The Combustible Alchemist Returns

Walburga, a residency of sorts. Ventnor, NJ

You may think you know your limitations. Tests of endurance may appear so extreme, you think you will never make it through. During these kinds of days and months, it is not how strong you are but how willing you are to go to the end of the road. The strength of your purpose carries you from the intolerable, the inexplicably disastrous situation, to a frame of mind where you can endure. If you are prone to such situations, you will develop the skills to pass from suffering to transcendence. You may be eager to share these periods that move beyond the ordinary. Many will have no interest. This thing of yours has no relevance to them. Your travels through hard space appear as a string of awful complaints, which often they are. There may be no interest whatsoever. It will be hard for those around you to comprehend since their lives do not include such things. They have other trials and tribulations to pass through. Different from yours and unwilling to share the intense human experience, unless, of course, they take the stage while ignoring the feverous brilliance of your own efforts. You must sigh and walk away since most of life is like this. The reverberation of your spirit so inflamed will seem like a dead spark. Your ardor is not their ardor. Vice versa, as well.

Do not shrink from this accomplishment, that you live still. You may fall off the face of the earth at the multitude of harpies left shrieking in your ears. You battle your way back to the world you now inhabit. You wonder, “Who are these people here? Surely I know them but also I do not.” A strange mood to place yourself in. There it is, though. You operate on the edge of their world, tottering into your own. You drink a cup of tea, looking at them with vast eyes, wanting to exchange beyond tawdry human interaction but you cannot. They do not ride that ship. Whaling men and frigates do not interest them. You are lost in a zone where your unconscious proclivities wrap around ordinary swells where you bob and weave eternally. Self-help books can only go so far. Motivational enthusiasm cannot solve your conundrum. You balance along an endless sea of misconceptions, failing to make your case for the moment. But there are others who will put forward those who write about the experience. The right poet can make the world well again. The waiting for resilience, for communion, may always pass you by but there are strings of finely wrought words out there that will comfort and keep you on the road to your true self, unencumbered by the way things are.

Stay on your long and fantastic journey, that odyssey of the mind in the modern world. These speculations, with little bearing on the world at large, where the inclinations of your own mind sit to comfort you, may not be appreciated. No matter. You did them while no one was looking. And they were good.