experience functions well in the vacuum of capitalism, of oligarchy masquerading as communism or socialism. But it doesn't reflect the values of an individual enough and when it overinfluences the individual perspective, there's a death of consciousness, in a way.
The way that I'm writing and putting it now, is certainly unrefined because I'm returning, after a long time, to an idea that kept my soul alive when I would write. This is a flame that sat upon the shelf of my consciousness, as an the last few embers of a cone of incense. But after reading some fresh air, the spark has scattered my thoughts. Now to collect them and set them to shape a new mentality. The god of my youth is still present, in the music, but it's been a long time since I heard him speak. I was making dinner yesterday, listening to music coming through a shuffled playlist of liked songs, in relatively large, wireless earbuds, and I started hearing the voice of a consciousness in the music I was taking into my head. It didn't persist beyond a few songs, but that feeling was a reminder that there is a force to be felt in this world that is living beyond what the mind can create on it's own.
On that, to this consciousness that goes beyond me and lives in the connecting force between us all, I ask for your healing. I want to ask for a specific healing, in a part of the world, in the hearts of certain peoples, but I don't have the presence today, this late in the evening. There is time, another time. This is a seed to be nurtured.