a velveteen rabbit

is there a key to happiness in a style of living? in a mode or pattern or rhythm, in a focused or unfocused impulse? m feels like there are sheets that steal over him, lucid ones, that somehow allow him to capture a purity or joy that is simply innate in all existence. ever-present. he can bring down his walls, seemingly all of his own volition (and yet also, definitively elusive in its recurrences), and let the sunshine stream down inward, deep, warming those most cavernous pools of thought lost within him and giving them a chance to cultivate all varieties of shadowed jungle plants, hidden subspecies of potential energy that can coil skyward until the thoughts find their way to the edges of his conscious streams, a nip of interest and absurdity, a tiny hand tugging at coattails.

he can do this; summon some monstrous and overwhelming excitement for the transition and passing of every moment, conjure a sparkly spell, a vivacious cloud of bees that dances around everything he can see. it is intensely engaging and he often reels, tilted whichways by the effects. but it seems to him to be, although immersed, also very disconnected in a crucial way from reality. it is potent and blissful, but it misses something....or does it? he isn't quite certain just yet. when he analyzes his idea of it recently, it appears thusly:

imagine a perfectly contented farmer, living peacefully and in harmony with his own quaint environment. his horses and strong and intelligent; his sheep are baa complacently as they bathe in warm sunbeams, never bristled by anything more menacing than a crisp breeze. his crops flourish; obviously he knows what he is doing, and nature approves. he crackles a thistle in between his teeth, twirling it now against his tongue, tasting the earth inside of it, and gazes over the rolling green meadows. he knows his place, he feels firm in his tradition and his foundations. he lives a peaceful life and listens to the music of the hills.

the farmer doesn't ask any questions...he knows what he knows. but one day, while he is sitting at the pub enjoying a rather sizable and frosty mug of spirits, he meets a traveler rollicking through the area. they talk warmly and become friends, though the traveler spends a good deal of time talking what the farmer considers to be nonsense about the 'meaning of it all' and such. the traveler shows him his paintings, his books, his music (radically divergent from the old-timey tunes the farmer's ear is accustomed to); everything of him in its due turn. the traveler unfolds a cassette tape and a crude set of paints from his red-spotted knapsack, and makes a gift of them to the farmer for his cordial company. they part ways after the night, and never see each other again.

the farmer ambles back to his farmhouse, and sleeps off the night. he goes to work in the morning, and the next day, and the next. on the fourth day, however, his sleep is stirred by a strange nightmare. he wakes in a daze, and spies the moon staring him down, sizing him up, from a lofted window in the heights of his house. draped in moonbeams, compelled by unknowns, he listens to the tape and dabbles vaguely with the paints, eerily absent of pigment in the nighttime shade. the music is modern, troubled; it is a mixtape composed mostly of progressive art rock and sprinkled with experimental instrumentals, the origins of whose sounds he cannot guess at for the life of him. he drifts off to sleep with the paintbrush in his hand and dark chords echoing in the hollows of his room.

things are never the same for the farmer. he cannot decipher the strange melodies or the significance of the colors and strokes, but he feels irresistibly drawn to them, to the ultimate detriment of his old way of life, his once-time peaceful mindstate. things are fine for him; his farm still flourishes though perhaps has more untended weeds than before, and perhaps the sheep complain of heat every so often because one or three have swollen up to the size of fuzzy haybales without the keen attention of his shears on a seasonally-watchful schedule as before. by most appearances, he is the same person, though perhaps seen a bit less in provisions marketplace of town and is often said to have a candle burning in his window 'til the midnight hours.

we know what has changed, though, don't we? he was struck by the thunder of humanity, of art, of the beautiful struggle. and mattress can say definitively (since he is acquainted with said farmer) that he is somewhat tormented, if not also invigorated and accelerated, by the teachings of the traveler.

so, m is elated to say that he feels he has the gift (or curse) of the farmer's previous life, but it would be a choice he would have to make...he is more naturally swayed towards the latter perspective, the artistic intervention. but, he could fight his nature and live an extraordinarily docile, naive, and complacent life. the tools are in his hands right now, these words; all he has to do is to toss them away without a second glance and be free of their burden forever. doesn't that seem on some level like an appealing prospect? to absolve oneself of responsibility for difficult philosophies, intricate sciences, emotional discoveries and upheavals, and again discoveries and again upheavals?

and obviously, he is reducing this to absurdity...nobody can really choose to go entirely in one direction. but it seems to him that so, so many people choose the route of 'today, and then tomorrow, and then tuesday', a day-to-day as it were. gleaming shards and fragments of deeper thoughts either when forced to, or when forced by boredom; not entirely by free will, in fact almost avoidant by nature of these concepts. and yes, please ride on him for generalizing about this, because no, it really isn't a fair judgment without knowing them well.

but he doesn't feel like he can turn back at this point; he would feel utterly useless and much like he betrayed his true self if he buried his head in the sand and gave up on digging both archaeologically and inventively through those sediments, choosing to be caved in, but restricted in transcendental dimensions of movement. he wants to be able to move his mind, his intangible perceptions, through that matter....even if his body may be cemented into place by them in its utter unfamiliarity with more spiritual natures. there is an antenna, or a whirling compass needle, somewhere inside of us...just waiting to be known by feelings and words instead of science.

this mind/body dichotomy is burly. lend the wisdom to know the difference~