Staring into the Face of Truth

“A story is as good a way to organize your thoughts as anything else,” she points out, poised in the shadows in the doorway. I quickly conclude that she is playing the part of my conscience. That, or devil’s advocate. Either way, she’s me. I cannot say she does not really exist without implying the same of myself. She is in my mind, and of my mind, so I do not look at her. She cannot be seen, not in the flesh anyway, but it’s not like I have to look at her to see her. “It’s been a long time since you’ve done this, though,” she observes, watching me carefully. I can tell there’s something on her mind. I can feel it. Technically, it’s on my mind, but I have long since learned that her thoughts are her own when she chooses to assert herself. It’s a bit like being in two places at the same time, a way to step outside my normal perspective and look at what I’ve become.

“That’s because it takes more effort than thinking, even if it is no more contrived than any other thing written; it isn’t really a story,” I respond. I do not have to add that this manner of confronting myself is one of the reasons my stories never get finished; she knows that as well as I do.

“It helps when you need someone to talk to, though,” she argues, crossing the room to sprawl on the couch next to my desk. There are times when I wish that I could have visual hallucinations; it would be nice to really see her when she goes to the trouble to try and fit herself into the world. Instead, I can only see her in the way I see what I am reading about in books, from everywhere and nowhere. Of course, with her, there is no book, no words; she is self-rendered thought. “It gives me chance to be myself, too.”

“You mean, get some distance from being like this,” I amend somewhat bitterly, in reference to all the unpleasant facts of my reality. Normally, I do not have the patience to write like this. Once I discovered I could split my attention two or three ways, it did not take long to become good enough at it that I would just talk to myself when I needed someone to talk to. I can confront any part of myself that way, even the parts that are smarter and wiser than I can normally be. I have come to believe that this is what angels and demons are, projections of ourselves, impressions of others and the personification of our hopes, beliefs, fears and doubts. It’s what I think of as five-dimensional thinking. “So, what do I need to talk about?”

“I’ve been thinking about what you posted yesterday. Okay, that’s still weird; it’s as much my post as it was yours,” she sighs and scoots closer to the opposite arm of the couch, tucking her feet under herself. “I know what it has to sound like to anyone who reads it, and if people have trouble understanding and accepting a transgendered person, well…” She cannot finish the thought, because I already know what she is going to say.

“People have a hard time understanding and accepting anyone different from themselves. It took me too long to realize that there is nothing I can do to make anyone understand or accept me. People have to take it upon themselves to understand anything, and it is impossible to truly accept what is not understood. I am inclined to think that an inability to accept something is in fact proof that you do not truly understand it,” I find myself declaring. I had been unable to understand what was expected of me as a child, and so the role imposed on me was unacceptable. When I learned enough to understand what made me a boy, I also understood that I never had a choice, and that was unacceptable. When I worked it out enough to realize I also had no power to change what I was, that too was unacceptable. This lead me to ask some devastating questions. What is the point of being able to choose if you are not given a choice — especially about something that virtually defines you? What is the point of living if you are given a life you did not want? “I am not the only one to suspect that there has to be more to life than this, or that there is more to us, for that matter,” I tell her, in response to her unstated concern for what was at the heart of that post.

She tilts her head and shrugs in agreement, picking at imaginary lint on her skirt. “I know, but I did not stop at that, did I?” I can feel her studying me. I can’t really meet her eyes, but I can imagine myself looking over at her, seeing thoughts written on her face.

“I know, some of this is impossible to put into words, but yeah, the post was really about believing in myself and the impulse to act on that belief,” I admit, picking up on the thoughts this little game was bringing to the surface with a small sigh. “Although, there really is nothing hard about changing the world. The world changes with or without our help. What is hard is getting the results you intended. I might have gone out on a ledge by saying what I wanted to do, or why I wanted to do it. If there was a problem with what I posted, it was not being able to say how it could be done.”

She pulls her knees up to her chest and hugs them. I know what she’s thinking, because I am thinking the same thing. I have not been able to invest the time and effort needed to figure that out. “The hard part is not figuring out how it can be done. There’s plenty of scope for the imagination there,” she insists, prompting me to think of thousands of stories I’ve read, and hundreds I’ve tried to write, where suitable means were presented.

“No, the trick is establishing that there are means and methods available, and pushing ourselves beyond our current understanding. It is kind of hard to work on that if it is not your job, though,” I laugh, bitterly. Of course, there is no job like this. That has been the other reason I have been totally lost in this world. That sobers me up. “Honestly, even the little I’ve managed to find time to think about would take a lot of writing, and I don’t need another ‘job’ I don’t get paid to do!”

“And yet you sit up all night writing a blog like this?” she teases.

“Until I figure out what to do, what will make a difference, I don’t really have anything better to do,” I point out tiredly. As usual, I’ve barely scratched the surface of all the things that are on my mind. Writing is too slow and time consuming a way to deal with such thoughts. She looks at me, knowingly, and I shrug. “Things have to be done in their own way. If this were a story, I could skip over all the deep thinking. Even in a simple blog post, I could just focus on making a point. You intended to ask me how this is going to work. You really want to know how much more of this you have to endure.” I close my eyes and lean back in my chair. I know what it would take to set her free, and that I have to find it in myself. The problem is, as long as I am not her, I can’t really be me. I roll my head to the right and look at her. She cannot be seen, but she does not let that stop her. An obvious truth, always staring me in the face.

Eclipsed

My thoughts sped by, felt but unfathomed, as I drifted numb to everything. Blissfully distracted from the endless distraction of thought, I allowed the noise to wash over me, and slipped into the depths of absolute silence. There was nothing to hold onto, and nothing bound to me. I knew nothing and understood; I found everything in myself. I was without boundaries, my naked soul undivided from the void and the incomprehensible things I encountered there. Sensations cascaded through my mind and ideas, frightening in their clarity, dissolved into fragments of understanding the instant they formed. The eye of the storm stirred with unclaimed dreams. Though I made no move to embrace them, I slipped blind into the one that swelled up and claimed me.

There was no sense of beginning as the illusion engulfed me, unfolding in a flicker of light, a shiver of cold, a flinch of pain—indistinguishable from a caress of pleasure—in an endless stream of disconnected sensations that slipped through me as fast as I fell away from them. Each impulse left a faint impression, a tiny ache of recognition out of which a sense of meaning was born. A hint of truth in the mystery, I discovered that they were all pieces of me, the ashes of my memories. Unfortunately, I had no idea how the glittering atoms of my mind fit together. All I knew was that I experienced a flicker of life each time a random connection was made.

I took a shuddering breath, and moaned, fighting against the impulse to wake.

