Do you ever think about getting caught with a chronic illness? Like you and the chronic illness are consorting in an alleyway before a medical doctor walks by and calls you out -- "Hey, you can't keep doing that. You're with a chronic illness, you know." And while your life won't change, since you've always had it, the realization of it fucks with you. I'm not a hypochondriac, but I find myself wondering when the inevitable anvil of the odds will fall on me. Car wreck, stomach cancer, mugging, jury duty, unexpected death of someone I'm close with, food poisoning, etc. How often can you walk outside in the middle of a lightning storm and not get struck? Maybe you can do it every day for 47 years, or every day for 62 years, without getting struck...or you might get struck the very first time. Or the second time.
There is no point in thinking about all this, of course. Nothing can be learned or realized, except for realizing (again) that we are a bunch of molecules bouncing off each other at varying speeds, and running into each other is the life of it and also the death of it. I am living and dying every day, which should make each day exciting beyond belief...but I find myself bored a lot of the time. I guess it's hard to feel alive or dead in the parking lot of the grocery store. More and more, I believe that to survive each day without developing an anxiety problem, you have to get in the habit of becoming a camouflaged iguana, even if it's in your own car or your own laundromat, and be still and wait on the rock for the moment to pass. Or if it doesn't pass, if it's the death of you, then...what. I don't know.
This kind of life-turn is inescapable, but is a drawn-out, angry, emotional response also inescapable?
This is what (worthy) art is born out of -- a desire to lessen friction with the environment. In doing this, it has to become partially like the thing it criticizes.
