Book of the Labyrinth: Taking the Path, part 2

(We’re looking at excerpts from my Book of the Labyrinth, a blank book into which I have written inspirational stuff, divided into the sections of RITUAL in Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy.)

Listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door;
Let’s go.
— e.e. cummings

TAKING THE PATH

Let’s talk more about Taking the Path, that part of RITUAL in which we actually go exploring and do the work.

It occurred to me that in last week’s post, I burbled sweetly about how tough it was to set out on the Path, with many pertinent and lovely quotations from my Book of the Labyrinth, but I didn’t talk about the issues with Taking the Path in Captivity. So let’s tackle that.

For me, the main issue keeping me from the Path is despair. As my fellow Lichtenbergian Mike recently wrote in a letter, despair is different from depression, and that’s an important distinction. We have a lot to despair about these days, most of us, and it’s all too easy to ask what the use is of MAKING THE THING THAT IS NOT if it’s not going anywhere. If there’s no AUDIENCE, why make it?

This is true even for those of us (like me) whose AUDIENCE is largely a figment of our imagination anyway — I mean, the number of people who have read Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy or listened to William Blake’s Inn or even read this blog is minuscule. Why should that stop me from working now?

It does stop me, though. Perhaps our Captivity has made our lack of connection to an AUDIENCE more palpable, or perhaps it’s just pure anxiety, but the feeling is real.

BUT and also HOWEVER, if we can overcome that inertia, that despair, and set out on the Path, then we may actually find a panacea. If we can enter into that space where we do the work, the work itself will be enough.

A burner friend, a fantastic artist, posted the Carl Jung quote on Facebook this morning just as I was getting ready to begin writing this post, and it speaks directly to my topic. If we enter into that space where we do the work, then we can also enter into that space we call FLOW, where the outside world and its worries and its despair fade away for a while. We are in the work, we are the work, for the brief precious time we allow ourselves to create.

So here’s my pro tip for Taking the Path in Captivity: Do it. Get in there and make a mess. ABORTIVE ATTEMPT that crap all over the place. Let the comfort, the familiarity of doing it all wrong wash through you. Let the absence of AUDIENCE free you to do it all for yourself. You don’t have to please anyone, because you are pleasing yourself.

You are taking care of yourself.

You are Taking the Path.