I like to think that my professional and creative pursuits stem from a noble root. For example, creative expression or the need to connect with others are fine reasons to pursue writing, but a thing like recognition is superficial and hollow. But the truth is, I hold myself on too high of a moral standard. I find myself dipping below that fine line between superficiality and righteousness and getting wrapped up in some moral dilemma.
When I was twenty, I read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, the first novel I’d picked up and read on my own after the end of high school. When I finished it, my brain turned to soft clay and felt as if were being pulled apart and reshaped by a sculptor. My brain was undergoing a reconfiguration process, or something of the sort, I thought. It was only later that I realized I had had a “moment,” or what most people might consider euphoria.
I sifted through my memories of the book like old photographs, hoping to find something I’d missed or perhaps needed to think through, but everything was accounted for. And even after the investigation, all I kept thinking about was that damned book.
That one moment in time led me on a winding path to college as an English major. I went after that feeling.
I read a variety of literature: from science fiction stories about the universe coming to an end, stars turning off in rows like lights in a stadium, to the plight of slaves in the antebellum south. And although I felt immense empathy for the fictional characters of these stories, I never quite found or felt that mind-bending feeling.
And then I thought that this fruitless chasing of a feeling and a moment in time might just be what’s at the core of an addict’s mind. The addict is always chasing a feeling similar to the first one that made him want more, and all the time in between his highs are intermittent shiftless lulls.
Does any of this make sense? I don’t know.
Come On In, The Water Is Fine 