8/12/10
Rebellion--the sweet contrary.

Apparently, I felt so enamored of this day’s theme, that I rebelled against the task I had set myself, and am now writing it a day late.

The night before this post, though, I dreamed I was two people: the chaser and the chased, both orbs of light surrounded by limbed (limned?) bodies. We, the chaser and the chased, were in an old fashioned structure, a cross between my grandparents’ old barn, and the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris—huge vaulted ceiling, grey careworn walls, and multiple stories to run back and forth on. As the rebel, the chased, I reveled in the game of escape, the adrenaline of taking chances. I taunted my pursuer by letting her almost catch up, then darting through an impossibly obstacled passage. As the chaser, I was resolute that the whippersnapper must be caught and made to obey, and satisfied that sooner or later I would bring her to her senses, to a stop. Yin and yang of rebellion, an ongoing dance of satisfaction and delight.

Many of us have moments in our lives where we are forced to make decisions that seem like, or actually are, a lose-lose situation, and in order to survive, we need to turn off the fear of the unknown, that attention to social convention, and just strike out, make a move. Some of us make a lifetime habit of it. Some of us (erhem) make such a habit of rebelling that we can barely endure conventional situations. It is to you, to us, that I dedicate this entry.

Love your imagination, your lighted orb, your spark. Love your willingness to survive, to get up and dance when nobody else is brave enough. Love your art, your colors, your friends who understand you, your friends who don’t. Love your brain with its lovely infoldings and crenellations, its sparking ideas, the thresholds it likes to approach. Love your gut, the strength of your feelings, your certainties, your fears. Love your inner structure-lover, as well as your inner structure-hater. After all, even creativity takes a lot of practice, a lot of repetition in your originality. Storm the ramparts of those old castles you’ve made, and be prepared to find another version of yourself inside, ready to bolt.