This, I think, is one of the most interesting questions that they have asked so far, but also one of the difficult to answer accurately.
First let me say that I have no idea how others would define me and I suspect strongly that I wouldn’t really want to know.
As for how I define myself, well I started to answer this with the usual litany of descriptive words that are supposed to mean something but really end up sounding like empty platitudes and I just couldn’t continue it. It was so inaccurate, incomplete. People are just too complex to be defined with a short set of words or sentences. I could say I am quiet and withdrawn, lazy and reckless and carefree, a philosopher, a gamer, and a writer but really then what have I said that could not be said to describe thousands of other people throughout the world? Surely this is not what one means when one says to ‘define’ onesself.
And so I wasn’t going to answer at all until one day I did recall a description of myself that I dreamed up in my random musings that did seem a lot more unique and interesting than a few dangling adjectives might seem. It was a depiction cast as a kind of an image, a single scene that sort of summarizes a great many aspects of my being and explains a lot of the ways in which I make choices.
Although ‘artist’ is a word that falls nowhere near any conceivable definition that might apply to me, I think that I can paint this picture of myself using words that allow the reader to create the scene. And so I will now attempt to do so. Bare with me if I seem to be going on and on without getting to the point. It takes a little while to get the details right.
I am on a little island…
Wait. This isn’t going to work like this. I didn’t come up with this self understanding in isolation and it isn’t going to make any sense if I describe it just as is. It only makes sense in relation to an understanding of others which is how I came up with in the first place.
You see, there are friends that I have that I think about often and often I try to understand them and usually fail miserably. Once though, for two of those friends I thought up this sort of portrait of words that seemed to me to fit my conception of them rather well. It is likely all illusion and delusion within the confines of my own mind, but this is how I saw them then when I thought these thoughts and it is how I see them now, sometimes, and myself in direct relaion there to. So let me describe them, and then you will understand I think how it is that I have come to define myself and why it makes more sense than a mere litany of adjectives ever would.
Imagine that you are floating above a great still ocean in the dead of night. It is deep and black and fathomless. You might wonder what mysteries lie beneathe its inky waters but you can see nothing, neither moonlight nor starlight can reveal its secrets to you.
But you float about and after a time you see a soft warm glow eminating from beneathe the wave. It is a gentle light shinning upon the water letting you make out shapes and colors undearneathe the silent waves. But little in the way of details. Still the light brings comfort to you in the darkness. There is a simple beauty to it. It is safe.
You squint and strain to try and see the source of this light and if you look closely enough you will just barely be able to make out where it is coming from. Deep deep beneath the ocean waters at the very bottom, sitting on the ground there sits a small stubborn little fire happily burning bright. The fire burns and flickers its light throughout the world as if it were the most natural thing in the world, not letting a little thing like being smoothered by thousands of tons of cold water ruin its day. The fire burns just as it would in the surface world, you can barely tell the difference and it doesn’t seem to even notice how deep and complex its world is or how unique its circumstances.
But every so often as you watch the fire pulses. There is no other word to describe it. It’s as if all of a sudden in expands outward in one massive push becoming something else entirely. What was once a little calm flame becomes a raging inferno blasting forth its light in a massive halo throughout the ocean floor. And whereas the soft light guided you, this new light bursting forth illuminates.
By the light of the conflagration coming forth from that once peaceful flame you can now see with perfect clarity the extraordinary landscape of the ocean depths. Coral reefs and schools of fish. Mountains and valleys. An entire new landscape filled with beautiful colors, and visible with extraordinary detils. It is like traveling to an alien world filled with wonder and glory.
It is an awe inspiring sight. Have you ever had this experience? Seen something so much bigger and wider and greater than yourself that though you might appreciate the sight and wonder at its beauty, that is not all you feel. A part of you becomes overwelmed and overcome and you start to feel… afraid. You are so small and it is all so big and real and righ there before you, undeniable, inescapable. It’s too much to take in at once. Too much truth to face in an instance. But when the fire pulses it captures your eyes and throws forth the world before you. You cannot look away. It won’t let you. Clarity and truth. An honest vision so real it would frigid cold and cruel if it weren’t revealed through the blazing of that wondrously harsh and brilliant fiery light. There are some visions we’d rather not see, but when that fire pulses it illuminates indescriminately revealing everything.
