I have several competing self images, or beckoning directions of development. Each new image becomes generated upon the failure of the previous, and then when the new image finally fails, there is a reversion to the previous, in the direction of least resistance. I develop where the energy takes me, where there is opportunity for growth, sort of like walking step by step, or in this case, tumbling. Of course I can do better at explaining this.
First, I am to become the sober writer and philosopher. Well, the academic landscape is fairly horrifying. How is one to subsist in this field, within its pathways, and at the same time maintain a clear mind for sound development? I forego professorship, and try my hand in the private sector. I make peanuts, and remain unhappy. One gains great joy from writing philosophical works, but one is limited to still conventional channels to subsist while producing that special work. One must do academic work, or else write commercially and bide one's time, hoping that the soul is not extinguished in the process. The conventional field is a wasteland, experiencing a gradual process of destruction. To face it with a sober mind is shattering.
Next, I try the intoxicated musician and artist. Why not ride the destruction, as opposed to lamenting it? This proves to be a promising line of development, and good times are had. Yet one must still subsist! Now even the need to engage in ecstatic musical improvisation must be directed to producing a commodity, within conventional channels. This must be done within one's social relations, if one is to improvise, and the social relations are strained and chaotic due to the strained and chaotic environment within which they take place. In other words, one's band mates are domineering, or uncommunicative, or beset with substance abuse; the musical joy becomes elusive.
Aha, so subsistence and social relations are constantly sabotaging one's efforts! One must go further out: attack and reform the channels of convention! I try the political activist. With blooming political consciousness, these channels of convention become the superseding harbingers of misery. They must be changed if one is to continue doing good work, which means integrating with radical communities and developing alternatives. But this takes social relations too, and those relations themselves are steadily corrupting. The political arena is profoundly frustrated and confused, and subsistence while working within the arena becomes continuously more threatened.
I see, so there is a greater problem: that of the field of subsistence itself, and all of the assumptions that go with it. So one is to go off grid, to release one's fetters to the market, and renew one's efforts to develop channels of subsistence and social relations. But I don't have the wealth, and subsistence keeps coming back as an issue.
Well, finally one is to go mystic. Make do with less, shed one's material commitments, purify one's self so as to regenerate sound social relations. Even this process is frustrated, as some crisis or other brings one right back into the material realm.
Each image is shattered, so one goes back to another in order to nurse oneself back to strength, where one is safe and in a solid position.
Where there is an image, I develop part of myself in the direction of the image, which always stays with me, even amidst failure. So each direction of development slowly changes the aggregate of my character; all of it comes with me as I travel, as I tumble, each of my characteristics ground or polished as they are touched upon. This is a process of much pain and frustration, and doubtless many others are caught within similar processes of their own - these processes taking their shapes from the natures of the individuals - affecting each other as they tumble against each other. Hopefully whatever comes out is worthwhile.
One tumbles, and one must hold tight to one's stance, whatever that may look like, and hold tight to others who are maintaining stances of their own, in mutual love and respect, generating those social relations that are to hold under harsh winds, in the hope that one's project isn't deserving of being wiped off the earth entirely.
