Some days, I know exactly what I will write about. I have a clear idea of the subject matter and the points I want to cover, or I at least have a firm idea for a good jumping-off point for something I want to explore, and writing the day’s entry is relatively easy from that point on.

But not today. Today, my mind is a dusty tornado full of random bits of Kansas, and I have no plan at all.

Oh well, clarity (like purity) is overrated anyhow. I would rather face the true mess of things than fool myself with artificial order created as a safety blanket against chaos.

That’s what makes me a philosopher, I guess. I am capable of highly ordered and analytical thinking with a very high density and resolution and laser precision.

But I don’t let it fool me into thinking I can conquer the chaos of life and create order for order’s sake. I pilot my little kayak of sanity around the oceans of possibility and when in doubt, I make do with less, not more.

The true philosopher, like the true warrior, is without form.

Speaking of purity, the idea has been on my mind a lot lately. And by that I do not merely mean that I have been thinking about it, but that it keeps spontaneously popping into my mind as a prominent theme. The usual wellspring of my creative mind, the place where all my insights and creations come from, has been producing ideas about purity at an increasing rate.

I think this is a sign that I am at the stage of recovery where, having become both aware of my own impurity and the possibility of their being something else, the concept of purity has now become a direction and a yearning instead of the meaningless and inaccessible abstraction it was before.

Total purity may not be possible, but greater purity always is.

And what do I mean by purity? I don’t know. It’s a spiritual feeling, not a well fleshed out philosophical concept to be now. It is the bare nub where an idea way some day grow. It is a need I was afraid to acknowledge and buried under mental abstractions and pretentious derision until recently.

For reference, see my thoughts on innocence. They are almost the same thing.

I was afraid to face this need in me, this striving for purity, because for a long time I thought that was simply impossible for me. Purity and innocence were something that happened to other people. I felt like I was poisoned, polluted, and paralyzed from the very start. The innocent world of others seemed like another dimension to me, one that I could see but never touch without destroying it with my chaotic and radioactive bitter truths.

Always, I have stood outside, wanting to be inside where it is warm and loving, but afraid of destroying it with my toxic self by my very presence.

This is not uncommon with victims of childhood sexual abuse. When we say it robs children of their innocence, we are saying far more than we know. I have felt disgusting all my life. There is no such thing as a clean turd.

So it’s a good thing that I am now feeling that some sort of purity might be possible for me. The waters of my soul need not be a morass of vile and hateful fluids. It can be purified. It can be clean.

One idea that keeps popping into my head is the idea of a spiritually perfect being. I have known since I was a teenager that one of the driving forces of my personality was a desire for spiritual growth, and that my spiritual ambitions had no limit.

But never before has the concept of the spiritually and morally perfect being been as strong and compelling as it is now. I keep coming back to the idea of a being that has no nagging personal motives or conflicting drives any more, but is spiritually whole and clean and unfettered by complications, and thus can embrace the universe of emotions and relationships without fear and without risk.

That is the state I desire, though of course, not being an angel (as good a name for such a being as any), I can never truly shed my humanity and transcend the messy material realities of existence into a state of perfection.

But I can try. Some goals you pursue while knowing you can never truly get there, because what you have found is not a destination but a direction, an axis along which you wish to travel.

It also makes me feel good to realize that I am growing more comfortable with the non-rational side of myself. The grand process of integration that is my recovery demanded that I abandon my palace of ice, at least some of the time, and I feel I have done that. I have tapped into the wellspring of spirit and feel more alive and real and valid as a result.

The process is ongoing, of course. This vast a renovation does not take place overnight. And in order to get there, I have to walk through that valley of death and get to the other side. I have to keep walking down this long dim cold corridor not just because I want to reach the end but because the acting of walking itself is better than the stagnant stasis that came before.

The first step towards purifying water is to get it flowing. Still waters might run deep, but they also run dirty. I have been deep and still for a very long time, which is great for philosophy but lousy for anything else.

And at some point, just like Zarathrusta, you have to come down from the mountaintop and live your life. Join the madding crowd and learn what it is to be human.

I am still making my way there. I am still only, at best, halfway down my mountain.

But I will get to the ground eventually.

That’s all the free form prosetry I have for today, folks. See you tomorrow.