Friday Philosophy: Jump Shift?

Phase in.  Phase out.  Out of Phaze.

Phase shift.  

Some people shift paradigms.  I shift points of view.  Sometimes I have felt forced to do so.  Sometimes I choose to do so intentionally.  Sometimes I have taken a chance at shifting willingly.

I’ve come to the fork in the road, so to speak.  (Insert Slauson Cutoff joke here)  Do I step on the transporter or not?  Do I scatter my atoms across the universe?

Mitosis?  Cytokinesis?  Meiosis?  

Will these metaphors never cease?

Some people write prose.  Some people write poetry.  Some people write both.  I haven’t yet discovered how to write both simultaneously.

My life is an open book.  It used to be a closed book, filled with paragraphs, chapters, even volumes of unwritten prose.  Every novel I read was rewritten in my head to tell the story of the parts not written by the author.  Perhaps that’s how I kept my sanity.  Perhaps it was part of the insanity.  Sometimes one has to live in the fiction in order to survive visiting reality.  So I’ve lived hundreds of lives on thousands of planets.  

When reality is more insane than the fiction, I’ve chosen the fiction.  I became Gaby Plauget.  I  have been Qing-jao.  I was Reverdy Jian.  Perhaps I am India Carless, Trouble on the wire.

I’ve switched genres.  Damn have I switched genres.  The Me who lives inside my head has reached conclusions about life and identity and existence and had to change to understand the book that is this life.  The Writer writes the pages not written.  The pages say what the pages say.  The Reader is always the last to know.  And sometimes the Reader has resisted turning the page, in Fear of what the next chapter might bring, fearful of having to endure pain, totally aware of past scars.  But the Writer writes.

Art Link Storyboard Performance Art A life is a play in many acts each day a new scene Sometimes one is the actor and sometimes the script but a life only attains full measure or meaning when one assumes the role of director –Robyn Elaine Serven –November 30, 2005

Through life altering changes, I have done what the Writer has written.  The biggest change occurred when I figured out that I, the Director, was actually the person in charge, that I have the power to tell the Writer how the story goes, that I can rough out the next chapter before it is written.

From time to time, I have changed the delivery mechanism.  When I transitioned I began to share my story.  Sometimes prose, more rarely poetry.  One or the other, but almost never both.  Entering one room involves leaving the other.

Decisions, decisions.  What to do.  Is it time to take another plunge into the poetic portion of my brain?  Or at least make the attempt?  Do I turn the spigot, knowing full well that in the past experience has proved that turning on the poems quite likely turns off the prose?  Does Louis Wu use the stepping disk?

Do these metaphors ever cease?

Art Link Inner Light Personal Evolution (an unfinished poem about a life not ended) Brief moments of awareness… like the immersion of a skipping shell in the liquid of another life. Suppression…Submission…Denial Insistence…Duality…Fear Anger…Confusion…Dissociation Coalescence of self… the protecting shell loses momentum, ceases skipping, and begins to sink. Control…Struggle…Pain Loss…Crisis…Acknowledgment Hope…Death…Existence Birth of identity… the sinking of the shell propels up a splash, a pearl of dew, which hangs suspended. Trying…Failing…Crying Learning…Knowing…Growing Assimilating…Adapting…Being Examination of soul… while gravity stops, the revealing lens zooms through the wet, uncovering layers. Exhilaration…Disappointment…Loss Pride…Necessity…Doubt Honesty…Certainty…Change. Assertion of gender… Vibration of ego… internal bonds break, the mist that was dew drifts on the wind, scattering slowly. Listening…Traveling…Speaking Reading…Witnessing…Writing Relocating…Suffering…Returning Perusal of purpose… catching an updraft the mist attaches to motes of dust from other life paths. Joining…Disclosing…Contributing Attending…Despairing…Meeting Enjoying…Loving…Committing Analysis of life… shifting perspective the damp dust provides fertile ground for germs of wisdom . . . dot dot dot –Robyn Elaine Serven –January 17, 1997

I know myself.    When it seems like I don’t know what I want, Fear lingers in the mist, perhaps a page or two in the future.

The Writer has yet to write what it is.  The Reader is in suspense.

Both are aware of the past.  My history indicates that when reality becomes insane, sometimes I head for greener pastures.  I have been a master of the jump discontinuity.

The one constant is change.