“Awe and terror have a fine defining border. Nothing captures this more for me than the sea. Every time my eyes reach for the horizon they are confronted with its impossibility: the truth of my own limitation in the face of ambition. As I think on it, the waves break forth and the reality of a depth that surpasses the visible distance in scope terrifies. Indeed I’m once more a spec, not even of as much consequence as the wind blown drop nestling on my eyelash. Before is beyond and I thirst for it hoping it would be my becoming.
The trouble is, this terror ahead – this awe – conceals by its drawing of my attention the truth of the vastness behind. I suppose this is the curse of ambition: never really taking stock of the unmastered past. The land that my eyes ignore isn’t covered in my footprints yet has contributed more to my foundations than the seas with all their potential can”.
He draws breath. Scratches his head and pauses.
“I cut my hair bald for a decade.” The words emerge from darkness and disappear, like headlights on a country lane.
“I wonder what happened to them. The faces that like my childhood memories irregularly haunt: showing up to confront what’s before in violent eruptions; claiming authority over the present; branding the eye; calling false all that is and is to come; and howling as the wind blows them away – back into the abyss we share”.
A breath intentionally drawn once again.
“There are terrors both ways; awe both ways. One must turn his back to the seas now and again. To bask in the unrecognized sublime”.
It's Complicated 