And then it ends, the fire calms and collapses back in on itself becomes peaceful, agreeable, calm, soft and gentle and soothing yet again. You could stare at the light through the waters forever and be at peace were it but to stay that way. But the fire fluxuates, pulses again and again at unpredictable random intervals and then growing still again.
This one incomprehensible unlikely little fire, soft and gentle, bright and fierce, extraordinary and unpredictable. This is one of my friends. Ocean Fire.
Besides this fire there is a great crack in the ocean floor. You couldn’t even see it from your vantage point above the waves except when Ocean Fire pulses and the whole world becomes visible. Something draws your eyes to this crevice and you are not sure why but slowly as your eyes become adjusted to the fire light and your mind becomes atuned to its erratic rhythems you finally notice that out of this great crevice there is a very very faint glow. It glows independently from Ocean Fire but consistent and as you know now where to look you can see it now even when the fire is still. You could probably see it if even ocean fire didn’t exist but it would be easy to miss, easy to ignore, but once found impossible to forget.
Still seeing the glow and knowing the source are two different things. No matter how you strain you cannot see deep down within that great crack in the earth to see what is causing that glow. But having found one fire where none ought be, is it very difficult to imagine that there might be another? And if you so guess you would be right, more or less, buried deep deep deeper and deeper crushed under Earth and Water both there is indeed another fire burning. No doubt Ocean Fire piercing all revealing light can look within the depths of the chasm and see this pulse for what it truly is, but you can only imagine it and suppose it is much the same as the one you see.
But this calm glow, coming from the crevice, there is something elegantly disarming about it. It is so clean and clear and constant and unobtrusive. It lulls you into a sense of security as you watch, you feel as if it will exist forever just a gentle glowing light within the water, right where it belongs, fitting in perfectly with everything within its environments, neither shattering the peaceful darkness and the night shadowed waves nor getting lost within it. It’s as if it makes you feel as if you have no choice but to accept it and at the same time you feel as if it accepts you too as a part of its world exactly as you are, non-judging, non-evaluating. It doesn’t try to illuminate anything, nor does it try to reflect off of anything to make it visible. It just seems content to be a soft glow, nothing more, nothing less.
Having observed Ocean Fire you might imagine that a time will come when this new fire might also pulse and grow and become something different from what it seems. So perhaps you resolve to sit yourself down and watch from your vantage point amongst the clouds to see that phenomenon occur. And you’d wait and wait and wait. Ocean Fire will have pulsed and pulsed and pulsed again whilst all the while this glow remains scarily surreally constant. But its constancy is comforting, and it brings you peace and lulls you and you grow sleepy watching the soft barely visible glow.
And just when you thought nothing would have, as if that light was just all there was to this fire within the crevice, it did happen. Ocean Fire pulsed and then, almost as if in answer, the entire world started to quiver. You were nearly asleep but the shaking knocks you to wakefulness. The ocean roiled like a pot boiling over. The land heaved like a great giant had taken it by its two hands and was shaking it like a rag doll. And then out of that crevice, that soft glowing crevice, out poors a great volcano of light. A bursting blast of shear white brightness that seems to draw a great line straight through the center of the world splitting the ocean in two. The light shoots upward lightning quick straight out of the crevice, straight through the inky ocean and up and up and up some more. Into the sky, lancing the clouds, and out beyond as if reaching out wantingly toward its brethen stars in the night sky. Unlike when Ocean Fire pulsed, this light does not illuminate. It does not clarify. It blinds. It yearns. Like a great flaming hand grasping out tying to obtain something, trying to reach something, trying to become something. It reaches out with determination that transcends want, transcends desire, transcends anger and rage, transends sorrow. It is shear unadulterated will. A terrifying intent thirst that will without hesitation or thought annihilate anything within its path to reach its unattainable goal within the depths of the heavens.