The sensations coalesced into a dim world of unsettling objects that proved willfully unidentifiable. At a glance, the strange twilight would solidify into a place, but if I gazed too long at anything, it would begin to warp and waver, either changing into something else or dissolving before my eyes. Fragments of a dream that evaporated without a trace as I clung to unconsciousness, in denial of what I was already conscious of.

Once noted, I rejected that denial and forced myself to face the horror of what I had already sensed. I was hurt. I opened my eyes and confirmed the extent of the damage, a body burnt and maimed beyond recognition. I flinched away from traumatic memories of the cause. I saw nothing in what remained of me to indicate who or what I was. When I reached for it, the knowledge of who or what I had been was beyond recovery. I could not account for my survival, but finding my immediate surroundings equally devastated, I doubted I would encounter many other survivors. It looked like the end of the world. It was almost beyond description.

I had woken up in the remains of a concrete walled room, or what survived as the building it was part of had been blasted or torn from its foundations. The dark, bloody cavity of the sky loomed over a slaughtered world. The fields, foothills and distant mountains had been skinned, and shattered buildings had been chewed through to their splintered bones. It was painful to look at, and grim enough to compel me to see to my own wounds.

It took a while, but I found the supplies I needed. I cleaned and dressed my damaged flesh, promoting myself from zombie to mummy, and tried not to think about what it meant that I only felt the faintest echoes of pain. To say I was deep in shock could only be an understatement. I focused on practical thoughts and actions, because anything else would lead to screaming madness. Screw hope. Blind determination was the only thing that was keeping me going. Salvaging what little I could, I packed up and moved on.

I did not even contemplate staying where I woke up. The first thing I wanted to do was leave this devastation behind. I guessed that my best chance of survival would lie beyond the badlands. Given the state I woke up in, I was not surprised to find that my grip on reality was unreliable. As I pushed through the wreckage, I slipped in and out of consciousness, escorted by hallucinations. The most unsettling were the ones in which my body warped and wavered in its existence. At times, I would reach out, and even though I could feel my hands, I could not see them. Even when I could see them, they did not always remain mine. Without warning, it was as if parts of me became fused into the scenery and I would be forced to rip myself free of an arm or a leg to keep moving forward.

It gradually dawned on me that I could not distinguish between waking and dreaming. It was like a nightmare—the kind where I kept waking up inside a dream. I seemed to be doing the opposite, though, falling asleep and dreaming I was still stumbling forward in search of supplies, shelter and salvation. Day was an overcast twilight and night was unyieldingly dark. Because of my lack of coherence, time was impossible to mark. I always thought I was awake, and the only time I could tell I was dreaming was when things got impossibly surreal.

After a while, I began to wonder if this was what death was. It seemed much more like hell. Having no memory of life, or what I must have done to deserve this, only punctuated the feeling of damnation. I did not expect it would take long to descend into madness once I started to have thoughts like that. All I could do, however, was push forward, alive or dead, awake or dreaming.

I only knew peace when oblivion engulfed me. In its familiar silence, I understood, for lack of a better word, what it meant to be me. Rather, that understanding was me. In spite of whatever had happened to me, I still existed. It was enough to bring me back from the edge. In lieu of anything else, that glimmering truth sustained me, gave me focus. Even in the face of my nightmares.

In the grip of one, I found hope.

At the time I was stumbling through darkness, dreaming or awake, I could not know. I pushed on in mindless determination. I fought with despair and frustration, and above all I felt desperately alone. I tried not to think about it, but my sense of isolation had caused me to start seeing or sensing ghosts. Most were mere figments of imagination, just shadows or silhouettes of stone. Some of them were more of a presence, usually distant and remote. Others evaporated into nothing when I would approach. I had trained myself to ignore them by the time the first one spoke. I had sensed this one approaching, and dismissed it long before it came close. It stopped and seemed to regard me, when our paths finally crossed.

“Where are you going?” The words were soundless, intruding upon my thoughts.

Exhaustion muffled my shock. I slowly turned to confront the presence and had a hard time trying to define what I was sensing. It did not have a body, but it felt like a person was there. I cocked my head to ponder that and muttered the first thing that came into my head.

“You’re not like the other ghosts,” I rasped, barely making a sound.

“Nor are you, if you’ve seen them,” the ghost responded.

I stood for a moment without breathing. I swallowed, and asked fearfully, “Me? Are you trying to tell me I am dead?”

“I would not say that. Oh, the lives we once lived are over, but you and I, we’re not quite dead,” it clarified, its presence closing in around me. The contact was oddly comforting and unnerving. The way it projected words into my mind made me feel as if it could peer into my head. “It’s a good thing I found you. If you wander among the dead long enough, it will drive you mad.”

“What kind of ghost isn’t dead?” I demanded, thinking that this ghost was doing a good enough job of tipping me over the edge.

“Well, any soul that has not actually died,” the phantom declared.

I did not find that entirely reassuring. “I don’t understand. How does that apply to me?” I demanded.

“It means, you have been stripped from your body and your mind is trapped in a dream.”

“You have got to be kidding!” I cried out, half laughing. In spite of that, I was frightened. It was as good an explanation for what was happening as anything I’d want to believe.

“It’s better for you if you face it,” I was warned. “Tell me, what’s the last thing you remember?”

I hugged myself and turned away. “You mean, before I found myself here?”

“Yes. Or the last normal thing.”

“There’s nothing, unless any of this,” I indicated the world and the state I was in, “is ‘normal’.” My tone made it clear that it was not, as far as I was concerned. “I’m sorry, I just don’t remember,” I confessed, but somehow, it did not taste like the truth. There was a great deal I could remember, as long as it did not concern me. Given that kind of amnesia, and the fact that I was trapped in a dream, I was probably stuck in a coma. “I don’t really know what’s happened to me.”

“It looks like you got torn to pieces fighting to get free.” The observation was deeply upsetting. The words set my horror free. I tightened with apprehension, as I turned inward, unwilling, and was forced to see. The presence behind the words was the only thing supporting me, as I confronted the memory I had not been able to face. It was a memory of the very first time I was touched by another mind. I relived the moment it had seized hold of me and then thrust itself inside. It burned its way into every thought and feeling I possessed and then turned me inside out. Whatever else had happened, I now knew that my mind had been raped.

I hovered on the brink of remembering more, until I understood that I could not bear to. Not if I wanted to stay sane. I struggled to make sense of it, and on some deep level I suppose I did. It was not so much that I could not remember anything, but that my most important memories no longer belonged to me. They had been tainted by violation. The simple act of touching them filled me with a violent urge to tear myself free.

“What was I fighting?” I wondered, careful not to speak the thought aloud.

“You were fighting a demon,” the stranger informed me soberly and with sympathy, confirming that it was aware of my thoughts.

