It feels like the minute I was able to say I had a plan (to get the fuck out of here) I realized the alternative (to stick around, at least for a bit?) might not be so bad. The problem is that both options are pretty bad; a plan has more to do with the material set of conditions than it does the vibrant agency of the would-be plan-maker-and-executer, and is thus a reaction— even if preemptive— to probable disaster.
This pulls the focus of any plan back to the present: what do I do now? Which is always what else can I do?, what more can I do?, which is always always what else or more am I able or is possible to do?
And this cluster of questions suggests a re-orientation toward (or high-resolution focusing on) the way I am living, my form of life, the state of being alive that I inhabit— as both a product of whatever agency or vitality I have mixed with my immediate material set of conditions.
I’m always telling everyone to pick a verb, but I think I need to follow my own advice. On the other hand, I think I do, it’s just not something I feel adequately conscious of, at least at the moment.
When you will an act you will every possible consequence of that act, regardless of whether or not you were able to analyze and predict it. This means you have to be willing to accept the outcome of that act— again whether or not you thought it through. Is it easier to just do the fucking thing than deal with whatever happens than it is to map the probabilities and consider your ability to accept them before you push the button? Is the distinction between how difficult they are great enough to render those questions useful? Is the attribution of one set of tendencies— careful consideration— against the other— let’s fucking goooo— a question of personality, or at least deeply intrenched habit? This last question haunts me in a weird way; is an iteration of “am I broken?,” or at the very least "irredeemably stupid?”
The funny thing is that these questions all map a process that is itself a sort of running loop, a repeating procedure that exists like the sun and moon and Carquinez Strait rising and falling and waxing and waning. What they are, together, is what they do— this is their form. You do not simply come to this set of questions, answer them, and move on— nor do you simply come to them intermittently, when the material set of conditions create their possibility. No, they are ~ by their very nature~ a repetition, a “cycle,” the form of a significant aspect of life, of being alive.
And by “funny thing” I mean “the point;” and by “the point” I mean “the reminder,” and by the “reminder” I mean that it’s no wonder we feel unhinged, because every time we cycle through it we “learn” the same thing over and over again, both “as though” and “in actuality” for the first time. Again and again.