Anxiety of Feeling

Under the blue tent, square hay bales line the perimeter and sun shines as sticky children chase each other. I watch, docile and dreaming. A playful dog runs past followed by a little girl in a white and pink dress. The tent shudders in the wind. A child stumbles and falls into a hay bale. Does fear lie in mortality? That the wonder around us is relatively unconcerned with who and what and where we are. The understanding that life is unknown, even if you are Billy Graham or Buddha or Da Vinci. Does fear lie in the unknown, unknowable and the unseen? I don’t know.

Everyone says when you have enough happiness nothing else matters. When you surround yourself with good energy you will always be happy. That's crap. I’ve had happiness. I’ve had joy beyond joy and I’ve enjoyed the trust of love but happiness cannot be trained. It cannot be taught. It cannot be forced. Without sadness and melancholy there would be no dreams. There would be no art. There would be no life. No freedom. In only a few souls does the desire for freedom hang from their stomach like a hook from a line. In others too, so rare, so far removed from the world, does the desire for justice leak like puss from a wound. The silent sadness that lingers in their eyes stands as a rare testament of humanity. Their thanks from God and the gods and society is as rare as an albino butterfly. Their tears leak into pillowcases of pitiable honesty but it is this tenderness that carries humanity forward.

And I feel this sadness now as I watch a child dig a hole. His fingernails crumbling with dirt and mud, white shirt streaked with finger-painted mud marks. I feel sorry for him. I hope he does not have this pain, the anxieties and fears and hopes and dreams. I hope he blends in and feels wanted. But for me, for my soul, anxiety roams like a feral cat and the question resounds, why am I tortured and to what end will my soul be healed?

There is little doubt this torture comes from the fact that we think we live in glorious movies while sitting on front porches watching cars lumber past as cicadas play the dramatic soundtrack. Each day is one film containing many tragic comedies subtly undertoned with death. That the last movie cigarette will keep us alive, even if we don‘t want it. It’s smoke circles into the air and descends out of our sight like a ball over the fence. And cars drive past, its occupants slow silhouettes. Some stare back, perhaps wondering what memories lie in our souls and when we make eye contact they look away as if hungry alligators tremble at their feet. A pink-orange sky throbes behind their car while the sun sets and ants scatter. Knowledge of existence engulfs us while we try to mask it with alcohol, but existence keeps reminding us after 365 films that we are getting old. Ten years fade and another ten diminish into cemeteries where we expect to be remembered for TV, video games and golf scores.

The child who had fallen into the hay bale screams as her cheeks glisten with wetness in the sunlight. Her mother runs over to offer comfort and soon the sobs subside and the child quickly on her way around the tent again. How quickly we regress pain. I suppose it is our greatest defense mechanism. But why not embrace it? Why don’t we enlist all our passions into one grand army within our soul, happinness stands next to melancholy, tears next to cheek-cracking smiles, and tell our fears, anxieties and depression to stand as it were and fight alongside our joys? It is this I intend to embrace within these entries. To experience dreariness for its own sake and to laugh with it, fight it and embrace it. But most of all I want to live.