Wanderer Above the Mists

There was a time, perhaps high school, when I used to search for words online that I thought described me. I would see where those words would lead me, usually toward various images, and in a manner of speaking I would derive meaning from those images - perhaps that I was not the only one or that there was a visual representation of how I felt inside - who I was.

I have long since ceased this practice. I no longer search for meaning in words, but words in meaning. I define myself; I am not defined. The agency matters. My direction has inverted. I have become the expeditious captain of my own life, rather than the wayfaring skipper. Enough with the metaphors. I can weave the most brilliant of tapestries, but it takes someone attuned - or perhaps simple-minded - to divine the meaning latent in their images.

That's what is all comes back to - the variable of understanding in the equation of perception. It all comes back to the desire to be understood, to leave clues that others might decipher, to understand another being for even a moment. I sought definition, manifested in image, as a mirror by which to feel understood, even if it was only by me. That alone, I submit, is a grand accomplishment that few can boast. I'm not even sure I can to be honest, but I'm getting close... Close to the perception of aperception - that is, sensation - just being and awareness of it. If a picture is worth 1000 words, then what of 1000 pictures? It's all an exponential curve approaching the asymptote of comprehension that can only be reached through empathetic inference grounded in experience. Words and images merely seek to convey what we fail to adequately communicate - pure sentiment. Each thought is a wave in the ocean of brain activity. Often we just ride the wave toward the equilibrium of the surf... bardo nothingness. But to share that wave with others... to be joined on that wave - what would that be like! Incomprehension. Failure to compute. We only know what can call to conscience, grounded in immediate experience. Memories are but a representation of that experience - potent yet alien. We've all been to the ocean, seen it in pictures and movies, read about it in print... but to actually be in it! No memory can adequately recreate the sensation coupled with disposition that leads to perception. We each experience it every time for the first time, and nothing comes close to conveying that exact experience. Such is the nature of thought. We've all been there, but who can live in a thought perpetually? [If only sharing was so intuitive, we would hardly have cause to do it and value it so.]