desultory.

Today I traveled around Nashville in search of…

We found a bookstore. The first shop we arrived at was closed, leaving our 35 cent meter fee as a public gift.

WE then traveled to greenhills… I would have preferred a more personal and rooted book perusing, but we had to settle on corporate hours for an open shop. The mall provided us with such an outlet.

I headed directly to the Philosophy section, which was fittingly ensconced alongside book aisles home to spirituality and personal growth.

My eyes paced quickly among the rows of eastern and western thought, and immediately found the classics. Epictetus: Essays and dialogs. I peeled it open, skimmed the intro, inspected the table of contents, and sampled a few excerpts before slipping it under my arm to attend my other curiosities. Next: Linguistics for beginners. The book contained large, bold font, and paragraphs that floated among sporadically positioned sketches with crude and childish design. It was a practical attempt to lead the reader into the realm of linguistics without overwhelming their cognitions.

I moved onto the Thoreau and his journals. I always love reading journals. I need to journal more. I feel that my writing becomes less and less imaginative the less I expunge on my thoughts. Pent up thoughts blister and swell until they bleed a consciousness asphyxiated and infected, devoid of richness and life. My thoughts unhinge onto the paper and saunter about, without direction.

I need purpose and direction. I keep a small paper journal where I capture fleeting momentary thoughts. I desperately need to devise a creed of character. A creed that embodied the internal life I wish I lead.

My purpose is to single in on the attributes, virtues, or qualities I wish to possess. From here I am granted a destination to acquaint and adjust new methods and processes for attainment.

My language. I long to develop a byzantine language that is not only rhetorically pleasing, but flowery and fruitful. I want to communicate desires- hopes, dreams, wishes, questions- with fluidity, power and poignancy, riding a delicate balance of feeling and reason.

More than anything, I want to convey something worth saying. I don’t want to regurgitate. I don’t want to reiterate the same message, the timeless truths. I want to explore the bounds of thought, the limits of our caged wonder, the frontiers of imagination, of reason, of emotion.

Sheeple we are, you and I. Sheeple we’ll stay, until we die.

Can’t we escape? Are we trapped? By our own minds. If we are boundless in vision and imagination, why not industry and discipline? Can we not fathom the work ethic of slaves? Let us become slaves to truth, slaves to curiosity, slaves to causes, to things worthwhile!

Is philosophy enough to thrive? Surely there are greater callings to truth. Will surviving suffice?

Doubt and cynicism. Skepticism and restraint. Fear and misery. These need to be chained and starved. Out of mind, out of touch, out of reach.