Exposed, and Night Falls

I have always kept a journal. I have never known why. And now there is this blog.

When I was ten years old, I thought I was preserving some unique slice of history for future scholars. At fifteen, I wrote to maintain sanity, sometimes writing continuously for hours, escaping my life by chronicling it. As the years wore on and memories faded, I would say that I wrote to remember the puzzling and the mundane aspects of my existence.

Lately, it has seemed to me that writing a blog about my life may be a fundamentally narcissistic undertaking. Who but myself is really interested in what I have to say? Am I not actually writing for others, and subconsciously trying to satisfy an imagined audience? And why do such a thing? Why not let life burn itself out, day by day, and vanish?

Because then I would not understand. I write to figure things out. To comprehend life a little better. To find patterns, to uncover insight, to record mistakes for future review. I aim to approach the truth, somehow, laying down thoughts while I am still blind to their significance, appreciating events only in hindsight. Beyond just writing in a journal or a blog, I have to read it. Otherwise nothing is learned.

And the truth wants to be shared. Which is why we have blogs, poetry, and Dharma centers. On the city bus, excerpts from poems are posted along the ceiling. They capture something widely accessible and yet effective. Good poetry is true. It has to pierce its own container to touch us, to mean something greater than it seems to. This is Dharma, humans grasping with words for a wisdom that pierces the fog: uncomfortable, necessary, and bracing like a cold wind. I suppose all art comes from this kind of attempt to find Truth.

The new Poet Laureate of the US, Kay Ryan, says there is nothing to be done in the face of her fame, so new and so awkward, because are all exposed anyway, all the time. And if she’s right--as I know she is--well then, those who blog are likewise exposed already, anyway, before they even begin typing. So what if we are seen? I once lived with someone who used to read my blog to find out what I was all about and how I was really doing. Perhaps I was seen more accurately through the blog than by the everyday eye.

And so we write. Medical students, Army snipers, religious evangelists, and proud parents all feel compelled to share something with the world as they try to make sense of what it means to be alive day after day. I know my life now is superficially less interesting than it was when I lived in a startup Zen monastery. My posts are less immediately affecting than they were when I first moved to the city. They are certainly less frequent then they once were. They show symptoms of mental fatigue. But there I am. This is what there is.

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Tonight the fading light made the blowing leaves on the trees glow richly green. Later, the leaves danced grey in the fading light. Breath came to mark the passage of time; leaves and mind did not separate. When the baby stirred, his skin seemed molded from porcelain, a tiny ideal come to life. He blindly searched for food from the depths of sleep, arching and raising his brows over closed eyes like a little drunkard seeking the sweet taste of life.

It is dark now, and the leaves blow still, rustling invisibly in the dark, beyond the drawn blinds.