A Poet's Journal: February 23rd, 2015

 

February 23rd, 2015

To have something meaningful before us, or produced by us, or in light of our imminent approach, is something we busy ourselves with without reprieve.  There is not the slightest question that we are fulfilled by something that is fulfilling, but it is only in our act of distinguishing it as a goal, or as a fact outside of ourselves, that we turn it into an accepted and pleasing form of nihilism.

At the very end of dreaming, just before I awake, I am sometimes stricken by an immense form of inspiration, but upon waking, find that it was all just an illusion, or what I believed so full and rich, is no longer understandable, or is misinterpreted; the two worlds never seem to end in the same conclusion.  And so this is what meaning puts before us, it gives a desire to attain, but in attaining, it has already led us to something else.  Satisfaction only lasts as long as the attainment remains present, so it is only the worth of something that keeps us going.  To do something meaningless is perhaps the most profound act we can come to.

Douglas Thornton