I was walking around Fukuoka two days ago. I saw the words “I carry a flower carefully” inscribed like a very short poem on the side of a big truck. I wanted to write an ode to the side of that truck. Or, maybe, I wanted to write an ode to postmodern commerce. Or, maybe, I wanted to think about writing an ode, and then stop, before the ode appeared, all wilted and unloved, like an uncarefully-carried flower.
Instead, I wrote the following in my little librito para pensamientos aleatorios.
I imagine that in the back of that truck, there is a single flower. It is a bit limp, in the dark strangling air and the stiffling heat of the back of that truck. It is a single flower, strapped down tightly and carefully so that won’t slide around in its tiny flower pot. It is alone in the otherwise empty cargo bay of that truck.
We all carry important things. Life has so many details.
Too many choices amid too much freedom can create its own class of suffering? I shake my head. The September sun is hot in Fukuoka. There are no clouds.
It seems like I have no goals. Isn’t life, and growing up, supposed to be about process? Sometimes the lack of goals can create feelings of anxiety, but I then try to remind myself that goals are hazardous. They are hazardous because… well, not precisely… but, they lead to disappointment.
I think sometimes that such a goallessness must seem odd, or even bewildering, to others who see it in me. I frequently make up goals and tell them to people, but these made-up goals are often shifting around like sand under the waves creeping up a beach. Sometimes I carry a goal that I have made up around with me, carefully, for a long time. But I never forget that I made it up to please someone, during some conversation. It’s an illusion.
People seem to find me difficult to understand.
Is it really suffering, having so much freedom? No. It’s maybe an irrational fear of emptiness. I carry a center of loneliness. I don’t comfort it. I simply carry it, carefully, and some day, in some metaphysical market, maybe I can trade it to someone who needs it more than I do. That person might give me some strong, desirable currency, or a kernel of enlightenment or understanding, in exchange.
The details in life matter, but they are so easy to neglect. Other people matter. I’m not always very good at connecting.
