To the sentient traveler, life is a journey of endless revelation…
This is a journal of personal, mostly random reflections on being human. Like other seekers, I struggle with this. So many unanswerable questions: What does it mean to “be,” or to be no longer? Why do we love and hate? How can we at once create such great beauty, yet practice such unspeakable cruelty? A few words or a sketch, a poem or a song, can move us to intense joy or almost unbearable longing. From what do these emotions spring?
I believe part of the answer lies in our need to belong, to belong somewhere or to someone. It’s in our DNA. Great literature and theater and cinema spring from the joy of connection or the tragedy of loss. And the singular malady in modern society is existential loneliness arising out of our increasing isolation as individuals. As a species, we are social animals. However solitary a particular individual might appear, we all need human contact to be healthy and fully alive.
Art in the broadest sense speaks to this. Artists as a group are notoriously solitary. Yet they create for others to see or hear or read. The artist’s creation is an expression of identity, an exposing of emotions in a search for understanding. And art is the tool most adept at awakening our emotions, however we might repress them. We receive it at such a profound level that it cuts through all our resistance, sometimes tearing open wounds, sometimes mending them. It is here, in our common vulnerability, that we come together in our humanity.
Over the years, I’ve embraced these questions. I’ve kept journals, read and written narratives and verse, written and sung songs. I’ve scribbled notes on scraps of paper, collected art and taken the occasional photograph. Always I’ve been driven by this same curiosity, or by the need to share my own emotions. None of this has been especially orderly, most has been intermittent and much of it random. But computers and the web finally suggest a way to pull it together. Thus, this site. I make it public because, like all of you, I’m seeking connection.
More than a few themes surface within these posts: Our longing for connection, the mystery of the divine, the indescribable lightness of being, the profound sadness of being no longer. These and others are the dimensions of our existence. Some entries offer understanding, some questions…and sometimes I’m just moved to write or comment.
st, 01/09/15