phobias and photomographs

there are always, it seems, those ghosts of insecurity that steal over us. even in the midst of cheerful times, there will probably always be the occasional shiver of disquiet, of uncertainty, of helplessness. even as m sits in this quirky coffee shop for the first time (but likely not the last; cute barista), reading some van gogh, he is reminded by whatever signs and tables and pooches outside the window that his life has progressed to a remote location that is dissimilar to what he has engaged with for a very long time prior to this. the city doesn't feel so different from any other city (well, admittedly, a bit "portland" in its ways), but there are fragments of sensations that have morphed into something quite different than any colorado springtime. he is reminded of visiting his grandmother in denver, the big-big city of colorful colorado, and gazing off of her deck into the massed confusion of a metropolis. everything was shifted slightly to the left, or the right; nothing felt as it should. this skewed his perspective of denver into the negative for a long time, and only began to repair itself near the end of college when he gave it a fair shot.

now portland is 'local' for him, and moods have shifted....he cherishes the slightly-familiar over the extremely-unfamiliar, whereas in colo he was steeped in the all-too-familiar. something he has only done once or twice is now the safe play, the explored territory, even though he knows that there are layer upon layer of understandings that one goes through in exploring any one thing, place, or person. one um, noun.

what's funny is that he makes motions between two opposites in this respect....sometimes he feels that the concept is what is important....and if we're talking theory, the same ol' things are happening in portland as anywhere else (with perhaps a few *hem* unusual exceptions). he would call this the majority of the time, where he feels comfort, peace with the turnings and tides of human patterns. life and he have an inside joke, a shared understanding, and it is simple to exist in whichever way one wants to. other times, which flutter in and alight upon his shoulder from time to time, bring a mess more confusion and imbalance, constantly prodding his mind back into stasis from the step it had taken forward.

why is it sometimes difficult to progress from a thought, from a mindstate? it's simple to be on top of the world one day, and have the carpet ripped out from under you in the next. self-questioning, self-criticism, stepping in pace beside you and inquiring in terse and obnoxious terms what your plan is, or will be, or has been all along. is it too much to live a life without a unifying plan in each moment? is it a confidence, which quakes at first only in order to be forged stronger yet by bending it to your will, now, and then again, in true damascus form? ("why do we fall? so that we can learn to pick ourselves back up.") do we ever feel so justified in what we are doing, that this recedes in the wake of our conviction? perhaps that could be said to mirror the 'good times', but certainly those are not always strong enough to ward off another coming, another regress (which we may call it, even if in fact it is a signal of a deeper progression).

why is it that when we strip off a layer of ourselves, when we remember the past fully, passionately, everything seems unfamiliar again? does that mean that our new selves do not effectively incorporate our old selves? that somehow we cannot reconcile the two, into different scenarios than what they had originally existed in? if that's the case, then perhaps it would be a relief rather than a concern....it would mean that there is never a reason to get down on yourself for acting differently than you might have at a later or more experienced time...there would never be any logical way to connect the two notions of yourself within the realms of space and time~ we live the best that we can.

or perhaps we live, forgetfully.