Am I here|here I am
I was lost again today. I decided to return to the forest and fields, this time with a map, but still managed to lose myself. I was careful at first to stay on the familiar path. When I emerged in the field with the gravel pile, where I'd become lost the day before, I felt pulled to wander further, explore, cross the openness of the wheat field, but I withdrew. It was growing late. I could explore tomorrow morning when I was less thirsty and had more daylight. So I went back the way I came, I thought, but knew right away something was different. The trail seemed too steep. I didn't recognize the bends in the trees and their roots were more pronounced as they stretched across the path. My bike bounced and my foot caught a root, pulling toes down toward the dirt, rolling over and on up I stopped at another fork and felt that familiar feeling: Loss.
I'm trying to make something here. I think it will be something like a visual poem. But I am overwhelmed with ideas and feelings. My projects are less objects, more ideas. Then I might make things, spaces, happenings, maps or bits of speech to reflect the ideas I've stumbled onto. All kinds of digging and building precedes the discovery of these ideas as art. I'm deep into the excavation phase, maybe too deep. Almost lost myself today.
When I was rolling down the trail becoming increasingly lost almost tangentially I was conversing with myself, turning over some ideas I'd run into reading HyperObjects by Timothy Morton. Damn him. I almost lost my mind today. This passage tries to persuade me to accept that there is no present, only a past and a future. Okay. Heavy. What about this emphasis on the Now as a means for a deeper experience of consciousness? Uhm... Buddhism? So if there is no present moment, is there even a self? I can be selfless. I can get behind that. Myself is such an asshole sometimes. I could be of service to others... but that's so boring. Okay, let's have a self, just for fun. But do I really even exist!
I pulled out my phone, opened the compass app and found the west. Then I saw the sun and remember what I already know. The sun sets in the west, even in the east. I returned to the forest. It pulled me in like it was playing games with me, tricks on my sense of self. I'm really just another animal, no international data plan, using astrological bodies to navigate through unknown territory. Turn here, wait, go west... then there I was, here I am there I go. The forest found me, again.