october 21 2024

I’m walking home from analysis and I’m thinking about The Quest. That’s what this is all about, after all. This Great Adventure - Life, by another name. I spend my days searchingsearchingsearching. And for what? I don’t know. But I am, therefore I search. I think this is what I was born to do. To look, to probe, to seek, to want - badly and more than ever. Everything I have ever done or said or thought or been or had or made - all of it has been in service of Figuring It Out. I just want to know, you know? I want the whole story.

In my earlier years, I drove myself mad trying to find answers. Once, when I was eight years old, I stared at my reflection in the mirror and pulled at my eyelids and stretched all the skin on my face.

“Who are you and what do you want?” I asked. I waited. For hours, no answer. Eventually I walked away to watch cartoons in the living room.

But that’s not the point. As Neville says, “the signs follow, they do not precede.” Truth simply is, and we realize it by living.

A ladybug lands on the sidewalk by my sandals as I wait for the light to change. In a memory, it’s many years ago now and I decide, finally, to live.