Potential Difference

Writing as potential difference, voltage across two points. Bereft of the tension produced by longing, the spark which impels the stream of writing does not come.

You still have your loyal commitment to failiure of course. Not proper failiure truly- that would be too much of a success. No, you do your quiet almost-middle-class form of failiure. That withdrawing, absenting yourself from situations where you may have to prove yourself; exams, essays, creative endeavours. All this will be passed off as a fiction. You will not commit. That would make you vulnerable and would consist in that most vulgar of things- being sincere to yourself. Success also envoked that other most troubling spectre- closure. And the repeat performance.

There may not have been the couch and that particular silent other then, but that fear of endings and closure was ever present. The undammable tears at the end of The Snowman, such that the only option was for it to be shown on an eternal cycle of rewindings till your 5 year ild lids grew too heavy. The fear of the persistently held off possibility of the drill caused by my 8 year cavity-free run. And then there was the academic success. The growing conviction that this was all just an elaborate structure that was being erected for me to fall from. Potential difference rose not just in percentage points but across the synapses of an ever more disordered mind. So rather than fall, you jumped.

And how liberating it is finally, after they slowly put you back together, from within and without. Those fractured parts reformed into a whole, stronger for the marks of dissection it bears. The fall from the heights of perfection and a peculiar sort of idealism had a curious landing place. For your life then was all in your mind, a perfect non-entity, trivially true. You finally discovered that you may not be able to fail up there but then again you're also a blank page.

: 17 Nov 2005 01:13 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem