A body of water ebbs and flows without much choice in the matter. It creeps in and out and cycles through periods of decline and regrowth forever. Can a body of water be forced to ebb or flow on demand? Can you manually control the tides? Would it be natural for there to be constant growth and no stagnation?
Have you been on a hike in Southern California? During a drought, the waterfalls dry up and some would say you were blessed by an angel if you could point out a single wildflower. Shades of brown and beige and lots of crunching footsteps. Surrounded by death. And when things start to dry up, they often go up in flames. Rolling black hills and tree stumps; a real apocalyptic scene. But for some reason, after a few months of rain and sun, you can go back to that same spot and only see wildflowers in every direction. Decline and regrowth.
I think it’s pretty natural that humans ebb and flow. We dry up, burn out, and blossom. After all, we must be driven by nature in some regard. Decline and regrowth; how much can you relate to that? I feel pretty cyclical, like my mind is governed by a biannual tide and shifts gears every 6 months. Eventually my passions dry up until I hit a low point and then all of a sudden I’m hit with an unstoppable surge of creativity. I don’t want to feel guilty about it, but i don’t know how else to process being human. Does a body of water feel guilty about submitting to the tides? Or what about a mountain, which houses so many living beings? Does it feel bad when it succumbs to the forces of nature, ignites, and then proceeds to destroy everything it has created?
For the past couple of years, I’ve really succumbed to my own nature and i’ve accepted that I will always operate like a tide. I think back to some of the moments when I really feel like I should write something or I should pull out my camera or God forbid, even my pencils — and the action of creating seems physically painful, so I don’t do it. These moments are worse than death, because I know that the only things that could fulfill me are not only entirely out of reach, but they are so because of my own doing. I could just start drawing or writing or photographing, but I don’t because I decide not to. And whenever I’m stuck in these moments, I remind myself of Kafka, who despite being entirely uninspired and disgusted by his own writing in his periods of decline, still wrote about how shitty he was. I don’t know if I’ll be happier pulling a Kafka or just accepting stagnation, but I do know that I would make a lot more stuff!
And what of the periods of regrowth? How do they come about? I don’t know myself that well to be honest, but from what I can tell, it seems as though creative regrowth happens when I’ve hit a low emotionally. It’s confusing because I can’t be both euphoric and depressed at the same time, and yet that seems to be the only explanation. But I cannot put myself through sadness for the rest of my life just so I can make stuff. That feels wrong and weird. I guess you can’t force a body of water to ebb and flow on demand.