Tuesday 20 November 2007

adulthood


I had a dream where we buried someone. They were put into a white coffin. I arrived to the ceremony mid-way, and did not see whose funeral this was. It had been an unnatural death, and in people’s faces I not only read bereavement, but deep shock also. I awoke with a startling grief weighing me down, and the stark vision of candles lit remained with me for days. It was a youth that died. Youth itself may well have been put to its grave, who knows? The youth of my project?
If a project grows like a person, mine has just reached adulthood. How do you define that? Making decisions that you would have rejected earlier in your life, and accepting the consequences, instead of being raging of Sturm and Drang. Doing the job even though the initial enthusiasm has gone. Sticking to the promise despite a million ambivalences. Tuning down expectations to realistic levels. Loving the person despite your own and their own weaknesses. But being a bit disappointed sometimes, mostly of myself and my own limitations. Being a bit self-ironic in one’s momentary, slightly shameful admission that this is how it is even though it should not be. And of course I am only talking about my project.
and as a reply to aaron: i do a lot of silly things all the time... it seems that i am sometimes very solemn on my blog, but that's just a cover...my relationship to writing is the following: once i have written it, i conveniently forget all about it, and it helps me cope with everyday life. well it is a kind of oblivion that is semi-permanent.

1 comment:

Aaron Manton said...

That's the Katy I remember! Never grow up. Seriously, it totally sucks.