Empty Square Boxes

An empty page.  An empty Word document.  An empty square Blogger box. Sometimes those things look so scary they fling me off into doing something else.  But I've barely written anything in two weeks, and so this morning the empty square Blogger box looks possible.  It looks like a big white swimming pool with a whole lot of white-type words in it.

Except now it's not.  Empty, that is.  It's now got a paragraph full of 62 words in it.  Except of course that now it hasn't got a paragraph with 62 words in it, because in talking to you about the number of words contained in this blog post, I am getting myself into a corner.  And so I shall now break out of that corner by informing you that this blog post, in its entirety, contains 161 words (which is up to and including the last word I have just typed here right now here this one right now.)

Okay, now that's sorted.  I've written almost 200 words.  Some people write 200-word posts and say something in them.  And then there's mine :)

Perhaps empty square Blogger boxes only look scary in proportion to the amount of scary that's going on out in the world.  I think there's a lot of scary going on out in the world.

I had a very honest conversation with the health food shop lady yesterday.  She came and asked me what I was looking for just as my partner was pointing out what I was looking for (ye olde St John's Wort, an extra crutch to help me through the latest winterly funk seeing some spiritual God conceptions I've crutched on in the past, according to Mr Marx, just don't seem to be working for me any more.  And who knows?  Maybe he's right.  I just don't know.  I miss the comfort of sitting in the happy-to-not-be-able-to-define-the-ineffable-but-think-it's-still-there.  I do still think it's still there, I suppose, in some fashion, but I know even less than I did a few years ago.  Which wasn't really all that much).

I wasn't the only one feeling this way, the health food shop lady said (depressed, that is.  I didn't talk to her about any God stuff because we don't do that here in this country.)  Seems a lot of people have been coming in to this lady's shop try to find some kind of bottled remedy to stop impaling themselves on sharp objects.  It seems, she said, that so many of us are feeling as if the very ground underneath our feet is trembling.

Which in some parts of the world it is.

Our entire conversation was filled from start to finish basically with how shite everything feels at the moment.  And this coming from people living in one of the richest countries on earth, some of the most privileged people on the planet.  And yet still, even for us - perhaps even more so for us in some respects because we have the time and the privilege to sit and ponder how shite and trembly everything is.  We are not starving, our standard of living is unbelievably high, we have health food shops full of worterly potions, supermarkets full of food, clothing stores full of blankets and fleece.  We are the privileged ones who feel the full force of modern ennui where we're full of stuff and yet our culture is empty as all fuck.

It was a really quite edifying sort of a conversation in the end.  Perhaps because it made me feel a bit better somehow, knowing that lots of other people are struggling through this weird, fucked-up trip called life.  There are so many people who have their niche, and they're happy within their niche, and it gives them meaning and solace and comfort and then they try to tell other people about their niche, and how meaningful and comforting it is for them.  I miss that feeling.  I'm not sure what I think/believe/feel about spiritual stuff any more.

I want there to be a capital G God.  I want there to be a benevolent force in the universe that is looking out for us.  I miss that space, because when you believe that is true, pathways open up to you which do not when you do not know anymore if you believe that that is true.

But maybe there are myriad pathways.  Sometimes, part of being on the pathway is not knowing where the fuck you are.  Good things come out of Where the Fuck Am I? Lane, after all.  What I find difficult, though, and which some others just don't seem to find difficult (and which makes me wonder if I have childish conceptions that need putting away) is that I have a psychological want, or maybe even need, for that road to feel like it's leading somewhere.  And right now, I just don't know whether that's not into a brick wall, or laying down childish conceptions, or into a glorious golden age, or into a death with nothing that comes after it.

I want something to come after it.