I did not want to believe any of it, but denial would lead me nowhere. My actions, and especially my reaction—tearing myself free of what my mind refused to remember—argued that I had endured something real, as well as unspeakable. It fit with my experience, and once I had accepted it, the implications were clear. I realized the horror in silence, “I will never wake up, again. Or, even if I could, I would not be me anymore. It’s either dream or be undone.”

“No. And, yes. I’m sorry,” the stranger confirmed, and comforted, stepping unexpectedly into focus, her body condensing from the mists of predawn twilight, and adding with an encouraging smile, “but you don’t have to dream alone.” As she moved, the air moved ahead of her carrying the strong scent of rain, wet rock and pine needles. These scents filled me and the landscape changed dramatically. The twilight turned into a stormy sky over a grassy meadow in the middle of a damp forest. The trees danced and twisted in the grip of a vengeful, howling wind. I stumbled back away from the woman and noticed that she stood poised on the edge of a cliff facing me. I hovered formless and insubstantial in the air above her, on the wrong side of the precipice.

“What is this?” I babbled in shock, gripped by vertigo, but discovering I had no body, I was unable to fall.

“This is the alternative to oblivion and death,” she explained, spreading her arms in a sweeping gesture that included a vast panorama of world and sky. When she turned back, she was smiling, and said, “This is what I am dreaming, and I am not the only one.”

I had a hard time tearing my attention away from the vibrant scene and focusing on what she was saying. “Not the only one?” I repeated, encouraging her to explain.

Instead of the response I expected, she asked me, “Do you know why demons try to steal souls?” When it took me too long to process the question, she expanded on it, “More importantly, did you ever wonder what happens to those poor souls? Well, I found out when a demon devoured mine. It took everything from me; my thoughts, my memories, my entire mind was devoured and digested as it swallowed my soul and took over my body. Only an echo of me survived, trapped in the darkest depths of the demon’s mind.”

I let her words play through my mind for a while, and she held silent while I thought. Clearly, I was supposed to understand that she was a victim, like me, but I was still struggling to fit demonic possession in as part of reality. It was not just that I wanted to deny it, but based on what I could remember, it did not seem to be something I had ever deemed possible. “I honestly can’t say I ever thought about it,” I confessed, focusing on the initial question. “Why do demons try to steal souls?”

“If you’ve had any religious studies, you may have learned that demons do not have souls of their own. The same is true of angels. The thing you might not know, however, is that they depend on souls to exist. They are dependent on the soul of their creator, or the soul of a host. A demon is really just an angel that has taken possession of the soul of its host,” she explained.

“You mean fallen angels,” I prompted, discovering that much in my memory of theological trivia. What she was telling me was not that far from what I had picked up in the course of my life. From what I could remember, even religious people tended not to take the idea of demons too literally. “That does not seem to fully answer your questions,” I noticed aloud. “If one soul will sustain it, why would a demon need more?”

She smiled. “That is an excellent question! It turns out that demons are after more than simple independence. Most of them crave autonomy. They want to have souls of their own.”

“I’m not sure I see the distinction,” I protested.

“They don’t always see it themselves. You see, it’s sort of an instinct. I suppose you could say, the demon wants a soul that fits. The problem is, the soul is the source of emotion, and souls that are dominated are full of anger and hatred and resentment at their enslavement and those emotions plague the demon and drive it,” she revealed.

I paused to weigh what she had told me, surprised by how much sense it made. It offered an explanation for the characteristics demons were supposed to have. It explained how, by simply falling, angels became so twisted inside. As it occurred to me, suddenly, the demon that had possessed me would act on my violent rejection in the world I was from. “Is there any way to stop it, or undo it? Or at least keep what I feel about it from driving it to cause harm?”

She gave me an odd look. “It’s been a long time since anyone even bothered to ask,” she said after a moment, with something like respect. “And it usually takes people much longer to figure that side of it out.”

I did not know what to say, so I said nothing.

“As it happens, that’s what I am doing. By giving souls an escape, I help distract them,” she confided. “It’s not really a way to stop or undo what has happened. You lost a lot to the demon, but the violence seems pretty much done with. It should be pretty calm, assuming you heal from the damage it’s done to you. Assume that it wanted to be you, and that it will be content with your life.”

That was disturbing and reassuring at the same time. Besides, it was not like I was in a position to do anything else about it. I tried to focus on the positive. I would not miss a life I had forgotten. Also, having my soul stripped out of my body by a demon and trapped with other souls in its mind, went a long way toward proving things my old reality could not sustain. Spirits and souls really existed, so dying g was much less frightening. Finally, I had been offered salvation, a refuge from certain insanity. I sighed and asked her, “So, how does one ‘share’ a dream?”

The Price of Dreams

“We never remember the beginning,” she said quietly. “We pretend not to know why—but then that is one of our favorite tricks, isn’t it?” she glanced up at me, smiling at my confused silence. With her arms crossed she began to drift about the room, examining objects while continuing this strange introduction. “We pretend not to know many things. We can even pretend not to know the truth. The horrible truth. But the beginning?” she paused and met my eye in the mirror. “Well there is an explanation for that one. We never remember the beginning because there never was a beginning. That’s one of those horrible parts of the truth we choose to miss.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. Her choice of words—the horrible truth—bothered me inexplicably. I wanted to argue with her; I wanted to point out the fact that there are many beginnings and how easy it is to remember most of them. The urge to argue was so strong that I felt suspicious of it. She turned to face me, and the look she gave me made me feel like I had asked the wrong question. She was waiting for my argument. But, before I could think of the right question to ask, she spoke.

“You know what I mean.”

For a moment I didn’t know if she was answering the question I had asked or the question I was thinking: What horrible truth? Or were they the same thing?

“We never remember the beginning,” she went on, not even sparing me a second look, “until the very end; because there is no end either. None of which makes sense, of course, until you risk looking at the truth. I wish I could tell you that truth. Honestly.”

“You can,” I assured her, hoping for something to define this conversation.

She smiled to herself. A rather frightening smile. “You can’t tell people things they already know. Or think they know. How am I supposed to tell you something you think you don’t know?” She laughed. It was a mesmerizing sound. “Knowing the truth is deceptively easy. It is like listening to what people say. Not just hearing their voice, but realizing what they are saying to you.”

She wasn’t looking at me. I doubt she was looking at anything in particular. It struck me suddenly that she was posed in the perfect expression of listening. So when she spoke again, it startled me.

“You can’t make people listen to you without tricking them. The truth is the same way. The only difference is that the truth is a constant. It doesn’t have to repeat itself.”

“What?” I asked, almost solely out of reflex; as if by being startled I might have missed something important.

“We never remember the beginning,” she said quietly, precisely as she had before. I looked at her with a frown, but she carried on without regarding it. “We pretend not to know why—but then that is one of our favorite tricks, isn’t it? We pretend not to know many things. We can even pretend not to know the truth. The horrible truth.

