The cornerstone of one's life

[lhexa]

This is another essay of sorts, from about a year and a half ago. It contained my ruminations on draconity.

***
A question that has no meaningful answer is itself meaningless - but it may nevertheless be the cornerstone of one's life... and for myself, who can find no greater comfort than the unknown, nothing is easier than to curl to sleep in what I believe to be the darkness, hoping that with awakening will come sight - when in fact, of these desires only the sleeping is real. But I have a reason to understand, and it drives me towards the goal - knowledge - even when neither that nor the compulsion is apparent.

I seek thought in my own exhaustion, I seek wisdom in that which shames me the most; I seek knowledge in the places of the past, and understanding in my own lack of sight. I seek myself in ambition, I seek myself in my dreams - I seek myself where I have found. In these ways and in many more, all horrible in some way, I am searching... but in what do I seek my draconity, the connection to that marvelous form which can fly in more ways than I can count?

In imagining the play of skin and hide over muscles and bone I come to find my human body stiff where all indicates that it is limber, collapsing where experience expects strength, hesitant where there should only be swiftness in sensation, beautiful when it is weak - and when I come to regard the form with power instead, I cease entirely to understand it! I fear the human body at its best, but even then I have cause for courage, for I imagine that at my back stands my own form, myself, able to snarl and fight, tense with energy in abundance, first gripping the ground so as next to better launch myself from it, fierce in a way that washes aside all confronting anger, beautiful in more than power or weakness...

Then the fear is conquered, and they... are both gone; I am left with nothing but a vehicle for my actions, unconscious and pushing me towards sleep. Whether I fight it or I submit to it, I think as my eyes drift shut, I lose - or maybe I win, for in the opaqueness following the battle I cannot tell. Neither answer suffices, and so when I come to believe myself awake again I seek answers - words by whose power I am able to sleep again, though in the end this goal is seen to be insincere.

They tell me that my greatest virtue is beyond me - but that I may, if I so strive, take the part of this quality that shares itself with its enemy and make that my own, while giving no more than a nod to the unimportant rest. But I only listen to these ideas enough to ascertain their power - and then I use them, always grasping at the entirety of draconity... so when an idle thought comes, arguing "That which a being can value depends entirely on 'es capabilities - and these are shaped by 'es body..." I take it, believe it as a path to follow, while blithely ignoring the destructive possibilities contained therein.

Later on things will have changed. I stretch my wings behind until my frame begins to strain, feeling them soft against my back, my legs, my tail - the latter curling in an expression I cannot define, while legs behind claw the earth, those ahead lifting a heavy, but breathing torso upwards until no muscle rests relaxed against another, with a neck finally forward and swaying, and a face that I can neither envision nor feel - the blood flows through my body, and I feel alive! Then I begin to move, and I pass completely beyond comprehension of myself; the creation, the imagination fades. But I am still ecstatic, for I find much joy in this unknown.

Eventually I return my attention to the old, worn-in body. A world of these surrounds me, and they too are beautiful - but I do not know how to react to them. At one point in my past I realized with a rush of happiness that to get to draconity, I must embrace humanity - and at another I realized with similar inspiration that I must reject it. But I do not understand it, nor do I understand the entirety of what I have just spent several paragraphs saying. It seems very odd, that I only truly begin to realize the power of language when I finally begin to escape its grasp; but of all things, it is my recently worked-out epistemology which has led to this (but here I am unable to complete the sentence - has it led to a change? an awakening? an understanding? I don't know).

My draconity has thus far contained a kind of complacency - among other things... an odd gap prevented me from fully applying my ideas about it, as I revised ever further the words which delineated the ideal; perhaps I knew that in the application of the idea (as opposed to the fact) of draconity lay its eventual disproof. The same is, appropriately enough, now also true of my idea of humanity. Embracing humanity increases my understanding of it - but so does rejecting it, so it seems thereby that each action leads only to a partial comprehension, and that therefore to fully understand humanity I must both embrace and reject it; this I understand in many other ways than in the single aspect I have just given, but it tells me... that to fully understand draconity I must... and here I become afraid.

This is more puzzling evidence of the power of language. I can begin with something I understand, put it into words, and go through habit to the simple consequences of these words - and have, as a result, something that is more incomprehensible to me than anything I have ever read.

Every now and then I go to the archives and read through my old posts. If I live long enough, there will come a day when I do that as I have done it many times before, but, this time finding there knowledge that had completely escaped me before, I will act in a way that I cannot currently comprehend - I do not know why I should believe this, but as long as I have memory I can at least imagine the possibility. And, though I am not now flying (in my peculiar usage of the word), I find myself anticipating it again...

Comments

[raki.livejournal.com]

I remember this. I'd like to link to it from the DRP, if I may.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

'Twould be better did you copy the entire text. The status of entries such as these might hinge on whim.