Impatience

sometimes I get so impatient with myself.
I’m constantly distracted from my calling
by more superfluous pleasures
and mundane pursuits

I think it has always scared me
to give total commitment to one thing
afraid it would blinder me

but I’m not seeing the value
in this failure to commit
and the “pursue all interests path”
which hasn’t really resulted in much depth
or quality

other than a certain flexibility of mind
an exhilaration learning quickly
a joy of discovery
and the ability to say “fuck it”
to just about anything

and these are probably not powers
to dismiss lightly

but in terms of powers
they are kind of weak sauce
compared to what I know through glimpses, squints
and blindside encounters
of that which lies down the paths of imagination

as a bridge and faculty
to somewhere more
despite all the red flags
culture, science, religion, rationality
naïve dogmatic materialism
throws down like puncture spikes to prevent thought-lines
traversing these byways

It’s the path of the unstable, the loser, the dropout, the psychotic
the personality disordered
the magician, the shaman, the alchemist, artist, the dweller at the village edge

dwellers tolerated by some cultures for their unconventional remedies and insight into intractable problems
ostracized, discounted by others for implying there are places of substance and meaning outside the dominant system’s domains

and across Bifrost, the rainbow bridge
across where we have to be wrong to right
versus the perfection of absolute rightness
where being wrong is sin requiring blood sacrifice for reparation
where being wrong is blameful ignorance
or prosecutable un-compliance

we step into the threshold of the utterly ridiculous, silly and nonsensical
we get our ticket punched by Heimdall
and emerge somewhere that only imagination permits
but it is now quite different
from imagination itself
we don’t need to carry the boat
after we’ve crossed the river

imagination is a means
not a destination
but it is not a way back to where we started
to be better, with new booty
it is a path to somewhere else
stranger
more alien

Imagination is not something scrubbed away by mindfulness
as useless qualia
related to thought debris
in order to unify with a passive no-thingness
and holy non-attachment

Imagination is a mindful adventure
into the depths of the matrix
as a particle
rather than a wave

waves are deterministic
particles are quantum

all stability depends on the wave
all individual evolution on the particle
there are gods of eternal sameness
and there are gods of metamorphosis

to dream awake
this is what calls me

    The Soul selects her own Society —
    Then — shuts the Door —
    To her divine Majority —
    Present no more —

    Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
    At her low Gate —
    Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
    Upon her Mat —

    I’ve known her — from an ample nation —
    Choose One —
    Then — close the Valves of her attention —
    Like Stone —

    -Emily Dickinson