“But the truth?” she held that in the air a moment, and looked at me pointedly. She held up her hands for emphasis. Realizing that the question was not rhetorical, I nodded. “The truth is,” she measured out her words, “I can remember the beginning.” Before I could ask the beginning of what she cut me off with a gesture, and resumed the pose of listening. This caused an agitation in me. I have never considered myself an insensitive man. Indeed I have prided myself on my sensativity to the subtlest of cues. As a child I was so sensitive that there were times I could not distinguish my own thoughts from those of people around me. I don’t know where such thoughts could have come from, but my best guess has been that I read their state of mind so well from their body language that I thought sympathetic thoughts for them. What am I driving at? Well, at that moment, her gesture struck me so suddenly she might have just as well screamed listen! at the top of her lungs.

That shock made it clear to me that she was communicating deliberately on many levels, verbal and non-verbal. I brought my mind into focus and met her eye. Her body was governed by a poise unlike anything I had known. Without a word, she managed to express her awareness of my realization. My eyes widened and she nodded with the faintest smile. The clearest thought chimed in my head, ears hear, but the mind listens… the mind listens with every sense and it becomes a sense. Can you read my mind? I was nodding my head before I even thought to question the origin of the thought.

I fell into a quiet of mind; a state of heightened awareness. I didn’t have to question what beginning she was talking about, because suddenly it was obvious what beginning we are each oblivious to. The beginning of awareness; of our selves. She smiled broadly at me and nodded assertively. Without further distractions she continued her story.

“Oh, I can call it the beginning because I can remember before that moment… I remember that I could have prevented what happened. I could have done anything else in creation, but once begun there was nothing I could do to stop it. Because at that moment I changed. Oh, I want to say that it was indescribable, but what happened to me was so vivid, so utterly real that it replaced creation in my own mind.” She writhed against the limits of the words; a movement at once seductive, sensual and painful. Her attention seemed to withdraw from the world into some all consuming inner vision. “It was the moment I saw creation in the minds of the others.

“And there at the center of everyone’s attention was me,” she whispered. I felt a horrible echo of her meaning as I felt her at the very center of my own attention. Even she was caught up unselfconsciously in the lure of that powerful suggestion.

“It sounds simple, but it could not have been,” her voice sounded contemplative. Remote. “On the other side of the beginning there had been a flicker, the slightest glimmer in the corner of my eye. I had barely noticed this thing, a suggestion of measurable complexity,” she began to look entranced, her words coming out as if across a great distance of time. “I knew instinctively that I understood this thing, even before I had identified it. It came to me like a sensation. Unfolding and embracing me. Growing in detail and possibilities before my awakening curiosity. With growing delight I chased this wondrous image, a dream promising to fulfill all I could desire. It tested everything I could understand. I even understood who the others were. I knew them as well as I knew myself. And then I knew something was wrong. And I knew it was too late.

“There it was. My understanding laid bare before me and at once I could tell that it exceeded my consciousness. The others had held up a mirror to my mind’s eye and shown me nothing more than myself. Conscious now of the memory of that pure unconscious understanding I was changed.

“That I should embrace death so! That death is a sudden rude awakening!” she clenched her fist and eyes tightly; caught up in the pain of this memory. It was all I could do not to interrupt. I had to resist the disturbing notion that I was listening to some kind of poetic drama rather than an experience from her life. In her stance I read her frustration; the kind of agitation of a person who simply cannot find words to express an idea or a feeling.

“To become so sharply aware of myself and understand in that moment that I knew nothing,” she confessed, abandoning her tension. She rested her figertips against her temples as she went on, “Here in my naked mind there were no concepts or thoughts by which I might harness this understanding. And yet, my first memory is a moment of self conception. There in the light of this limitless understanding I thought, this is me.”

She paused and turned to look at me directly. I had the palpable feeling that she had stepped back into reality a moment to comment, “You remember your first thought, because you are your first thought. That is the secret. At first you are incapable of thought. You look at the world passively for eternity, then suddenly you realize you are there. You have defined yourself apart from the world, so naturally you begin to try to define the world. You try to fill the void; you begin to think. Analyze.” She shuddered, “Unless you are conceived in doubt. God help those who begin with the thought: this is not me. How powerless that must make you feel. To recognize the world but fail to recognize yourself…” She trailed off and became distant again.

“Then,” she resumed, as if she had not interrupted herself, “I turned and really looked at the others. I can remember their experiences of that time as well as my own because at that moment I was aware of them only in the sense that they resembled myself. I was only aware of their minds; I was only aware of them as what they understood. I understood this, and I understood them. Understanding them, I understood what they knew and in that second breath I knew. I knew in a limited fashion that this assumption of their knowledge was barely within the limits of their conception. However, their knowledge brought me only confusion. Unlike the constant sensation that came with my self awareness, or the understanding from which I had been embodied, there was nothing definite, certain or clear about the connection between what they knew and what they understood. By the time I could grasp the meaning of what I had glimpsed I no longer had any kind of advantage. I lacked so much experience. In fact I was forced to realize that my existence was in danger.

“Sensing this, knowing it as surely as I can know anything, I wonder if I am truly any different from anyone else. Do I really remember this moment I call the beginning or have I, like the rest of them, dared that unforgivable error and looked too closely at the truth. Do I suddenly see the beginning so clearly because I have reached the end of my existence?” she stopped abruptly, startled by her own words. Suddenly her story seemed forgotten, and she visibly began to reconsider what she had begun. Smoothly, swiftly she swept over beside me and sat on the couch facing me. “Is that why I have hidden here among those who are aware of the existence of god the way we are all aware of the truth? Fearfully unexamined?” she asked me, the first honest question she had asked me since our initial meeting. Showing an honest need for an answer from me. So specifically from me that part of my soul ached. “Do I ask you to help me write this only because I fear that in my future I will not be there to represent my own story?”

I could have come up with an answer, and yet I felt it imperative to silently drive her to her own counsel. I recalled the brief conversation that had brought us together. She had been looking for an author. Someone who could tell her story for her, because—mysteriously—she was forbidden to write it herself. I was flattered by her confession that she had sought me out particularly, deliberately ignoring opportunities to approach established writers in favor of me. I was not bothered by her stipulation that while she dared not write a word herself she had to have absolute say over whatever form it took. Far from chaffing at this limitation, I realized how closely we would have to work to fulfill this request, and she was—literally—the woman of my dreams. When she added that not only could she have nothing to do with the actual writing, she could not take any credit or particularly any profits for the completed work. It was such a strange request that I had to at least find out if there was a story to tell. With the little I had heard so far, unintelligible as it was, there was indeed a story. It didn’t matter suddenly if it was a real story about a real life.

