From Stockholm, 2012

Lot’s of voices. A humming in my ear. I listen to a song and it plays over and over and over in my head. When I’m in such a state my mind feels rigid, things get stuck in it. Is this what it feels like to lose your mind?

I try to find a space where everything is ok. Where things happen and I can watch them and see something. That’s the part I’m looking for. To see something new in something old that I hadn’t seen before. Something is interesting because of thinking about it and not because of being new. It can only be new because of thinking about it. And what about the questions? Who’s making the questions? Who has made the questions that I ask myself over and over? That I try to figure out in all earnestness because… those are the questions right? I told Zoë that I was looking at an improv and asking myself why I liked the parts I liked instead of just being happy with the parts I liked, just accepting them as whole “good” parts. She said the next step would be to ask what I’m looking at and why have I chosen to look at those things.

I’m split between an ocean. Haha! I’m going to give up trying to accomplish the impossible, yes, and just be in one place. You’re good. Really? Really.

I’ve felt the shell of my personality take over and hide something more vulnerable beneath. I laugh louder, I talk more, I’m quicker to jump into a conversation. Whoa… Cool your jets, take a chill pill. Who’s breaking out? Whose face is it that laughs and jokes when inside something else is terribly troubled? Who is it that draws the gun so quickly, who whips out the thought, the comment faster than you actually would? But it’s you saying it. And then night falls. That other, that drawer of weapons, that clown is gone and you lie there in a panic, so confused. Something is different.

And what about silence. And what about sitting. And what about not doing. I’ve learned something this year, and that’s the value of silence – physical and mental. To trust that stillness and feel that it is the fullest thing of all. Then you can make the most fitting choice and go from everything to something, which is less than everything. I surrender, I say. I sit in silence and then I pray in my own way and surrender to life. I should listen sometimes. Things happen and they tell you something. And this silence, it goes for relationships too. There’s a certain amount of trusting without forcing that has to happen. I forced for a while and now I’m really trying not to.