And so very quickly it stops. It’s over. The land is still again. And you are left blinking in shock. You look down into the ocean again and it is dark again save for Ocean Fire’s light. You find the crevice again and once again note the soft welcoming glow again. It’s the same as it has always been unchanged, in control of itself, as if nothing had ever happened. You start to wonder if what you saw ware real or not, and try as you can you can find no evidence that it even happened save your own memories of the event.
But you know that it was real. Such a thing is beyond your capacity to imagine. But now having seen it you start to understand the truth of what you see. You had thought that the fire deep within the Ocean chasm had to be a fire like Ocean Fire a soft small flame burning on its own ignoring the water around it. But you didn’t take into account the depths of the chasm, how very many miles and miles deep it must go. You start to imagine it now though a crevice unimaginably deep lancing straight through to the very bowels of the Earth and yet somehow miraculously a fire’s light can be seen at the top of such a hole, even if it is but a small faint glow? Impossible. If it were a fire like Ocean Fire its light would have been blocked by the massive walls of Earth visible, perhaps barely when it pulsed, but not at all at any other time. Ocean’s fire’s light illuminates, its power is in revealing the extraordinary wonders within the clear blue waters of the Ocean that are only invisible because we lack the light to see them by.
But if you could shatter the walls of the earth rip them apart and drain the ocean of its water, what would you see at the very bottom of all that? A fire yes, but not like Ocean Fire. No. Here you would see a massive ball of flame dwarfing the tallest mountains and making aints out of continents. Massively bright, extraordinarily brilliant. But its light masterfully suppressed by the only thing large enough and powerful enough to block its infernal brilliant. The very Earth itself. This is my other friend. Not a fire at all but a small star buried under Earth and Water. Ocean Star.
And so those two are, very different but also very much alike. Two secretly hidden piercing lights living within the enormous darkness in their own unique world where few others would dare to tread. Each with their own extraordinary beautiful steady state flame alternating between moments of glorious fierceness.
So where am I then, in all of this? Well look to the north, and I’ll guide your eyes to my abode if you dare to turn them away from such extraordinary sites as Ocean Fire and Ocean Star. Travel some miles and miles above and soon you’ll come across a small little land mass sitting upon the water.
Look upon the shore and you will see naught but dirt and sand. Simple, clean, lifeless, empty. But scan this shore nonetheless and if you came upon it at the right time you may well see some litlte itsy bitsy pieces of soaking driftwood cast up randomly upon the shore by the ocean waves.
And if you came at just the right time, you’ll see amongst this sorry scattered lot of scraps a tiny little spark sits and burns and ever so excruciatingly slowly it grows bigger and bigger building a littly fire out of the wood that all the world forgot. It is a disorgaized thing, no clean campfire to sit around here, but chaotic flames bursting forth here and there sparks spreading from drift wood to drift wood making a messy and dangerous fire ground that might seem risky to near if it weren’t quite so weak and grasping with so little fuel to feed it. You see it sputter out in areas and build itself back up again from a spark trying to pull itself together into something more consolidated, something more real.
Just as this little wannabe fire gets itself going though, you look on in horror as the tide comes in and quickly washes over it, wiping out all of the flames. This is not Ocean Star or even Ocean Fire capable of laughing in the face of trials of earth and water. The frigid cold life filled waters makes short work of this flame and it is all it can do to keep an itsy bitsy little spark of itself alive. But somehow it does. The spark outlasts the tide and whit recedes, the little fire begins to build itself anew. Piece by piece. Bit by bit. Gather the drift wood, strike a spark. Burn a little. Burn a little. Tide comes in. Wipe Out. Save a spark. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
And that little itsy bitsy spark that never seems to die. That silly little spark that never seems strong enough to keep its fire burning through the ocean waves nor smart enough to move inland where safer smarter fires choose to rage. That crazy spark that continuously succeeds in building itself up just enough to become a fire that can illuminate just enough to continuously look enviously through the night out upon the ocean and see the extraordinary flames that burn within and back upon the lands and the safe and studiously happy fires that burn so easily there. That stubborn little spark that refuses to move elsewhere, refuses to live differently despite the risk and inspite of the failure but forever wonders at what it feel like to do otherwise. That, that I think is how I would define me. Driftwood Spark.
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