Sunday, February 12, 2012

Long Division

The term writer's block isn't unfamiliar to me, I've had my share, but that isn't what's going on here.  Awake without any notion of what to do with my two hour window before work, I eat breakfast and stare into the distance.  Read? No, I don't want to read.  Ski? no.  So I sit.  And as much as sitting and staring may seem a waste of time, every now and again, that is exactly what I need.  To let my mind stew and work out the jumbled mess tossed in from the previous day(s).  Thus, I write. With a blank slate before me there is no limit to what can be created, no limit other than that which I impose upon myself.  However, consciousness can get  in the way.  Ideas have a life all their own.  Unraveling the mind sometimes requires an absence of thought rather than intensive contemplation.  So what finds its way onto the page is a mystery even to me.  To allow my fingers free reign over the keys is like watching figures take form from a mist.  Ideas that have been in the works in the back of my mind, now have the  freedom to manifest themselves however they, not I, see fit.  "What," is rarely the question for me though, rather my mind is typically concerned with where.  Where am I, in time, place, condition?

The simplest of questions is less clear cut than it would seem.  Where I am, in a sense, is Utah.  But saying I am in Utah gives no understanding to anyone who has never been here.  And what of those who have seen this landscape with their own eyes?  Perception is unique.  What this place represents to me is not the same as it may be for others.  More than the view of snow capped mountains or an immensity that stirs the soul, it is personal world view that shapes this place.  Anything I could tell you about Utah, or any other place, would do no justice to personal experience.  I am here at a time in my life when uncertainty is a companion I take on willingly.  I am discovering the world and life on my own terms.Set backs are as instrumental in defining this place as is the freedom of breaking away, or the beauty of it all.  Where I am now, is slightly out of focus.  I can not believe this place to be limited by borders, political, geographical, or otherwise; its enormity defies all that.  Where I am has no boundaries, no limitations.  These high desert mountains divide the continent, and for me, the world.  Everything I thought I knew about the natural world was learned eastward.  Putting that behind me, I must see the world anew; and that, is perhaps representative of where I am most of all.