Not Knowing Why

Don't worry. Be happy. Don'tworrybehappy. Ain't there some loving for the undergrowth, for the passed-participled peoplefeelings that tend to irk and grumble in a lesser appreciated part of the stomach. I'm talking about emotions and expression of them.

Insofar as life has been lived, there's reasoning behind why emotions come to us, why we feel the pull of something in a certain direction, why we like a particular song. I've lived that. Messages, from something I cannot comprehend; guidance, for something that's best. That remains. The more acceptable an emotion is, the more easier it is to feel it. Even victimising oneself is easy to do when one knows they are going to be pitied and thus fed the return-movement of the energy they are spilling out in their outward display of turmoil. That's been a recurrent blueprint of my behavior, that is, until I noticed it - then it began to change, little by little. And for those emotions that are easy to feel, we can find reasons why it is easy to feel them because the circumstances around us seem to be shaped towards their justification. Serendipity may have a hand in that, or maybe that too, is but a life-employed tool. I exemplify: Boy sees girl. Boy admires girl from distance. Boy meets girl. Boy gets to know girl. Boy develops a liking for girl. Boy asks girl out. Boy goes out with girl. Each of these steps is acceptable, done and done, and the world is ready to see the scenario play out. The props are arranged, the lines can be said, voilà drama, voilà relationship, and the emotions that are associated with that are évoquées. Lighting's in the right place, you notice later. So is the audience placed and pleased well to watch it unfold. Stories.

Now, I can't say that what the boy feels for the girl he feels because of the circumstances, or life orchestrated something else entirely that seemed to just take this circumstantial form but had a different purpose. Life's choice. What I want to return to is the justification. Why did the boy feel what he felt for her. Reasons are now heard.

All's well. But then what happens is there's a slew of other emotions from the palette that the brush accidentally (doubt it) streaks over the lifesituationcanvas. Fear, angst, anger, anxiety, rainbows. And this confuses the justification-cloud. If I'm happy, it could be because of reason x or y! If I'm sad, reason z or w. If I'm bored, reason x and y and z and w (overstimulation). If I'm sad, reason x^2. If they were easily boxable emotions then I am seeing that perhaps (yes, conjecture) that it is easier to pencil in ticks next to plausible causes depending on circumstances, even if they are 'negative' emotions.

This fifth paragraph breaks at my point. Emotions that are blurs. Emotions that are hues and the overlapping part of several Venn diagrams pancaked together. Emotions that centipede and devour leaves and then cocoon and butterfly. Emotions that fall in the drops of rain and slip down window panes, leaving trails that evaporate. One moment they are there, the next they are there, now they are there again, and it feels in the heat that they have never left but they do, whether it is by their perte en oubli, or overstimulation, or via ignorance through lenses defocusing. And I don't know why. Not why they disappear, though I don't know why they disappear. But I don't know why they come.

II exemplify: Whitney Houston died recently. I didn't much pay attention to her music during her life, though after hearing some more of it on television, it caught my attention that she was quite talented. Now, usually songs carry some sort of meaning or seed of knowledge that sprouts just at the right time that guides me in a particular direction. Sometimes it seems unlikely, but the messages are there and at the right moment, I click. So perhaps this is on its way with all of this, and I am just interjecting because I find myself aware of the process and somehow fascinated by its goingon. Life has many Hermes/gay messengers. Bear with, back to the point. How will I know if he really loves me? Doubt. It's been stuck in my head, but this is what my mind can come up with for the meaning of this song. Now that I just saw the lyrics online though, I noticed that yes it is about love and doubt, and perhaps how it could relate to me. Lightbulb.

The song is concrete-enough. With emotions, there's more of a boundary-haze, so I be not sure where is where. I haven't actually pointed to a particular vague emotion because I don't feel comfortable with this medium of expression. But there are things I feel that are not conventional or, couldsay, acceptable, in the minds of others. I accept them, because I have put the sword to my own neck and wasn't able to unfeel. But then the tension comes. If these are feelings that aren't normally expressed but ought to be expressed, then I do not know the medium for doing so. Expressing them in any case, is risky, because I don't even know where they come from, or how can they be justified. I know I feel them though. So the question comes, do I just feel and wait for the feelings to pass through my digestive system, or do I feel and outfeel and actfeel, committed, insecurely, to them. Like throwing liquid out of a bowl. I don't know if it's acid. I don't know if it's water. Will I be killing the ducks outside, or waking them up with a little rain.

It's fascinating. Don'tworrybehappy. How will I know is what I have been trying to know, but again I can't know how I will know, I will just know when it's the moment to know; I will know when I know. Encore, it seems. Well, fun to have written this.

This week's English 344 reading on "Risk and Investment" in performance (and writing) carries significance. Risk means exposure. I consider why I write. To expose, to understand, to release, to communicate with myself, to go through a mental process. It comes down to this: if I am serious about writing - no, about living, since it is our umbrella and our rain - then I can only matter if I am invested, and thus if I expose myself, if I vulnerabilise myself, what I am is going to be... used, done, appreciated. God, that's scary. God, that's necessary.

I admit, then. I don't know what is going to happen, nor why, nor why I feel how I feel, nor why that. I might know in hindsight, if I get that. I'm just bridge-walking, peering over the edge at times like now, when I don't know a stone from its absence. But I'm going across.

Attraversiamo