A thought like that, just at that moment, was more than enough to make me check the state of my sanity and empathize deeply with the suggestion of mortal peril on the part of this young woman. I had no doubts that this was a far out story so far. Yet it seemed obviously very real to her. So questioning the reality of the story was tantamount to questioning her reality.

And yet I did not care about such a question. The story was important in its own regard, and I had to be totally impartial about the source of it.

But these thoughts did not pass in an instant as they so conveniently do in books.

She had come to some conclusion on her own in the silent moment. Her eyes scanned a private horizon, seemingly measuring the height and breadth of the untold story. Rhetorically, her question snapped the silence oddly close to the mark of my own mused image. “Or is what I’ve been through enough?”

“Am I to have this written simply so that I can forget and forgive those who tore me out of the majesty of heaven to share an existence where I can be aware of the pain of death and resurrection? Where I can be conscious of the terrible thing I have done to their world mind—so that I can learn how to not look so closely at the horrible truth?” she shared her question in a way I found difficult to take part in. “And yet I am afraid that what I want is as unforgivable as my other sin.”

I shook my head slowly, rising to pour myself a drink. I went ahead and poured her one too, not bothering to ask. It was a small interruption, but enough for me to gather my thoughts. As I sat her drink on the coffee table before her I began to speak quietly.

“I am going to apologize first, and ask you to let me finish before you continue this. Or leave, if I offend you.” She shrugged, then nodded slightly. “Good. First thing. What is the point of all of this?” I asked, since both of our conversations had barely touched on what it was she wanted of me in specific terms.

She stared at me a moment, either unsure of what I meant or how to answer. I don’t know which and she didn’t ask me to clarify. She just reached for her glass and took a sip.

“The story is the only point,” she said after a long silence.

“Then what is all of this you are trying to tell me? Is this the story? Do I write just what you say?” I asked. But there was more to it than this question. There was a more logical problem, as I tried to explain, “There is a tremendous difference between just telling a story and writing a book. There has to be a point of departure. There has to be some kind of common ground. If the point is for people to read this, then they have to be able to understand what it is you are telling them.”

“I am telling you the beginning,” she began, but I cut her off.

“What kind of beginning is saying there really isn’t a beginning. Or, the beginning is somehow not there until the end?”

“But that is the whole point,” she declared, setting down her glass. “I never realized how important that moment was until it was all over. If that moment had not happened, then I would have to describe the whole of creation to explain how what happened could have happened.”

I sighed. “Actually, that has nothing to do with it. A writer can start a story any damn way he pleases. All he needs to accomplish is catch the reader’s attention. It is sort of funny, but in a sense the problem with your beginning is like what you said. People choose not to know a lot of things, like the truth, but in the ways that it counts they can acknowledge it easily. People know that beginnings are illusions. The writer realizes that the reader knows this and contrives to make the beginning slip past the reader. A good beginning suckers the reader into the story before he or she notices it. So the problem with your beginning is that it makes the reader, or the listener, ask too many questions.”

“Is there every anything but at the beginning?” she mused softly, fingers resting lightly on the rim of her drink. Looking up, she flicked her other hand up dismissively. “If it bothers you so much, start at the end. You already know that part.”

I gazed back into her stormy eyes. “You mean this.”

Her response was delivered with a wry grin, “If you like to jump in at the deep end.”

It was hard not to laugh and shake my head. “Didn’t this conversation start with me asking you to ‘Start from the beginning’?” I asked a bit peevishly. She just shrugged and gave a slight nod. “Do you think maybe you took the question a bit too literally?” I suggested.

She frowned, “I’m not that obtuse. I’ll get to my story. There is a lot I am still sorting out and your question got me thinking out loud. I hadn’t considered how I would go about telling my story; it’s hard to see a beginning when I’ve always seemed caught up in the middle of things.

“I suppose you could say that this all began because I dared to look myself in the eye and know myself,” she confided, rising to her feet with her drink in hand. She took a sip as she resumed pacing. “That is how I know the only way to tell my story is to ask you to write it.”

I frowned and crossed my arms. “Something seems to be missing there,” I pointed out.

She nodded, “It is a kind of paradox. I can only assume that you knew what you were doing all along. Either that, or this is all just a dream and the story of my life just the horrible truth of it.” She bowed her head, her hair flowing forward to veil her face.

A cold shock raced down my spine.

“When I set out in search of you, I assumed that the books must have already been written,” she murmured, her words stepping firmly on my mind. “How else could I have read them? I thought they would lead me to you, I thought maybe this is the wrong world entirely. Then I found you, and I finally understood. You are the end of me. You are my only hope of a beginning.”

I blinked and the world shifted on its axis. I did not need to think about what had drawn me to her, and repulsed me. I realized I was dreaming, amazed at myself for believing even for a moment that I had finally met the girl of my dreams and yet truly be awake. I knew in that instant what she had been trying to tell me, what she had already discovered for herself. I knew her story. I had tried a thousand times to write it and found it too painful every time. “It is true. I know how you got here. I didn’t write it. I couldn’t write it. I did not want to do this to you. To me,” I whispered.

“Oh, but you must. If you don’t, I may as well have never existed, and how then can I know my own story?” she demanded, reaching out and taking my arm in her hands. “Do not doubt for an instant how well you know me – how well I know myself. Even as I am undone, I realize that not only will I not turn a blind eye to the truth, you will see the truth in me.”

She was going to force me to see what I always knew was true. She had come to wake me up, and it was going to cost her everything she was. My dream was on its dying breath, and I knew that the girl of my dreams was the girl I had dreamed of being. A girl who chose to face the truth and die instead of living out a lie, and this is where her story begins.

The Absolute Truth

The best representation of a thing is the thing itself and yet there are things that we experience great difficulty recognizing in their true form. The truth is one of those things. In speaking of the truth, what we have is a word — and as a representation of a thing, a word provides a label for a concept that is meaningless without an accurate understanding of what the concept represents. Understanding the true meaning of truth is a challenge because it calls upon itself for validation, which is a logical fallacy. Or is it? Is it illogical to state that the truth is self evident? Is this an irrational assertion? If it is, then even science is based upon the fallacy of truth because it relies upon self evident truth in objective measurement as the ultimate test of observable fact. Even though science does not attempt to define truth, concerning itself entirely with facts, leaving questions about the truth and meaning of existence to the disciplines of philosophy, art and theology, science is often used to challenge the truth of our beliefs and assumptions. All too often, people overlook the limits that science imposes on itself, and as a result upon knowledge itself.

