“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”
- santiz Patanjali
I yoinked this from a blog I follow on Wordpress.
Just let it sink in.
Remember a time when you embarked on something, a project or new endeavour that excited you, made it so that you could almost feel the very cells in your body tingle with anticipation. I felt that way when I saw my actors at the very first rehearsal perform the play I had written. Not the read-through; when we began to block movement and discuss emotion. The act of seeing in front of me that which I had written, come to life, made me come alive inside with a tense, jangled enthusiasm.
It's safe to say that that play is the one piece of creativity born from my own mind that has seen a beginning and an end. I have many ideas whirling around in my head but none that I can grasp and collect and piece together into anything with potential. My computer at home has a dozen, if not more stories that have been started with a flourish and grand idea but never made it past the first or second chapter.
I've been working on a book lately that expands on the play I wrote but now it feels trite and silly. It hasn't any character development. It has a beginning, middle and an end yet gradually, it has become a plodding one-note effort. I'm bored with it. It has ceased to excite me and unfortunately, will probably end up on the cyber shelf next to all the others.
However there is a dark, whispery thought that has beckoned over the past year. I'm not sure if there's a trigger for it's timeliness but it seems to be calling a little louder each time. It happened during my drive to work this morning, ironically after I marvelled at the loveliness of the sun's rays shooting to earth through the clouds. I do a lot of that these days; looking for beauty in nature wherever I am, it makes my heart sing.
Anyway, the thought...a murmur really...to dive into the dark side. It's not a place I've been comfortable to go in the past, mainly because of that silly mindset that if you imagine something awful happening, it actually will. Like when you call in sick because what you really want to do is go to the beach but within a day or two, you actually do fall ill, that sort of thing. Perhaps I am hearing the call with a clarity I haven't known because I am more in tune with myself and aware that the dark side is as much a vibrant possibility as the "light" side. I am no longer afraid of acknowledging it.
The dark side is very deep and shadowy, like most people's. It's the watery harbour for those things you want to say, those things you want to do but by their very nature, go against every moral and ethical code. For the situations you think of that perhaps only see the dim light of your craziest dreams. Scary things. Terrible, terrifying things. Opposing situations that if you considered to bring them to the light of day, would leave cracks in your psyche that could eventually become wider and deeper until those harbour walls crumbled, its blocks of stone splashing into the murky water one by one until the demon in you was unleashed and there was nothing you could do to save yourself.
That's the call and if I heed it, I will have to go further and go deeper than I have attempted before. I will have to commit to writing something wretched and gasping that's been scraped off the sides of a dark, earthy pit. It feels like a giant snake stuck in a deep well, circling with a cruel patience and when I finally allow myself to succumb without fear, it will uncoil itself and up it will come. And all that I want to say will rise up with it. I will feel just like that saying above.
All my thoughts will break their bonds. My consciousness will expand in every direction.
Lisa...
No comments:
Post a Comment