Bleeding In Black and White

“Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”  – Friedrich Nietzsche

In the past few weeks, I’ve been slowly losing my will, my hope, my heart. What takes us from a thousand vivid adventures filled with risk and reward—a bank volt stuffed with expectation and payoff—to watching our life slide into the bottom of a cold coffee cup? Don’t worry, I can answer that question myself: it’s boredom.

I don’t know of anything so mentally debilitating than to lose your sense of purpose. And the more you dwell on it, the worse it seems to get. Was is Émile Zola’s character Octave Mouret or Van Gogh who said, “I would rather die of passion than of boredom.” Lately, I agree. With the fading of duties, of direction, I’m convinced that a person will eventually begin to lose themselves. Their identity thins with each misty grey sunrise void of interest, of practice and achievement. What’s left of us when that precious presence gives in and lies down? Can it be whispered awake again with the once infatuated kiss of intent?  

Sitting around on standby, conversing about nothing, holding in a circular pattern, can and will threaten who we are. What we do. How far we can see, whether tomorrow or eternity. To you and to myself, a challenge to stay awake—wide awake—and vigilant. Storm the gallery each morning to find new works of opportunity and wonder, and express that wonder in the material you write. Graft special textures into the colorful skin of your characters as the purest of poetic air lifts you above stagnant circumstance.

Though the stage lights dim, I will not sit out the scene for which I was placed to play a part. Instead, I will take my mark and wait expectantly in the wings where exuberant passion readies and idle self is estranged.

To love. To speak. To stand.