Being Bruno

Preparing to never be ready

Is this really what we spend so much of our time doing ,preparing to never be ready? It is appearing so to me lately. Not that nothing gets done,, much does, but stuff takes time and watching life around me, for humans any way has looked a lot like setting up the situation, but never doing life. Sort of like cleaning the living room, but never getting to use it because of some perverse idea of perfection, and how that will make it all better, the illusive “if only” or “when” dominates and destroys. I wonder sometimes when this happened or if this always was, a condition of our humanness.

I am not proposing some sort of Bushian idea that destruction of all betterment gives true freedom sort of idiocy. That isn’t going to work and is anti, all that is good. Maybe some philosopher can believe that nothingness is freedom or enlightenment, but that is a mental masturbation I choose not to engage in.

I think, that if you believe something should be, then live it. As my beloved would say, and yes he is always on my mind (what a gift God gave me) Some models are useful and all models are wrong. So if it is your belief that discrimination is wrong, live it, don’t discriminate. If you would like to dance, dance. Don’t spend all your time getting ready to dance, or worse yet getting ready to get ready to dance, dance. Most likely we will fail miserably when we first try, and we might never be the best, but we will be dancing. But if your intention is to wow others with your ability to dance, then perhaps your actual pleasure lies elsewhere. That is a tough lesson to learn, and a VERY deep soul search. What is it that we truly want.

I think for me escape to beauty is what I most desire, and to share that with others, to give others a sense of, well the sensuous side of life, and that would be in the true meaning of the word, pleasure in all the senses, not just the bits down below. This could be because I am mildly autistic, or my earlier life when read back sounds like a over worked disaster soap opera, or maybe it just is. I think that is where I want to operate from, it just is. I make art, I paint, why? Because it is painful, but in a good way. It is work, it is the most painful, pleasurable expression, every stroke is freedom and the most back breaking weight of slavery. There is pleasure and struggle in laying down the paint, there is pride and disappointment in the finished work. There is longing and fear in the sharing of the final piece. I get more from doing painting than any drug could provide. So why have I taken the last seven plus years leave of painting?

Getting ready to get ready! I took a short time off, really then kept convincing myself that when I was ready, I would get everything ready, then be ready. A brilliant sort of avoidance, don’t you think? I still do it, but now I look at the paint and brushes and I feel as if, well as if I were being called to a revery, a revery that if I touch, I will get lost in. I know that every painting I produce for a time will be pure shit, so I tell my self that I must get ready lest I be judged poorly. Why can I not let it just be what it is? Am I really letting the fear of judgment of others stop me from answering a call to joy? Hmm, yes, with a small y. And yes with a big Y too. But I think there is, lying somewhere deep down, or not so deep down the fear that I won’t, or worse CAN’T be a pleasure to everybody. WHY do I need to please EVERYBODY? What sort of consumerist bull shit is that? And what sort of bigotry is that? Do I really need to collect praise like so many tchotchcas? Does everybody need to be aligned in a sameness of reading for me that the world becomes a glossy sterile field? AND, sorry this is an and and not a but, What does this say about my place in all this, the ME, the soul waiting to be born?

I wonder how many of us out there are living our lives as partial births, or worse yet, still born. I can’t believe that God has a desire for us to live our lives as aborted souls, the living dead wandering about without trust, without hope, without joy. Getting ready for life after death by denying life, while we have it. One of the absurdities of life is preparing for death, and yet we do it all the time, by preparing for failure, I am denying myself the chance to get lost in revery, to touch God, to communicate, converse with my deeper soul, because I am getting ready to get ready.

I am going to try, try to break free from this cycle, but the reality is that life does happen and must be engaged.
I wonder if I can learn to trust, hope and live in joy, I think it is a goal worth getting ready to get ready for.