Monday, May 30, 2016

T E N S I O N

You know something. You know something I don't. You know something nobody else knows... and everyone knows something you don't know.

In the theatre of our shared lives, this iteration creates tension.

Some of these things you can communicate - many of them; so many that were you to begin speaking and never stop, your physical body would deteriorate long before you were able to accomplish such a semiotic ritual.

You might draw them, but still - there is not enough space in the universe to contain the infinite complexity of a human life.

Sing them, record them, dance interpretively through the passing of your mortality, and broadcast your every waking moment, and there will always be a basic inequality between information you know and that which you can express.

In silence, sometimes you can hear the truth that you already know everything, though.

Only in complete honesty do we have a chance at understanding.

But is honesty in its purest form even possible? Are there secrets that burrow so deep we hide them from ourselves? When you look into the reflection of your own eyes, is it you at whom you are staring?

We have built our selves so carefully because the truth is dangerous. We have named and affixed to ourselves these kits of identity because we know that underneath it all there is no core upon which it is based.

We are not circles. We are triangles. At the boundaries of the self, we gather and tessellate, each holding together like otters at sea to protect ourselves from the void below.

But this forms a shadow. The shadow of the self. The shadow that, while comforting, means that we are blocking the light.

Through sharing our tension, we give each other the tools to destroy one another - and only by being deconstructed can we see through to what lies beyond.

Be silent. Pay attention. Read. Read the walls and the city, read the strangers who stand next to you. The degree to which things appear random is the degree to which we are unable to see the pattern that lies underneath.

It is there, though. This strange attractor that calls to us in fitful dreams and inebriation, these memories we look in upon through cracks in the wall, the voice that speaks to us in our loneliness... it is the singularity of shared experience, and it is the light.

And it is the tension.

I will not give in to the fear of being broken.

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