Hours of Clarity

It's a mood and a decision and a certainty.

From then on, all day, it is only good things. Once it begins to happen, it, for the most part, is complete and lasts until the set time. If it is a panicked series of days of study, it is a productive, if exhausting, several days of determination. What I care more for, is when I can set aside a single day for myself. Sometimes it is purely out of instinctual recognition. Things have been bad, so I take a breath and fulfill an entire day wherein I do exactly as I need. And for it, emerge clearer, better, and whole once more. Or, in this case, things were alright, but not held together well. So it came to a moment where I "woke" with resolve and decided just to do what I needed to do. Not in the sense of steeling myself and pushing forward, but in the complete opposite way. Letting it all fall away, and letting myself just go ahead and take care of it with ease - broken away from all the external thoughts. It was very much taking a day for myself and doing exactly as each moment demanded. It began with writing what and why I was doing as I was in a few simple sentences with immense power. Then a list of ideas and goals. Then a few little things as they struck me. Need to clean that, need to fix that, need to reply to that. Each step simple and obvious. As well as: no, should not do this. Just dropping and moving on. I made a promise and I will not break it. For each moment, I look at it directly, (in a way I probably always can, but never do....) know the answer, and do as I know I really want to do best. The result is a mixture of activities. Tidying, looking up sexual topics I was curious about, showering, a private spiritual meditative dance, dressing up in a comfortable dress and a blanket, studying, drinking tea, talking to Jackson, looking up bus schedules, more memorization, more preparation, more notes, more planning for the coming week, and now this - a reflection on what it is like.

Because it is like being as unblemished and ...as paramount, aloof, prevailing, as I can. Promising to do my best, and every moment checking that I am, and actually doing so. However it starts, it is an unbreakable commitment that makes me more powerful than I am and lasts for the entire time I gave myself. It has been that I lock myself in my room for the entire day, away from everyone and everything, but it probably could be accomplished just as well if it were a promise regarding going out and doing as I think I ought publicly, I think it would not fade because distractions and negatives and badness are repelled with such resolution. It isn't without question, each imperfect option is still considered. But the question each time is asked and answered with such irrefutable knowledge with what I should do or change.

I have done it for figuring myself out. I have done it for planning a summer. I have done it for how I think of my life. I have done it for rescuing my studies. I have done it for reading a book and playing certain games. It is not something that I am very good at just doing whenever I want to, despite how I sometimes think I must be able to (and subsequently am unpleasantly surprised at just how far from the same level of completeness I am) but sometimes things collide or come to a head in just the right way that I can, with ease, slip into this mode of single-minded determination. Perhaps the most mysterious part is that it isn't quite single-minded. It isn't a focus on a single thing, but a focus on a single way of acting. No dedication to one class, but a dedication to an ideal. I will do only important things today. I will not do things I do not want, I will not avoid things I do want. I will go about today with purity. And purity is really as best a description as anything. I want to wear this dress, so I will. There really isn't anything else to it. I wanted to. I promised I would act as I think I should. So that is what I am going to do. I want to study so I will without thinking about other things I could do or should do. I should clean up so I will without thinking or planning much past. I will stop when I am tired, do something else that I want as a rest, and return when I realize I should. There really isn't anything more to it.

As great as these days of eternal uprightness are, they only last a day and are difficult if not impossible to cause.

They vary too. This time it was more materialistic study and progress and maintenance. Sometimes it is very deep dedicated philosophic-spirituality. Thinking of who I am, what makes me me, writing and drawing and communing with how I have been and what I will become.* Sometimes it is a day of doing everything that is frivolous without letting worries intrude. "I promised this day to myself, so it will be computer games, reading, and whatever strikes my fancy at the time." The next day there was no shock or repulsion, but a feeling of gladness and clarity and preparedness afterwards, each time for each kind of day.

*(This is the most frequent, deep, and memorable kind. These I can promise myself much much more readily, and I'm even thinking that possibly at any time. The only reason I don't do so more frequently is actually because it seems oddly selfless and selfish at the same time, and there are things that are more connecting to this world that always need attention. Shame.)

They all have a purity. A separateness. A single-ness which is not narrowness. A promise and certainty. And they are whole belief and knowledge of what I can do. Without the should or need but simple "will." They are shedding all the built up conflicts and knowledge and cross-referenced necessities and just submerging myself in the mindset I have chosen.



It's really too bad that I have only been able to describe the outline and the facts of the nature of these rare days. I have hinted decently at how they are to experience, but, perhaps because this time it was more materialistic, I have not and will not describe any more the quiet "otherness" of the mindsets I throw myself into. I don't have the same deep desire to root out the reason and encapsule the nature and source and being of it that I sometimes do. In fact I don't think I've done a very interesting reflection on a very interesting phenomena so I don't very much want to post it as if I were at least a little proud of it. The only reason I am is because I suspect I will look back and be glad that I wrote it at all, and perhaps will like parts of it or else be able to pick out what was done right and know what needs adding to. Not that I ever will, but the principle of it is really what makes it matter, and makes me act one way or the other.