Monday, October 25, 2010

engendering anxiety

The only thing that would make me love this image by Laurence Winram more would be if some (or all) of the figures were women.

dream world by laurence winramWhat makes it so superb to me is how much I identify with the man in white. I think this image illustrates what it feels like for me to be (slowly) chasing a dream. It is also what it feels like to be falling in love which, for a lot of people, is part of the overall dream.

At the moment, I am feeling probably the most secure I have ever felt in my entire life. This isn't saying much since I have lived most of my life harboring a feeling of impermanence and/or imminent doom. But I am with a man I love and trust, and I spend my days sitting in his/our apartment, reading and writing and thinking. It is just like what I was doing in Buenos Aires, only I am not crushingly alone and isolated by my linguistic incompetence.

It is blissful and liberating, and my frontal lobe feels like this man in white, shining bright and smiling. If I keep my face forward, I stroll through this Irish valley of green grasses, lit by the soft light of the northern hemisphere in the early spring, and all I see are possibilities.

But optimism doesn't come naturally to me. Every third moment of the day, I cast a backward glance and see these tuxedoed specters of every imaginable kind of failure. They're dumb and cowardly and only rarely do they come close enough to me to scratch me, but they are always there, looking all haughty and menacing.

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