I am a hurricane. It is not that I am bent on destruction but just that movement and wind are all that I really know and life around me is so fragile. I am a storm stretched between the ground and the sky. I cannot hope to leave either behind.

A quote from the book I am reading says, "The more abstract our life plan, the easier it will be to feel good about it but the harder it will be to know concretely what we are affirming. The more concrete our life plan, the easier it will be to know what our tasks are but the more likely we are to overwhelm ourselves with tasks and narrow our possibilities." This same book (The Van Gogh Blues) cites a lack of meaning in life as one of the primary causes of depression in 'creative people'. Now, we will ignore the fact that I do not comprehend the existence of uncreative people. We will also ignore the word depression because it is an overdiagnosed, misunderstood (but real) state of being with a lot of baggage.

Let us call it hopelessness. Let us call it sadness. Let us call it whatever name we find ourselves saying after dark when we should be asleep but something is sitting on our chest keeping us awake by sheer force of panic. It may stay for awhile or it may visit only briefly. I have hours of despair in which I do not comprehend what it means for me to be alive and living much less what I am supposed to do about it. I have always had these hours interspersed with my life and they never once made me feel like I had the right to end my life or harm myself in any conscious way. Yet, I am coming to understand them as a kind of mild depression, which is funny in a way because I never set myself to reading about depression only Van Gogh.

My struggle has always been to sail the storm that I am, to understand where I find myself and what to do about it. Abstract wrapped up in concrete. If I get too specific, the wind kicks up and beats against the barriers and boundaries. If I remain nondescript, my hurricane becomes clumsy and I become self conscious of my dangerous blustering as I aimlessly tear through life. I may understand this and be able to define life in a meaningful way, but I do not cease to be a hurricane. And that is something I am coming to terms with.

I was a hurricane of a child and have never really purged myself of the storm. I am constantly in danger of being pulled apart between the ground and the sky only to discover that I am full of an ocean that must be sailed. I have only learned to sail more (and sometimes less) expertly over the years in an effort to connect the parts of me that are deeply rooted in reality as I understand it with the parts of me that resist definition, classification, limitation, and reservation.

I am one part sailor, one part cartographer, and another part ocean but two parts hurricane. Life and living are very much about getting all of those parts to sync up without letting any of them win. Not just for my own benefit, but also for the sake of those around me.