Drifting, Encore

The final holiday gathering, the final stone in the Infamily Gauntlet, abbreviated though it may be, descends. Fingersnap won't work – the only way out is through (though it's almost always more enjoyable in reality than my brain lets it be for the three months leading up to it):

“... for trying to please the brain is like trying to drink through your ears.”

— Alan Watts, THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY, p. 62

Thought pinballing about through the gutter of my mindstream this morning: for much of my adult life, or at least since I ran away and joined the circus — and dropped out once I realized I wasn't cut out for the life of a lion tamer but was only using my mediocre skillset in taming goats as a pretext to run away —I've spent an inordinate amount of time adrift in my dinghy paddling after a moving ship, the HMS NewandImproved, loathing myself for never being able to catch it.

Current approach a relief, then: instead of chasing the HMS NewandImproved, best to let it drift into the horizon and wish it the best while I outfit my dinghy with reinforcements and make said dinghy a floating city of myself, able to recognize islands worth investigating and visiting time and again but to keep enough of myself for myself that I'm able to appreciate the value of those certain islands, no matter how exhausting the occasional port of call might be.

Once more, then, unto the breach of this gauntlet's final docking of the year.

Listening: L'INCORONAZIONE DI POPPEA, by Biosphere; ORIGIN—EP, by Kelly Moran.