Cuddle with Chaos...not all alliteration is appropriate

I have always written very good letters of apology, and semi-decent letters of explanation. My mother suggested that I stay in New York on an unnamed "professional" course (professional often seems to be a synonym for decent, worthy and justified).

Dear Ness,

Your suggestion is truly an excellent path to pursue, one that I have indeed considered yet am not ready to commit to. It is one that may manifest depending on my other options. Certainly, New York is always open to me, and, as with my good friends, will greet me with ease upon my ready arrival. It may comfort you that I have often heard rumors that traveling for a year, or any unconventional actions as such, may actually be appealing to employers as someone who thinks outside the box and offers a fresh perspective.

I note a disturbing tone in our conversations: is that I feel as if all of the things I fear are being reverberated back to me in a strong and well-articulated manner.

One of the basic things I believe about fears is that they are in essence inaccurate. If they represented the whole perspective, they would not inspire the feelings of horror and disgust and anger. When we encounter truth that we "don't like" or "would prefer to be different", they do not affect us in this manner. I find it easy when I learn something, such as that I shouldn't stay out here longer or that there is no opportunity here for me until next summer, to move on, shrug my shoulders and continue.

However, many of the things you tell me, that I am lost in the world, no scientist and no artist, that my school did not held me, that it did not pick up a striving for knowledge, that I completed no projects....these are the very things I struggle to face every day. Perhaps it makes me a stronger person to have someone I love so much (you) place them before me each time we speak. Perhaps it makes me weaker to always be brought back to that point, to be caught in the web of that perspective. I don't know. It certainly upsets me.

There is certainly some truth to all of the things you say, or they would not upset me so. Yet taken from a different perspective, they are not all that troubling.

It's true that I feel lost in the world, that I don't know who I am, that I feel like no artist and no scientist, that I am ignorant and know so little and wish to know so much. I wish I was wise and I knew which direction to go in. It's true that I always feel as a child and one of the problems I have is that everyone is urging me to throw my perspective onto the world (to teach, to create, to inspire) and all I feel I have to offer is questions and questions and uncertainty.

Natti thinks I should write a book of questions.

Finding a place in the world feels terrifying. What is this world that I want to create a place for it? Who am I to do so? And how am I to live? I understand so little in the absurd dimensions of reality that to try to establish a place in whirlwind is terrifying.

I do not believe there is shame in acknowledging my own ignorance, confessing my confusion and admitting all that I do not know. I have a brief glimpse of you saying "so study philosophy!" "so go back to school", and yes that is what I want to do, yet, one of the most interesting things that college taught me is that it limits and enlightens at the same time.

I do believe that I have to follow my own curiosity, my imagination and my dreams. No matter how ridiculous and inexplicable they seem to other people. As long as I am not harming anyone (for instance, if my dream is to hurt others or control them, that's not all right in my books), I have that freedom, or at least, until my money runs out.

So you can't understand how I am feeing, what I am doing, and what, if anything, I am creating. Do not be upset by this.

Perhaps it is always like this at the present moment, change seems threatening, values lost and people astray. Yet looking back on it five or ten years later, it is as if it was a perfectly planned story where everything happened at the exact right moment, and couldn't have happened any other way.

If you are confused, give it time. Sit with it. Walk with it. Cuddle with chaos, breathe comfort into your shakes. Wait. Will a phoenix to rise from the ashes, more powerful than the works of imagination, beyond the scope of any reality we can create.