Insoluble Solutions

Is there a philosophy of rejection? Ways to cope with rejection? Things to be learned from rejection? Is there anything to take the sting out of rejection? Is there a way to reject rejection?

I don’t really have any answers. What I do have is a moment in time to sort out all my little operations. Various emotions trickle through my ribs. I wear a necklace of mastodons. If existence is wet, existence gets me wet. If existence is existential, existence makes me existential. If existence is a synonym for being there, I’m here, trying to solve life with a lubricant and a film projector.

Can I be personal for a moment? My eyebrows have a myriad conspicuous hairs corkscrewing out of my brow. This is how I describe reality. I see it as a diffusion of gradients. Then some gravity comes along and exaggerates the weight of morning. The gradients get squeezed into tangents, Yorkshire canaries and springs. Some become ridges and knolls. A few get stratified. They become laminated. They become glazed and delicious. Fortunately, we have forklifts for these things. And packaging and aisles and three-bean salad.

Not all gradients are granite. There are giraffes. There are greyhounds and Indiana. Goodbyes on the porch, obsessions on the road, discrepancies in road construction and drug sensitivity. Eggshell, ivory, and cream. Outer space, onyx, and midnight blue. Some gradients are ice and show necks of themselves floating in arctic water howling in preternatural silence to the indifferent stars.

What happened, exactly, in 1967? The world got weird and weirder and then it got cooked in various conversations. Conversation is what people used to do when they got together. They didn’t have gadgets in their hands. Nothing to stare at but the lines in their hand, the hair on their wrist, the time on their watch. So they talked and shared experiences. The raw experience of life became tasty morsels of narrative.

And there’s plenty of that to go around.

When one thinks of the infinite number of infinitesimal elements and infinitesimal causes that contribute to the genesis of a living being, and that the absence or deviation of any one of them can affect the stability of the overall evolution or result in an inflammation of musical notes that can humor a feeling into a public exhibition of tiny sea polyps and crackleware, the chandeliers of the unconscious burn a little brighter.

The world is largely imaginary. You can’t see darkness with a torch. You have to experience the darkness in its natural state, which is a swimming pool late at night in the Hollywood hills imbued with underwater lights. The shimmer is hypnotic. But it’s not my pool. It’s an imagined pool. I imagined it for my imaginary life as a movie director. That life lasted for not quite a minute. Then I decided to become an astronaut. And now I’m 167 pounds of dark energy pounding images into a laptop screen.

Lately, I’ve been tossing peanuts to crows. They’re among the few birds we have left. I want to make life a little easier for them. But I have to pay attention. Sometimes I wait to see if they go for the peanuts and trip over a tree root or irregularity in the sidewalk. I now have scabbed knees. I haven’t had scabbed knees since I was nine.

I’ve never really learned to sew. But so what?

The paintings of Vermeer are spellbinding. The lucidity is stunning. Women read letters, pour milk, gaze affably at the viewer or focus on a piece of needlework. In The Astronomer, a man with extraordinarily long hair and wearing a large heavy robe is seated at a table. It is said that the man might be Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the “Father of Microbiology.” He leans forward in the light of a window with one hand on a globe, the other on a corner of the table. The scene is imbued with the spirit of inquiry. 

Our past undresses in our emotions. Or is it the other way around? Our emotions undress in our past. No one can predict the future. That’s good. Let’s keep it that way. It’s good to comb the fibers before spinning them, if you get my drift. It’s ochre o’clock and the tide is beginning to walk onto the land and cover the mud with the dream that is water.

Conception grows by contrast and heat. For example, I need a flashlight to search in the closet for a bottle of white vinegar. If I find a rainforest instead, it’s generally not a problem. What worries me is losing an entire planet. What kind of species destroys an entire planet?

It’s not amusing to watch a society collapse. Do you believe in something greater than yourself? I don’t believe I have a self. Not really. I think I’m a constellation of cells that evolved out of nature like anything else crawling or walking or slithering around looking for food and comfort.

Because it’s all just a dream. And the clowns weep softly.