sangfroid vs. BRAMBLE

30 January 2009 - 12:07

<<--unravel * reintegrate-->>

I used to want to be sort of like a vampire. Conflicted, aroused, but extraordinarily restrained. I used to think a world where the people I loved and I were passionate, well-dressed, sensitive, sensual, in-control(-but-barely) creatures seemed like heaven.

I still appreciate the style of that world. But in recent years I have become aware of a new energy I find more intoxicating.

I have appropriated the word bramble for my own use and meaning because there is something about it -- the way it sounds, or possibly even what it denotes (essentially, a thorny plant with chambered berries) -- that reminds me of this energy I'm attracted to.

Somewhere in my imagination there is a Being who is incredibly vibrant and engaged. Electric, playful, feisty, sassy, vivid, warm, lighthearted, present, devil-may-care, jaunty, glowing, mirthful. A dancing, giggling cat, perhaps, who is also very naughty and inappropriate and avant garde -- but challenging with a purpose. Challenging in order to bring more light to systems that have become caricatures of what they were intended to be, challenging in a way that mocks anything that doesn't have truth or vitality in it. The key to this Being is that it is unbeatable and eternal. No matter what you do to it, it is always itself. No matter how hard you knock it down, it gets right back up and keeps dancing.

Wow, I keep thinking about something from years ago, and I realize that I've already written about this far more eloquently than I have today:

There is an unstoppable force, a force that can endure anything, a force that can make art out of everything. The only thing to do is to be that force, and let it free you from EVERY concept, from every idea of what love and pain are, until it is all a dance, until you are so full of new you are tearing at the fabric.

That's the spirit of bramble -- its beauty, its power. I suppose what I've become more sensitive to in recent years is the comedy of it, the sheer hilarity. In making it into a character rather than a force (or wind, which it also is, and the feeling of being in love, which it also is)... In making it into a character, I've come to understand that it is something I can emulate and something I always have access to.

Right now, for example, so many things about my life (and about the world as we have created it) make absolutely no sense to me and seem like drudgery, and I don't know how I will navigate or what choices I will make. But what I do know, and what will get me through this, is the stance I want, the pose I want to strike.

100% fierce bramble kitten.

<<--unravel * reintegrate-->>