While I was reading Letters to a Young Poet, which Kayla recommended to me, I came across this passage:

"In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn't matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life; learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!"

This summer has so far come to be a big lesson in patience. Patience in the knowledge that I will find a job, patience with my health, fitness and well-being, and patience with my artistic pursuits. I've become enthralled by the need to be efficient. If I'm not doing something with my time, I feel very anxious about it, and then depressed and greatly frustrated. Even if I am doing something, if it's not something my ego arbitrarily deems worthwhile, then it's as good as doing nothing. If it doesn't have a tangible result, then all is lost, it seems. I need to keep looking to this passage for a reminder that I don't have to do everything all at once. More importantly, the times where I feel inactive, something--an idea, a picture, a song, is in me and needs that time to bloom in my mind. The evenings I get home from work and I may accomplish nothing all evening, it's worth remembering that while my conscious self may not have done much, my unconscious might be working very hard, and is waiting for the right opportunity. It's worth remembering that any inspiration I get came to me not in spite of that seemingly endless wandering and floundering, but because of it. Nothing is a waste.

I've idolized the idea of maximizing my time, doing the most with it as possible; a distortion of the carpe diem mantra, I guess. Perhaps we're not meant to be that efficient. Stanislavski, who devoted his entire life to acting, likened himself to a prospector, who had to sift through tons of useless rocks just to gather a few pieces of gold. I think he found an abundance of it, but the important part is all of the time and energy he put into sifting through all the rocks. One can't get around that step.

A word I came across, also from reading Rilke, was fruitfulness. This word struck me instantly. I think this is what I've been working for, but I mistook it for its deceptively similar, utilitarian counterpart, productivity. Yes, they're synonymous, but I believe there is a difference, in our day and age at least. To me, fruitfulness implies fruit, which comes from an organic kind of growth that will only yield over time, with great patience and humility, after enduring great pain. Productivity is an Industrialist word, and it smacks of quotas in my mind. It implies efficiency, and economy. If a human being was a lightbulb, it would not be a very cost-efficient one. Yes, it can create light--and it is a marvelous light indeed!--but not without producing a lot of heat. The metaphor itself doesn't come close to it, because I don't think we're meant to be that way. We are from Nature, and Art is from Nature, so we really are more like a tree. That's why we live according to the seasons, and that's why there is a time for everything under the sun. (So for God's sake, we've got to stop believing that we are what we make! Our creations already have that covered.) Efficiency is something that I cannot satisfy right now. I think there's a reason why people say the "fruit of one's labours" more often than the "product of one's labours". It's got a far nicer ring to it, and it speaks of something that comes out of life and is life-giving. I believe this word is closer to Art, as well as Life. And that's what brings me back to the passage above. And that's why I've got to be patient. I will not yield anymore than my earth will allow.

Confessions of an Armchair Anarchist

Hey everybody,

I haven't posted much of anything lately, and I don't really have too much on the boil at the moment. But that should change fairly soon. In the mean time, since I have no new material, I thought I'd share with you an ooold and silly entry from when I was 15, because it's just too amusing:

"I think laws are stupid. For as long as they exist people won't be able to continue in their evolution. Rid ourselves of laws and people will gradually become more self-reliant upon their potentiality for common sense. Things will seem chaotic at first I'm sure, but I believe the long-term effect will be better. Until then, we will be bound by laws; external agents that we look to rather than looking inward. Laws are like over-protective parents, doing more harm than good, since they are ultimately supressing the growth and development of the children (i.e. the subjects under which laws are implemented, a.k.a us). My two cents for today."
Liam Volke
October 13, 2004

Seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess.