Finding Walls in the Dark

I feel like the boundaries must be somewhat supple. The perimeter between thought and action might not be so narrow. In fact, I wonder some times if there are actually great banks of foggy unknowns. Exclaves and counter-exclaves. The syrupy delay between reflex and cognition muddles what seems a genuine distinction. Am I a Cartesian point in space with will and knowledge—the hand on the controls that rules an armada of cells, organs, systems? Or is this self just a coalescent phenomenon of parallel forces? It could be like an egosphere of swirling impulses, instincts and chemical complexity that protects the frail machinery which animates me.

But even that delay—the jump your mind makes to explain actions done in haste and without planning—can be ruled by the slower forces. Practice. Almost as determinedly as the sharpening of a blade, you stand toes-to-the-line throwing ten thousand free throws until the flick of the wrist, the estimation of distance and the leap that drives all the precision and power of your body behind the ball becomes autonomic. You are the programmer of that machinery. It must be honed like that blade. Each slow hissing pull over the stone sets the grain of your muscle memory. Every gently flicker tightens the alignment. It guarantees appropriate reaction.

Exclaves and counter-exclaves. Supple boundaries. Am I the one who throws that jab around his guard in the split second his cover drops? The speed at which my mind reacts to such stimulus gives us a clear picture that it isn't so. I turn the flashbulb images of an ungentle memory into a likely story. But if it was the creeping, controlling programmer of my slower cognition that ordered the hours of practice and honed the blade of my reactions, then can I not take credit for it? Even if it happens outside of conscious prompting in that instant.

I say it falls within my egosphere. It is bound within the phenomena which make my body. My sphere of influence. Still, though, there are ripples in the surrounding forces. If the conditioned swing of the bat is me, as is the reflexive release of the arrow, then so to must the fluid leap of the thoroughbred over a barrier be within that sphere of the rider. Train a body. Master a tool. Control an animal. Teach a human.

You see the trend. The line has to be drawn. Drawn with fog banks and exclaves, perhaps. If you draw the lines right, you can increase the size of your “self” to the ends of the universe. Actions caused by solar flares and passing comets and birthing stars can be as integral to “me” as are my blood, flesh and thoughts. When I go out into the world to find myself, am I already and always there? Or is the flush of the tides, the hold of the earth's molten core and the constant bombardment of cosmic rays so overwhelming that this tiny seed of “me,” fighting to control a body of mud and light has no hope of causing anything?

I'm driving at a point of contending to change the world. I'm fluffing up my ego, and remembering there's nothing I cannot control if I possess a certain lofty sense of grandeur. Through actions properly ruled by thought, I can change your life and mine. Or I can worry in the late hours that I am slipping into sleep, and that maybe this time the illusion of control won't return. That these last dreams may tear asunder the egosphere I inhabit. I'm struggling to uhold the former, though the clutch of the latter is constant companion these days.

So good night and best wishes. And supple boundaries to you all.