Life by Chance

Thought it would get easier, huh? After what feels like the ten thousandth...thousandth time, to tear another page, another piece of canvas from the place in your heart you've already scratched and frayed for so many others, for so many stains that only ever remained stains, that were crumpled up and thrown away—you can't even think about the wastebasket where you left them to languish in abandonment without getting nauseous. But your trembling hands know: that's only half of the story, half of the song. The head knows the other side of the coin it's a tale of taking a chance when you make something new, when you strive to heights where noone has gone, scaling beyond uncertainty's clouds to a rarefied blue, the muse and you, alone together at last in a dance that brightens and expands the great expanse, itself. Some believe the artist's job (as if this heavenly task could be reduced to such a paltry thing) is to journal what they see, to paint or print a mere imitation of the external reality—if such a thing exists. They would make crass demands on imagination, demand that it bend the knee to a king that, the true artist knows, wears no clothes, has no throne, not even a crown. Fie! There is no such thing but that which we think and see, hear, taste, feel within! A wayward, wise prince once said, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." So it goes, thus, with goodnesssin our thoughts, we must chance to launch creation's cannon where thinkers, and thinking, seems most good—in doing so, we create the world anew. Being, itself, was a creative chance, and only our shared, our mutually pledged creative chance can give being a chance at a future. We are all artists, and our medium is our lives; if we refuse to risk mistepping, we've already forfeited our chance at life.