Crisis

A man is a god in ruins

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature (1836)

Originally written in my journal on August 7th, 2006

Crisis… that’s the word of the day. Perhaps it is the word for these times. It’s everywhere. It’s personal and it’s global. Is there no escape? Is this really how life is and I have finally woken up? Is play time over? Who decides? What decides? What am I going to do? What am I not going to do? Jon called me at 7:17am today. His first words were “Kel, help me!” He was up all night doing coke, drinking, and smoking cigarettes with the usual suspects. It would be just another night blending to day but he’s ill so now he is paying the price. He’s been ill and trying to get better but he’s in an environment that’s not good for healing. He’s feeling out of control, anxious, hot, cold, trembling… that’s his body talking to him, rebelling against the way he’s been living. It's exerting its will forcing him to make changes. It’s up to him to get with the program. Is life cruel or is it our own overgrown sense of what life is all about? We are always in pursuit of what we think is better. Are we not born into this world complete? Why do we spend our whole lives looking for things to fulfill us? Why can’t we just be? We are imaginative and creative beings. What am I imagining? Fear? Doubt? Lack of purpose? What am I creating? Desolation? Isolation? Anxiety? Depression? Rage? There has to be a greater purpose to my life than just doing battle with myself. It seems now I must battle life itself. All these things that are closing in around me, life is beyond them. They are just obstacles for me to get through or around. The question is how clean can I navigate? There is the future space and my now space. My now space is filled with obstacles while my future space looks like an oasis. Will I land calmly and safely? Triumphantly? Or will I be washed ashore bruised and battered gasping for air? Too many questions. Now to create answers, solutions, actions, and results. It’s creativity on the one hand and machine and robotic on the other. Fuck it. If I have to be a machine then I will be a machine. End of journal entry.

Three years later I find myself back at this very place facing the same challenges and asking the same questions, except this time the future space seems remote and unattainable as the world spins off its axis. Is this a tragedy or a comedy in the classic Greek sense? I say it is both. Emotionally and spiritually I am in ruins which I can still laugh about now but as the sands slip through the hour glass there will be a reckoning and tragedy will be inevitable. What lies on the other side? The Truth I say! I don't mind being broken but to be broken and have to rejoin the charade would be a worse tragedy.