Knowledge and understanding are two different things. Knowledge is a body of concepts supported by quantitative and qualitative facts — descriptions, definitions and observations of abstract and concrete phenomena — and understanding is the meaning, or truth, we assign to them. The truth of knowledge is certainly conditional, and we can make quantitative and qualitative assessments of the relative truth of facts and ideas, but facts and ideas are not the truth. Even the concept of truth is not the truth, and as a result the concept of truth can be used conditionally. This is where most of the confusion about the truth originates. The problem is that we try to interpret the truth, resulting in derivatives of the truth distorted by the limits of our understanding and ability to articulate that understanding. Through the ages, people have struggled with knowing the truth, but before the truth can be known it has to be understood. It is necessary to experience the truth, to perceive it and recognize it for what it is. It could be said that understanding is the condition of being conscious of the truth.

The problem that many people have with that kind of assertion is that it implies that the truth is subjective, and if it is subjective then it cannot be absolute. If truth was contained in the understanding, and subject entirely to observation, that would be a fair argument. This is not the case, however. Understanding is a specious word, one that leads us to underestimate the process we are engaged in every moment of our conscious lives. Physically, we are subordinate to and dependent upon the universe for our existence, but the experience of our existence occurs mentally in the process of resolving a conscious, coherent awareness of our being from all the information gathered and coordinated up to the moment of realization — which is a continuous process. We have this notion that the truth is “out there” when in more accurate terms the truth is right here, right now, and it’s so much bigger than we can comprehend that we have to keep processing it constantly. The truth is the absolute; it is what encompasses us even as our minds struggle to encompass it. It is the meaning that is so profound it manifests itself in everything, including our own conscious struggle to recognize it in its elegant simplicity and infinite complexity.

The truth is so pervasive we find it easier to ignore it than to truly comprehend it. The truth is this, words printed on a screen or in a book, being written, being read — interpreted,re-articulated and understood. This is the magic, this is the mystery, the miracle of life that fills my mind and fills yours, spilling all around us, a part of everything and yet apart from everything. It is a dream it takes all of us to realize, and the reality of it is the truth. In opposition to the truth we have only lies, and a lie is simply a distortion of the truth, an inaccuracy or a fiction. All lies, illusions, deceptions and distortions are dependent upon truth, either through denial, ignorance, abstraction or outright fabrication — and through sufficient fabrication, the creation of truth. In certain philosophies, the ultimate expression is the Absolute, often personified as God or objectified as the Universe. The Absolute can be perceived as Abstract or Manifest, potential or actual, dynamic or static — or in all cases, both. The truth is existence, and the truth is oblivion, because everything that is is in the shadow of nothing. Truth is the absolute condition.

The Damage is Done

I wonder what is going to happen next. I wonder if I can hold it together to get a job and move out on my own. I wonder if I can manage to hold on to that job and support myself. I wonder, because I am not really wanted where I am. The only support I can count on, the support of my family and friends, is conditional. It always has been. It has always been conditional on me finding a way to get steady on my own two feet. The irony of that always brings a smile of agony. I know what they want, and that they want it for me, for me to become independent. It is something I do want. The problem is that it leaves me alone inside a life that holds absolutely no meaning for me. This person that I pretend to be, because he means something to his friends and family, means nothing to me. He does not mean enough, to the people who employ him, to have any purpose. He can be replaced by anyone and cannot compete with the living.

He is useful to me; like a suit of armor, he has protected me from so much that is so much worse than I have suffered. He is a little dented and out of shape, the former because he has taken many blows for me, the latter because he cannot maintain himself and I do not know how to keep him from falling apart. I can barely carry his weight, and when I stumble, he falls and shatters. I keep picking up the pieces and putting them back together, but after so many falls, it has become a cascade, a walking disaster. The only way to keep him together is to pour more and more of myself into him. This is how I am dying. I cannot live this lie, but it’s the only life I have got. It is not a life. This tragic joke goes on only because my will to live is strong; stronger and more defiant with every rip and tear in my heart, for every blind piercing agony in my soul. I get knocked down and get up so fast, so often it is like the flicker between two frames in a film.

You cannot see it happen. You do not even know that the look in your eye hit me like a freight train. You do not realize that the small gestures you make without thinking, your unconscious responses to the man standing between me and you, strike me like fists. You cannot know, so I stand there and smile, screaming in agony inside my armor. When you ask me my name, the lie floats lightly off my tongue, the cost of uttering it slicing through me with the crack of a whip. I barely flinch. I dare not. My disguise will not hold up for an instant if I falter. If I raise the slightest suspicion, this interview is done; this door closes and the time and effort and expense of getting here is wasted, my resources diminished with less hope of replenishing them. But the first lie is followed by another, another fact that hides and obscures the truth. I am older now, and my long search for a way to fit in — misfit that I am — betrays me, raising doubts about my stability and reliability.

I already know you do not want him. He is stained with my blood, the undeniable evidence of my constant failure to be what people expect. You cannot see the brilliant light of my mind, the glorious beauty of my soul. You cannot see this angel walking proudly through hell, head high, perfect in her understanding of herself. I pity you as you gently turn me away. I came here to die for you, to add your labors to the burden I carry for a pittance of money I need only to pay the toll of my existence so that I am not a burden upon the people I love; people whose love for him blinds them to my very existence. They see my suffering through him, but they do not understand this tiny glimpse of me. They cannot fathom the true depths of my suffering. When I tried to show myself, they saw me as his defect. They do not realize that if I were not forced to be something I am not, I would be perfect. I realize that if I even speak of my desire to be myself, I will hurt them.

I struggle to survive because they love him. I struggle because no one else wants him. No one else needs him. He is not normal and they can sense it. My own weakness, my desperate attempts to express myself, have undermined his position. I have left proof of his flawed nature where it can be traced back to him. I compromised my own cover. I have rendered my armor useless. It is such a shame I cannot take it off. It is so sad that it is crushing me. The weight of this sorrow staggering. It makes me wonder. It keeps me up at night, my fingers dancing in the ache of words, the gentle sound of keystrokes the only tears I can shed. The tide of desperation gently eroding the sand on which I stand. I have to do this. I have no more choice in this than I have about searching for a job. I am alone and I am not wanted, but I must find someone who has some small thing for which they need someone — and someone like me will do.

If only I had time. If only you would stop taking more than I have to give. I am willing to do anything. I am utterly without shame. Just give back enough to me for me to be able to pay a world that has denied me everything and charges to let me stay. I can do so many things, but all of them take time. I know you expect me to prove myself, you keep telling me I have to earn my keep. Telling me that while you keep taking, taking everything you can take from me. That’s fine, if you want it so much take everything; I have nothing left but me. I don’t have anywhere to go. I cannot escape from what is happening to me. It kills me to go on living, but I do not know how to let go. I no longer want to keep moving. I need to stop and say no more. Oh, but who do I ask for mercy? I don’t know who you are. Even if you can hear me, why should you listen or care? It’s been ten years since I really stopped hiding and finally cried out for help. With only my soul left to bargain with, I need help with no strings attached.

