A Long Walk Overdue

I finally hit the trail behind my house this afternoon. It’s something I should do regularly because it’s good exercise, convenient and relatively isolated. Life tends to crowd personal time into a corner. I’m guilty of allowing this to happen, subsequently there is a price to pay for this practiced inactivity. I started off during the last waves of the afternoon heat planning to climb up for an hour before turning back. I wore my woven slouch hat and brought the camera along knowing that would cause me to stop periodically and hopefully keep from overheating. I realized after fifteen minutes that I wasn’t gasping for breath, sucking in flies as my heart raced. I was actually feeling pretty good and averaged a fair pace. These realizations lead to another concerning my eating habits and physical activity over the last two weeks. This is where the trip shifted from an early evening health walk to a voyage of contemplation.

I was completely alone on the trail, probably because of the heat, giving me a perfect opportunity to think about my state of mind without interruption. The last two weeks were epiphanic with the assistance of a good friend helping me to shake out emotional cobwebs and rid myself of a pervasive lethargy. This period began with a cleansing that was both actual and mental. Clearing out the accumulation of the last nine months lifted an unimaginable burden and assisted me to transition emotional residue.

This realization then connected with the fact that I have, for some unknown reason, started to reread Lacan and his structuralist concepts. Piecemeal as my reading is, it struck a harmonious chord in how I experience a good artist friend’s work and the way the incomplete image carries just enough detail to suggest but not too much that it closes the experience in a finite sense. Lacan’s notions of “the lack” and its relation to desire pierced me, leaving a visceral pang sending me back to the books to look for more definition.

Hopes and wishes had occupied me for the last nine months, or so I believed. Reviewing my philosophy notes reminded me of the concept of desire. Desire explains the feeling that’s been filling me since May. A desire to accomplish and complete. To attempt and compete. This feeling comes from a lack. This is not an appetite for satisfaction but it does involve affections. I begin to wonder if these unspoken desires can become a driving force, pushing me to realization.

This trail of thought also referenced the “other” as a self-not self. Looking inward but not seeing myself. I’ve rarely been able to apply this type of thought to myself. With that thought I was hit by an understanding of the French philosophers idea of “self as other”. By not applying theory to any personal experiences I have been looking outside of my “self”. If only I could have pondered this way when I was in school…

The trip back down the mountain was all too quick. I was repeating the concepts I had thought of knowing I would forget most of them by the time I got home. I did forget most of it, but the germ of understanding was still there. The past two weeks have been an opportunity to see things new and reorganize. These provide comforts badly needed that mend the soul. It was an opportunity to recharge the batteries. Next week promises to bring the return of stability on a new footing.