The state of flow.

It’s an easy thing to name – less easy to accept, less easy to internalize, less easy to imbibe.

Yet sometimes, it comes; unashamed, unyielding, ever-asserting.

Do we say that this is a state of flow in execution, words articulating themselves through the moving spirit of a universe pushing through me?

It’s tempting to say so – yet I realize that even in these moments, where the words seem to come easily, the urge to edit and go back remains; the old instinct to self-correct and look back at the past while binding the present stays – an abusive partner there to gaslight and to chain, to press down on the ground, never allow to see the Sun.

I imagine a state of flow as a time when that bondage is not present – where ideas spring forth in the executions of dawn; where each letter, word, sentence, and thought in formation begin and end in the company of the divine muse that awakes from within, pushing forward each word, sensory impression, idea, as a small forward push in the universe.

I imagine it as a time when order arises spontaneously from an ordered mind freed from captivity – constantly breaking the rules yet reposing in perfect knowledge of those rules; a realm where skills are nature and nature is skill, the attainment of which rests in that perfect capture of capacities in the otherwise formless and directionless void.

Who are we really, and what are we for?

I often wonder – but I imagine that at least part of the answer lies in creating what you saw here and today, each word drawn out in my mind by an animating force that stood beyond my comprehension.

The words came from the deep – who provided them, and how they arose, however, is an entirely different story – a different part of the stream that arises from the flow, yet a constituent of the greater whole.

You’re actually kind of part of an experiment right now – an experiment for me to discover what it’s like to write with no inhibitions.

Why?

Cause I don’t really check the statistics of who visits this site – All I really know is that it’s public, it lets people see what I’m thinking about, and I can more or less yap here with no real consequences.

As a result, here I am just casually typing away as part of an experiment or an attempt, if you like, to throw away fear of rejection.

After all, even if people don’t read this, do I really care?

Do I make less money? Have fewer friends? Does my audience suddenly rise up in outrage and judge me for writing in this space but with no consequence?

Not really.

I have no idea what’s going to happen in the future or how I’m going to change as a person in terms of my name and what I’m known for – I think that most people if they want can go out there and begin to make their conclusions, and it is starting to be a reasonable assumption that if I go out on the streets and just casually hang out, people are likely to at least know of who I am.

Which means that I need to become a lot more thick skinned.

Thanks for being part of that process, haha.

The perfectionist within me sits, casually, lazily, warily yet unashamedly;

He looks at everything I do, each sentence fixatedly.

“This sounds wrong”.

“That doesn’t feel right!”

“The rhythm is wrong!”

That doesn’t even say what you wanted it to say!

And before we know it, there goes the rearranging of tiles as the kaleidoscope shifts from one broken iteration into another – before we know it, there the perfectionist is.

All cylinders fire, all hands are on deck.

The ‘mistakes’ fade, the ‘errors’ are blotted out – the gift of the perfectionist is handed out to its recipients, one after another.

But it is not a gentle gift.

Harshly it is given, critique after critique, self-assessment after self-assessment; no win, it declares, should be yielded through anything but sacrifice – no victory procured without an act of truth-telling; no satisfaction is earned but through looking clearly at oneself and understanding the answer to a simple question:

“Are you good or are you not good?”

I wonder about the perfectionist sometimes – whether he was there eternally, or maybe if he suddenly took on that role like Rasputin in the court of Count Nicholas; but whatever it is, there he had appeared one day, pushing me day after day, never brooking weakness, ever seeking greatness in an act of divine cruelty as he called me to go beyond my limits.

I began this piece wondering if the perfectionist would die as time would pass and the era might come, with a fixed answer in mind.

I leave realizing that he has a greater influence over my life than I knew.