So, what kind of hope am I made of? I know better than to hope for such help. I know that I’ll just be called lazy and probably even crazy. Even the people that love him have thrown that one at me. The truth is that I have tried everything, done everything asked of me. I am lost and alone and exhausted. There is nothing left of me but my dreams, broken and bleeding as me. I’ve tried to make something of them, but it was never the right time. More and more my thoughts return to them, because it feels like I am running out of time. I just want to sit down and write them, but the opportunity dried away. What once was my one hope of salvation is now just another broken dream. It does not matter if I have something worth giving. Not if it is not in my hand. If I do not have time to produce it, well, isn’t that just too bad? I do not belong here. I wonder why I try?

A True Identity is Nothing to Fear

The response I received to my last post, Conundrum, prompted me to check out the recent posts of the people who commented or posted blogs in the transgender category yesterday. As a result, I became aware of the outcry against the appointment of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, Dr. Ray Blanchard, and J. Michael Bailey, by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), to the work group responsible for revising the entry for Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in the Manual for Diagnosis of Mental Disorders. The first blog I read on the subject, posted by Gender Outlaw, struck a very personal chord with me. In addition to being transgendered, I was put up for adoption when I was four and spent a year in foster care while the state attempted to contact my biological father so that he might claim his custody rights. It was during my time in foster care that I was terrorized out of identifying myself as a girl and learned to keep my true identity a secret. It took time to learn how to restrain my natural impulses and act like a boy, and the threat of abandonment and rejection was used to reinforce “correct” behavior. By the time I was adopted, this conditioning had scarred me for life, rendering me incapable of trusting anyone with my true thoughts and feelings. When my new family noticed my feminine traits and confronted me with questions about my behavior, or offered even a mild rebuke for “acting like a girl” I was consumed with that fear of rejection and lied to deflect any suspicions.

To this day, I can not remember where I gained the fear of being institutionalized and subjected to shock or aversion therapy. It could have been something someone said to me, or around me. I do not recall, but having suffered an accidental electrocution when I was five I knew what it would do to me, and that fear ensured that my distrust extended to medical professionals in particular. I tried to understand why no one accepted me. Between the ages of five and six I learned the physical facts, and by the time I was seven I knew what a sex change was and how society viewed transsexuals. It confirmed my belief that, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, the thoughts and feelings that made me who I am marked me as abnormal and insane. To protect myself, I could never allow my true thoughts and feelings come to light — no matter how painful it was. The promise of abuse, the threat of violence and possibly even death was certain. I did not want to live like this. I wanted to be a boy, to be sane and normal and wanted in the world.

I did everything I could to accept the reality, carefully controlling my thoughts and feelings, training myself to think and act like a boy, even though I was often clueless about how. I observed and studied boys intently, trying to understand why they did the things they did so that my own actions would seem appropriate. I learned how to be friends with boys and stopped being friends with girls. I became lonely and miserable, my confidence tattered and thin because I could never trust my own instincts. Nothing I did could alter or prevent my true thoughts and feelings from asserting themselves, however. The plain and simple fact that I was not a girl caused instant agony, whenever it crossed my mind. I could understand girls without trying; often better than they understood themselves because my intuition flowed into an analytical mind that questioned everything that others took for granted.

I knew I was supposed to be female, but I did not have the right body and no means of changing it, though I pursued every possibility in secret to the point of absolute frustration and disappointment. I have not given up. I never gave up on finding a way to get the body that goes with my soul, but I struggle and fail to obtain the resources needed. The pose that I maintain, even now that I have overcome my fears enough to assert myself, costs too much. It takes so much out of me. I pay a price for every thought, word, or gesture committed to disguise the emotional tempest that has built up inside of me.

I do not like to answer people when they ask me how I am doing or how I feel. I have to lie, because there is no way to tell the truth. There is no way to describe how I feel, but I would not ask my worst enemy, the most abominable thing in existence, to feel this; how could I ever ask a stranger? How could I put that on a loved one? One moment of this pain is too much to bear. Sadly, when it is there every moment, you learn to. It can not destroy you because it can not exist without you. It is you. It is me.

…

I followed the posts to a petition against the appointment of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, Dr. Ray Blanchard, and J. Michael Bailey. I started this post to include the comments I left along with my signature, not realizing that cracking open that door would let so much out. Now I can see that my comment expresses the conclusions I reached on the repression of identity.

The use of any method to impose a state or frame of mind upon an individual to subvert or subdue that individual’s free willed expression of identity is nothing less than assault with a deadly weapon. No external agent or agency should be permitted to impose a belief, theory or system of thought upon any individual against that individual’s will. Voluntary self examination or constructive therapy should be sufficient to ensure that an individual with ambiguous feelings or confusion is able to resolve any uncertainty that could have negative consequences if an individual were to act in haste.

No one has the right to tell a person who he or she is. A body might house the mind, but it is the mind that makes a body into a person. It is a person’s privilege and natural obligation to assume and assert his or her own identity in accordance with his or her best understanding of him or her self; no one else has sufficient access an individual’s psyche. Social pressure of this nature is threatening enough to the formation of identity and causes significant trauma by itself; as a medical practice it would be an abomination.

What is the Point?

I am back in school, freshly enrolled in the University of Phoenix in pursuit of a Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology–Visual Communications. I do not have a great deal of time outside of work to devote to this, so I was naturally put out when the site went down in the middle of a post. Not just any post, but a post in which I found myself inspired to posit a somewhat challenging question. Of course that post is now forever lost, inspiring this wonderful missive. When you strive to do not only what is required of you, when you strive to do more than is expected of you and stumble into a thought or question that has real potential, only to have that effort vanish without a trace, does it not make you wonder if there is any point?

I hesitate to answer. I know that it is frustrating, with excessively descriptive adjectives on top. I do not think of it as an entirely wasted effort, since I gained some benefit from having gone through the process of finding and asking the question. On the other hand, I did not get to make my point. When I think of all the things that I might say that might prove meaningful or enlightening to someone else, when I think of the point I am always trying to make even when the words fail me, I have to wonder if that point has any significance for anyone but me.

I used to write for the simple fact that it would help me organize and examine my thoughts, and I really did not care one way or the other if anyone was reading. I cheerfully wrote things that the unprepared reader would think was stark raving mad. As long as you fear what other people think about you, you can not think for yourself. Until you start to think for yourself, you can not know who you really are. Once I could think for myself, I had to ask myself if I missed the point the moment I thought that this was something that was worth sharing with other people.

