Another Explanation.

There are things going on in my life and inside me at the moment that might prove useful in the long run, but at the moment they don’t feel good. Going beyond those parameters of existential enquiry to which one has hitherto been accustomed can be enervating. It leaves a big question mark hanging over any sense of self-worth, it dilutes one’s belief in the capacity to deal with the mundane world, and it precipitates an image of oneself as an empty vessel from which any attempt at communication would be pointless. Hence the lack of blog posts lately.

This isn’t a mere case of the winter blues, nor is it only about the current problems with the new agent and the uncertainty over my home, unpleasant and complicated though they happen to be. If only it were that simple. Neither do I make any exaggerated claim for the dark night of the soul. This is just what happens when you go a-walking beyond the cultural and spiritual tram lines without leaving them behind once and for all. Until you learn to exist routinely in the greater reality beyond, you have a habit of losing your way and ending up in some dark places. It’s happened before and I sense it happening with other people, too; it’s just that they haven’t clocked what’s happening to them yet. Instead they tend to tear their hair, weep copiously, and ask questions like ‘Why am I so worthless?’ and ‘Am I going insane?’ Probably not, although the people who never leave the safety of the tram lines generally see it that way.

I intend to be back once the fallout has settled and I can breathe freely again.

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Just a little footnote, something that hasn’t done much for my mood over the last few days:

I was watching a news report from one of the coastal areas in north eastern Japan. They were in a small town that had been badly damaged by the tsunami, but not destroyed altogether. A local man was describing the event in such a restrained, phlegmatic way that the horrors seemed almost commonplace. And then he made one little remark that arrested my breathing:

‘I saw a child being washed out to sea.’

How the hell am I supposed to process a statement like that?