Monday, May 13, 2013

Destination

How simple to say a destination is the end result of a planned journey.  Destination seems to want to imply an arrival at a place or condition decided upon after some deliberation.

You've had a number of destinations in mind, some relating to relationships with actual persons, others relating to individuals of your creation.  These individuals were not altogether clear in mind, but became more so as your understanding of the story progressed.

Other destinations had to do with career. Some of these destinations were in ways like characters in the making, their relevant details not clear in your mind.  You were as surprised by the ultimate destinations as you often are when discovering things about your invented characters you had not anticipated.

By a certain point in your own story arc, you learned to accept the fact of your often being promoted out of destinations you liked and wanted to retain.  You were elevated, your responsibilities calling for you to keep track of things rather than be the person of whom track was kept.

There were times when your ego got in the way in the sense of urging you to set destinations for your goals that you sensed were inappropriate, having more to do with power and title than function and ability.

Being without a destination causes you to feel disconnected with parts of yourself.  Having too many destinations in play at the same time seems to cause you a sense of resentment, reminding you of the standard complaint of having destinations for which you have no heart.

The proper amount of destination for you is being embarked in a story that has taken you past its point of no return, where you cannot stop because stopping under those circumstances would be like having a persistent itch you cannot reach.  This is an unnerving place but a satisfying one because it forces you deeper into your journey, deeper into complications and possible digressions where you find yourself sometimes awake of a sudden in the early hours of the morning, tingling with unresolved closure.  You're being forced to be curious in a focused way of trying to figure out plausible arrival points, plausible destinations.

You enjoy the beginning, the point of intrigue which is packing for a trip to a destination you cannot yet identify.  You believe work on such a level is true happiness because the journey is about discovering where the destination is, then trying to find ways of reaching that place.  You see yourself as batting about .500 in terms of arrival at places you'd embarked toward without a specific place in mind.  You enjoy thinking yourself to sleep sometimes with a review of the destinations you've set in motion without a completion plan.  How can you have a completion plan when you cannot name the destination?

Why would a person set out on a journey without knowing where he was going?  Why would you have been doing so for a great segment of your younger years and much of your adult life?  Were you a practicing Catholic, you might come to worry that your concerns for journey and destination suggest the stage of limbo or a tap dance along the cusp of the boundaries of Hell.

If you are a practicing anything, the thing you are attempting to practice is writing, which is to say setting forth toward a destination, much in the manner of ancient mariners who steered their crafts beyond the point where they could use the shoreline as a reference point, where you'd have to use some other reference point, say stars, as a guide to get you arrived at your destination.

In some metaphor, you enjoy the boundary line between Hell and un-Hell because it is a reminder that you are once again forcing upon yourself the need to research a way by which you can reach a plausible and appropriate destination.

Earlier this month, you observed within yourself a sense of connection with Sisyphus.  The observation brought you no grief nor concern that you've gone too far this time or that you must repair your attitude or condition.

What you must repair is your education, excising the things you took in in the belief they were true learning as opposed to cultural hype.  This destination, you realize, is not going to be clear cut, meaning you've done it again, set yourself out past the point of no return.

There is some thought that Death is the ultimate destination; once you reach it, you'll not have to be concerned about implications any longer or having bought into cultural lies.  In so many words, screw that.  You are in no hurry to reach that destination.  You would rather risk cultural lies in pursuit of education than experience death.  You would rather trespass on boundary lines between intolerable or culturally unstable conditions such as Hell, pursuing the ongoing uncertainty of being in transit than not.

You may not be planning for death but it would be foolish for you to think death has not been planning for you.  Writers know this and yet they start new projects with purposeful regularity. Writers know they may not finish the journeys on which they've embarked, but so far as you're concerned, the bon voyage parties of setting forth are your true friends and pleasures now.  Many of your dearest ones are in the metaphor of destination, but their memories are fresh with you and you know to pack them along with the things you take on your next venture forth.


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