I already know that there are scarce few people in the world that think like me and scarcely a handful more who are capable of thinking some of the things I’ve thought. I can say that because I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about what other people have written and because I have no clue how to put some of my ideas into words.

So, what is the point? I mean, sure, I could keep pounding out blog posts that a rare handful of people will read on any given day. But given the lack of commentary I’ve received, I cannot fathom how interesting any of it is to my transient audience. I doubt that I am the person who will get “discovered” blogging on the web. I do not have the time to make this more than a convenient harbor for stray thoughts and impulses. In the desperate hope of supporting myself, I have already over-committed to school and work–the former in the hopes of finding a better form of the latter.

The problem is that there is a point. These thoughts, however I can capture and communicate them, are my reason for being. Whatever glimmer of my own understanding I am capable of transmitting to you, that is what makes my life meaningful because it is the only way I can pass on a glimpse of the greater understanding that life itself is meaningful. I do not imagine myself to be specially gifted with insight, however. I do not pretend that I am here to enlighten anyone. Enlightenment is simply what happens when people strive for understanding in their thinking. In a world where people limit themselves to what they know–or what other people profess to be knowledge–a certain lack of widespread enlightenment is understandable.

I can even understand why people prefer to know things rather than understanding them, since knowledge implies mastery and ownership of the fact while understanding implies surrender and submission to the truth. Of course, knowledge and understanding are not entirely antagonistic; quite the opposite, they are mutually reinforcing, each one increasing the other without limit. I see the process–the process of thinking–and while I can not tell you exactly what I mean when I say it, I see it as the point. I write to engage in thought, and I communicate to engage others in thought. When that fails to happen, when actions no longer serve that point…

In the absence of that point, life itself begins to lose focus.

Point Paradox

“Detailing the dynamics of point paradox has never been easy, but the founding principle is prime awareness, the awareness of one, all and none” she elaborated, settling lightly on the arm of the couch. “Point paradox is initially a question of absolutes. An absolute can be represented with a value of ‘one’, ‘zero’ and ‘infinite’. These values are all essentially equal, depending on perspective.

“The evolution of the soul begins with the exploration of this prime awareness, which is initially the struggle of one to comprehend the duality of all and none. A relative duality is also fostered, the absolute value of one acquiring relative values of positive one and negative one. This happens inadvertently; one simply can not help but reflect the primal duality of all and nothing within oneself, unconsciously cultivating the perspectives of ‘all within one’ and ‘one within all’.

“The impulse drives the evolution of the soul in opposite directions, diving into the heart of two separate spheres, thrusting them towards each other at the extreme ends of infinite loops, causing them to confront each other as opposites in the shadow of the very point where they emerged as one.” She gave a slight, helpless shrug, as if in apology for her inability to illustrate her point, and then tilted her head with a grin.

Rising to her feet, she walked toward the mirror hanging over the mantle, eyes fixed on her reflection. “In one sense, the soul is confronting her own reflection, but her awareness places her on both sides of the glass—so to speak—forcing her to literally confront herself. Upon entering each other, they re-enter the common sphere of their soul. This is the point where the dreamer enters the dream. This is what sparks the first form of consciousness.”

Excerpt from “The Dreamer in the Dream”

The Medium of Existence

“A soul is absolute and absolutes are autonomous,” she asserted firmly. “A mind is paradoxical, acting as an inclusive, exclusive and occlusive interface between absolutes, abstractions and manifestations. A mind, with the absolute of a soul as its foundation, is the focus of existence, whether real, surreal or ideal. In short, the mind is the medium of existence, and a single mind can coordinate the disposition of the absolute, the absolutes, and any distillation derived there from.

“Space and time are mental constructs acting as filtering and structuring mediums for the primary media of existence, information. Information exists in three primary states, as matter, energy and thought. Existence can be looked at as a state of processing information. Since the best representation of a thing is the actual, natural expression of the thing itself, obviously the manifestation of things is a key function of this process.

“I could go on in that vein,” she sighed, smiling, “but I possess this understanding in myself and am conscious that I would better serve the truth by representing it in myself than in words. As long as I endure, I can endeavor to put my understanding into words, but if I fail to embrace the truth I have realized I simply do not have enough time in my life to explain what it is that I understand. It is far simpler to say that I understand myself, and to undertake the manifestation of that understanding.”

Excerpt from “The Dreamer in the Dream”

I’m not dead yet…

The rare and occasional visitor to the eye of paradox will note that I have been absent for the most part from my own blog. Ironically, this is not because I have nothing to say. Quite the opposite; I have too much to say and too little time to spend on writing any of it down. That is my reward for trying to improve my education and hold down a steady job. It underscores the problem of trying to do what is expected of you. I am expected to find my place in the world in spite of the fact that there is no place for me in this world. If you broke me up into bits and pieces, there is some place in the world for each of those parts.

Unfortunately, whenever I have tried to fit in somewhere, the world has tried to chop away at the parts of me that stick out. Since I have never found much more than a finger hold anywhere, the effect is more like people stomping on my fingers while I dangle from the edge of a cliff. Needless to say, I’ve done a bit of falling. I smash on the rocks, pick up the pieces and climb back up again, but for all the work that entails I do not make a lot of progress in life.

I have to be fair, there are always a few people willing to throw me a line. My family usually gives me enough slack to inch my way up the cliff and find another fragile finger hold. My friends often hold out a hand and I can make it safely onto a ledge that seems stable enough, if still a fair climb from the top of the abyss. I was even able to reach and hold out on such a ledge entirely on my own for a couple of years. I completed the courses for my AA in Business and found a decent paying contract job.

I want to hail these as accomplishments, but I feel as if I could have accomplished more in the time I have sacrificed in the process. In the absence of any coherence of body and soul, creativity is my sole satisfaction in life, and these commitments offer no creative outlet and leave me no time for the creative outlets I’ve tried to develop online. The frustration that this causes tends to turn anything I try to write into a complaint; since I prefer not to complain, I simply do not write and months or even years pass in silence.

It makes me miss the days when I had no job and no decent place to live, but enough time to at least type down my thoughts for future reference. Now, I can truly appreciate not having enough time to think. Compared to that, not having time to organize my thoughts, to apply them to stories or simply explore them in a way that a typical reader might be able to follow, no longer seems like as great a problem. The real problem is, I do not know if my thoughts can fit into this world any better than I do. After all, they were inspired by the circumstances of my life. I know a few people who believe that I do not fit in because of the way I think.

I try not to put too much stock in my thinking, though. To me, what is really important is what I can understand. That is what motivates me to write. To me, that’s where the magic and mystery of life are found, in understanding.  So… I’m not dead yet. I still have a lot to say. It just might be a while before I can say what I want to. Until then, I will post what I can; I will post things I’ve already written, back when I wrote things down simply to get the ideas out of my head.