existential crisis

. . . But I suppose I am getting ahead of myself here.

The last nine months of my life have flowed through me like the flood waters following a tsunami. All of the extreme good and bad that have swallowed me haven’t left me much opportunity to breathe until now.

Words haven’t been expelled from my fingers in complete phrases and most have been left unconstructed. For someone who has spent a long time identifying himself as a writer there has been an unsettling loss for words. One exception perhaps is the occasional rambling left, unsupervised collecting figurative dust within the archival collection of unpublished blogs.

It’s these little morsels that tell the bigger story in my mind of this bipolar timeframe my life has labored through. Metaphorically speaking, I feel I reached new personal heights and quelled within surprising lows during this time. I have seen the uncontrolled burn of once beautiful landscape and saw shoddy temporary tenements built in its place.

Back in October things were rich with excitement, creativity, and passion! On camera I was piecing together spare moments from one of my strongest screenplays for use in a promotional trailer as well as seeing the first sparks of what would become a very successful local stage play. I was starting to find myself in a zone of collective artistic energy I hadn’t felt the warmth of previously. At last the building blocks in my life were starting to look like something vaguely recognizable as a finished product.

As a counter-balance, after closing my held-over play at the start of February instant karma seemed to kick me in the ass as I found myself involved in the “Man of La Mancha” (ala Terry Gilliam’s famed non-production) of theatrical messes as well as within deep mental brooding and emotional anguish I’d never known the likes of. This began to present me with the belief that my life had become little more than an arbitrary mess. Looking around at my life, everything appeared to be a complete accident. I don’t mean an accident waiting to happen, but non-contemplated choices and spurious whims played out.

When the rug is pulled out from under you in regular life, it makes you much more impressed by that old magician trick involving the table cloth and those fancy settings. The real world doesn’t work like that, because in truth all of the things in your life tumble to the ground and you scramble to grab for the ones that mean the most, the ones that you’re most likely to pull out of a fire.

Not surprisingly in times like these, I am again reminded of a favorite “Northern Exposure” episode. Chris Stevens puts it like this: “I've been here now for some days, groping my way along, trying to realize my vision here. I started concentrating so hard on my vision that I lost sight. I've come to find out that it's not the vision; it's not the vision at all. It's the groping. It's the groping, it's the yearning. It's the moving forward. I think Kierkegaard said it oh so well, 'The self is only that which it's in the process of becoming.'”

extraneous, i

There’s that safe old expression about waking up one day only to look in the mirror to see an unfamiliar face staring back. I contend there’s a different version of the story that involves getting hit by a figurative train only to survive to find whatever you once were propelled into the air several hundred feet. The old identity crashes to the ground into a million tiny pieces, offering up nothing the least bit salvageable. That shell of a person that remains has a sense memory for what once filled it and clambers to retrieve some semblance of what is recalled, but even the familiar pair of old shoes don’t quite fit right anymore. None of the steps they used to take feel appropriate, nor do any of the paths they have been travelling along.

The shell that I have become feels unfamiliar and extraneous. I have disappeared into the ether, but still retain the consciousness of whoever I was before. Sure, I too expect to know myself when I peek at the mirror, but am still surprised at my hairline, that extensive forehead, and these eyes that are starting to play tricks on me. Perhaps I have aged out of my own existence. Whatever I was before seems not to matter anymore. I have given up practically everything that interested me before. I don’t have the time or crave the time for it. I don’t know if I do anything to suit my own desires anymore. I only seem to choose things that boost, inspire, encourage, and please other people in someway. And that’s presuming a lot since I really feel incapable of maintaining any of my myriad relationships anymore. I just don’t have the energy to keep up with all of these people, their problems, or their minutiae. I feel like a pawn for everyone else to move around and place into whatever role they choose, or more significantly whatever roles are left over after they’ve chosen someone else in the place I thought meant for me.

I don’t think I really have a purpose or utility. For sometime I was a collection of things that represented life lived and that old proof of life. I have tried to whittle these down and focus more on memories as indicative of where I’ve been and what I’ve accomplished. This worked well for a while and I was even told I had a terrific memory. Now it seems as if erasing the past is the way to play this game. Looking back is all I get, however. As I search for a job I must constantly look backward to seize moments and phrases from thoughts and actions long gone to try and shine on paper. I do start to wonder, given the list of details about who I am, what I’m interested in, and the like, if I don’t sound more like someone I don’t know than my self.