The Quest

Bsd

This is the mission statement of this blog. So read it carefully.


Who am I? What am I?
These questions have answers and yet they have none.
Here’s a question:
What’s the difference between what I am and who I am? Aren’t they one, indivisible, a redundant repetition of a question whose answer is the same?
Here’s an answer:
No.
Who am I?
A soul bound within a body. A spark of G-d Himself, pure and eternal, beloved and whole.
What am I?
A girl who complains about never getting anything done and then never does anything about it. Only one of my mortal imperfections.
Who am I?
A Jewess, proud and fiery with my belief. I carry within me the hopes of my ancestors and my children will reap the fruits of their dreams.
What am I?
Never a true doubter, have I ever known the certainty that comes from asking questions, or do I merely follow the path that has been laid before me, only thinking that I have challenged and been satisfied?

I could fill pages, both with what I have been told about myself and what I consider my own unique discoveries.
I could describe the composition of my soul, the charting of my being, the essence I barely recognize.
I could describe the nuances of my character, the faults and wonders that I marvel over when I uncover them, astounded by the reality that this is me.

Does any of it answer the questions?
Who am I?
What am I?

In the quest to discover the answers, I doubt myself:
Does it matter?
In the quiet where I find the answers, I affirm:
I know it does.

If I am honest with myself, I will admit that I hate these questions. It is because I know the answers.
And knowing that I know the answers leaves me with no excuse for why I haven’t followed them through the course, through to action, through to change.

Who am I?
What am I?
I know!

On the quest, in the quiet, I cry:
“If I know, then why don’t I…?!”
In response, my soul turns over, and stubbornly returns to sleep.

Stories in My Head

Bsd
Maybe it's being home again.
Maybe it's because I need it again.
But for the first time in months, I can keep a story in my head.
This is something I learned to do as a child, when troubled with insomnia. Lying on my back, head nestled into my pillow, my sister breathing softly on the other side of the room, I would close my eyes and begin a story.
It would often be centered around an image, or a character, something inspired by books I'd read, movies I'd seen, or even a song I'd heard. Or just my own wondering, my own wanting. Whatever the case, whether I imagined a picture or a person, there would always be the moment. The moment is where everything in the story began for me. It could be the middle of the story, or even the end, and often it was the beginning, but it didn't matter.
Behind closed eyelids, the details of the moment would develop. Slowly, in an ephemeral process, the colors of my story would form. Characters would take their places, and their emotions would well up within me. Once everything in the moment was staged to my satisfaction, the story would begin.
And I would fall asleep.
Sitting in the van on the way to school the next day, I would gaze out the window, and recall the moment. Again, I would set the stage. Distractions abounded - the history of my characters, the beginnings and endings and connectings of their stories would tug my focus on the moment away. But it all led to or from the moment, so that was okay.
In class, if I was bored - I'd scribble descriptions of the people in my stories. Choosing eye color, hair texture, height and weight, like a prospective parent designing the perfect child. I'd brood over their personalities - should she be a rebel or a saint? Shy or adventurous? The person I want to be or the person I am?
And that night, I would lie in bed and return to my moment. And there my story would begin, again and again and again.
It waited for me every time I closed my eyes. On a long car ride, in a strange bed, during boring speeches, and as I stretched out on a couch to wile an afternoon away.
The story - whatever it happened to be - waited.
But then sometime soon after I left home for high school, I began to be too tired for my stories. I'd close my eyes, and sleep would greet me, leaving no time to linger over moments. And boring classes were enlivened by scribbled notes to friends. I lived next door to school, and missed my long commutes.
Images still sprung into my mind. Moments full blown, that waited for me to discover their secrets. Characters that hovered, their complicated pasts lingering behind them.
And the old stories, rehearsed so often, never quite faded. Dusty and shadowed, they gathered forlornly in the corners of my otherwise-occupied mind.
And high school became seminary, and seminary my first year in New York, and I slept deeply and nearly instantly when my head hit my bed, and I still had stories, but different kinds, stories of what I might do the next day, or who I might meet, or what I hadn't quite finished thinking of just yet.
Finally, I am home again. I've been sifting through objects I've collected over the years, knicknacks, and souvenirs, keepsakes that no longer have a sake to keep, and treasures that still awaken in me a sense of wonder or a glow of love. And memories galore. I have been sorting through memories. Among the varied discoveries that I have been making in the detritus of nearly twenty years of life are the scribblings. Scribblings from the days of my many, many stories. My moments. And in lying on my bed (a different bed, a different room), mind twirling about myriads of thoughts I really wish it wouldn't, sun streaming down from a familarly blue sky, I captured a moment.
I built an image behind my closed eyes of two people, lovingly constructing their faces and bodies, detailing their histories and futures, sinking deep into imagined emotions.
And fragile as this moment was, unlike others just as fragile, this one sank roots within my troubled head and bloomed.
I can't describe the difference. This moment brings with it a certain... reality? Yes, that's the only word that qualifies it. There is a certain reality that this moment possesses. It is a real, textured place, of shadows and sunlight, tenderness and terror, filled with sights, sounds, souls.
A place real enough to escape to.
Which is what I was looking for.
And in looking, created.
A story in my head.