Clarity & Confusion
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Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood.
Henry Miller
This is one of those moments, rare and raw, when it all makes sense. When I feel my feet on the ground. When my eyes see what’s before me and what’s well beyond.
I am at Starbucks. At a small table at the window. I stare out at the people passing by. At the cars starting and stopping. At the dogs scampering and sniffing. There is a bank across the street. Chase. A word I love. A word I live.
I’ve just been writing a chapter. A chapter about a man with a past. A man who can’t stop thinking about one day when his world changed. In the last hour, this man came to life. Even though he’s invisible, present only in pages I’ve scribbled, pages I won’t show anyone yet, I saw him today. He was real to me. Walking through the sidewalks of his life, moving on, but ever stuck.
Chasing something.
Aren’t we all?
I sit here, a stranger to so many, sometimes to myself, and things seem suddenly plain. I see myself as I saw this man. I am a mother. I am a writer. I am a wife. I am a person. I am an observer. A dreamer. A doubter. A living and breathing mosaic of utter confusion and utter clarity.
And here. I marvel at something. How life is both. Completely senseless and full of sense. How I suffer through shaky moments when I don’t know a thing and then, suddenly, I am here, in this sweet spot, in this sweet day, and I know everything worth knowing.
And here. I marvel at something. How I can be chasing and chasing, grasping away, cursing the crippling complexity and then, bam, it’s right there, right here, in front of me.
It.
In the confusion that wraps my head and my heart and my world, there is a humble order I do not yet understand. A pattern so subtle and so slippery, it can only be glimpsed and grasped in fierce and passing flashes. But is there, this order, this crisp clarity.
It is here.
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Do you believe that life is a patchwork of chaos and order, of confusion and clarity? Have you experienced unexpected moments of crisp clarity? Are you sometimes a stranger to yourself? Do you think that we are all chasing something?
Everyone struggles and...
Kindred souls.
There is no such thing as a complete lack of order, only a design so vast it appears unrepetitive up close. (Louise Erdrich)
Yes, yes and yes and I often feel I’m “chasing” my tail. I spend my days fitting it all in, chasing the next project and task. I then tell myself to appreciate those special moments and I do and I feel I “get it” and then the race is on. I guess I’m not unlike those taxis you are staring out at.
This is what I love about your blog…this is EXACTLY what I was going through today and I just couldn’t quite make sense of it and then I click on your site and you perfectly put it into words!
Thank you, Aidan!
Now keep writing that book because I can’t wait to read it!
Oh yes. I dance between confusion and clarity daily, sometimes hourly. I have those moments where everything is so crystalline and I think I will remember it always. And then the next moment the phone rings, the car needs to go in for service, and I can’t figure out what’s for dinner.
This experience is particularly pronounced when I’m writing. I spiral around writing things that aren’t the thing I’m trying to say, and then, sometimes after I’ve written it, I’ll see: There. That’s what I was trying to say.
I call them my random moments of clarity. Lately I haven’t had them as frequently, but when they are present they fill me up. It’s a remarable feeling. Teetering on the abyss and yet feeling something great. Lovely as always Aidan.
xo
I love those tiny moments of clarity and I appreciate them more when I have the awareness to embrace it as it is happening.