The danger has passed for now. I can breathe again. Was there ever a danger? Of being left behind after being so close to graduating? I don't know. I don't know what I learn these days. I read the books and do the homework and take the tests and forget about it. They say the only things that stick enough to move you to action are the things that you genuinely accept as true, and vividly so, where enough force is applied to push it back into your subconscious to gestate there for later days. And all this school is just a blur. I have the vague feeling I'm losing these days spent here, but no, the philosophy is invigorating my mind, shaping it, preparing it for exercise, that I can be sure of. And there are some things that are sticking. I don't think like I used to.
But I do think I am starting to believe in something. It is hard to believe in nothing, but I remember being pretty close. And it was painful. But now there is something. Nothing from school either. Maybe some things from philosophers here and there, but I've been reading on my own and oh the ideas, they can be so beautiful. Contemplating them can give that swelling in the chest that comes with the viewing of a sunset or a grand landscape, or a great work of art, or a sprawling skyline, or a gorgeous person, or whatever else it is that gives the swell.
And the music. The music has been good. Listening. Playing. Sometimes I'm improvising on the guitar and it gives rise to certain modes of thought that I hadn't been expecting: say a collection of images or somebody arguing with someone else or someone advocating a certain idea. I carry off a certain pattern of notes and here is a man who believes he has been cheated, and here is another who is trying to tell me something important. Vague constellations of meaning, trying to sharpen into focus. It slips away for now. I think I'm moving in the right direction. It feels good to be in a trance once in a while.
It is getting colder and colder for the coming winter. The dusk is very beautiful in the clear cold. The fire leaves are back. The brightest red-orange tree in the neighborhood. It catches my eye when I go out back to turn on the jacuzzi. But then I move past a certain point and the wall and the neighbor's trees obscure it and I curse the obstructions and look to the right, where there is a beautiful sunset with huge plumes of clouds and I can't sit down to enjoy it because of another wall and I curse that obstruction too. And I curse the suburbs, all crammed together with nothing to see but walls and houses and its all the same and these backyards are just concessions to something lesser, as there's not much to see out here. But I'm glad for a backyard. I am. I just want to be able to sit out and watch the colors changing in the clouds, that's all. Because it is there, and it is very large, and shouldn't be that hard to see. But it is.
It has just begun to rain. Sleep for now. The rain should make drifting off pleasant.
