Been contemplating my lopsided mind today.

So much put into the cold circuit of logic, reason, and limitations, and so little put into the hot circuit of realtime action, intuition, and transcending limitations.

It makes me feel like someone who has been working out really hard, but only on one side of their body. So one side is all ripped and cut and the other is so puny and weak as to practically be vestigial.

Pretty sure that could kill you.

So the forest from the title is the vast dark jungle that exists outside the bright shining circle of light cast by my massive mentations,.

The light is so bright and so clear that it is easy to totally forget about the much, much larger worlds outside that one bright circle.

After all, when you are in bright light, you can’t see anything that’s in the dark. It might was well be the end of the universe.

But I am not one who can accept lsuch mental limitions. If there is more out there to know, I must know it.

Even if it means stepping outside the light into that deep dark world out there and trying to find my way around.

The prospect terrifies me because I know that, deep down, none of my usual tools will work out there. I won’t be able to “see” out there in the dark. and I will have no choice but to learn to “see” the world through other senses.

Just like a blind person. When it comes to that place outside my bright circle, I really am quite blind. My faculties for that kind of thing are practically nonexistent.

So not just blind, but feeble too.

And so it scares me. Scares me more than damn near anything else. I don’t know the first thing about following my heart and my emotions.

What if I get lost and can’t find my way back/

Oh emm gee, I just figured out what all those dreams where I keep getting increasingly lost as I am trying to get back to where I was are all about.

Me getting lost in the forest.

But exploring the forest is no longer optional. The answers I seek and the healing I crave are out there in the dark somewhere, and that means I have to go out there and find them if I want to be whole.

So I will be brave, and explore, and find my way by whatever means come to hand, and if I do that for long enough, I will adapt, and that alone would bring much healing.

I could prevaricate and say that I don’t know where to start or that I don’t know how to do it, but that’s a trap set by my depression to protect itself.

Of course I don’t “know” where to start. This is not a “knowing” kind of thing. That’s trying to use the old thinking instead of the new.

The hardest part of this for me will be learning to trust things I can’t verify via reason. To accept that emotional reasoning can valid. That’s it’s okay sometimes to not know where you are or where you are going.

That involves a massive update in my ability to trust the universe. Right now, my mistrust and fear run so deep that I automatically assume that to step outside that bright circle of light means instant doom.

There is only control, and death. That which I cannot control via my massive mentation is so inherently hostile as to be instantly toxic.

And lo and behold, you now know why my life is so tiny. Most things in life will involve at least some intuitive and/or emotion-based thinking and so the inability to accept or understand those things can be quite crippling.

Like autism. But way way weaker.

As I write these words, I am feeling the cold touch of my depression as it slowly dies, as well as a pins and needles of the soul feeling that I hope means parts of me are waking up and coming back to life.

In many way, recovery is resurrection.

I have learned, as patient readers know, that this cold feeling in my chest is a good thing. It means I am birthing my ice. That some of that glacier that sits on my heart has snapped off and is floating over yon horizon, never to be seen again.

Kind of sucks while it is happening. It is not at all a comfortable feeling. Kind of feels like I swallowed an enormous icicle and now have brain freeze.

Nevertheless, I glory in it, because it is the feeling of my liberation.

Where was I? Oh right, at the edge of my forest.

I could probably turn at least some of this exploration of mine into fiction. In a sense,. I already have. When I am writing, I might have the major plot points in my head, but the rest comes to me intuitively.

And as I have grown as a writer, so has my ability to not question why what seems to come next seems to come next.

I am still not very good at it. I still verify everything with reason. I am not yet so bold that I could write straight from my consciousness, like a mystic poet might.

In fact, I have great admiration for people with the guts to stop making sense, if you know what I mean. People willing to present the world with works both bizarre and seemingly nonsensical because to them, the audience does not matter.

What matters is that their intuition says the thing is “right”. It is the bext expression of what the artist was trying to express. It is therefore a thing unto itself.

I can’t do that, not yet. As a poet, I am one heck of a science fiction writer. I can conjure up all kinds of wild notions and outre ideas, but they still have to pass through the vasty halls of logic and reason and the desire to communicate before they can be part of anything I am creating.

Perhaps one of these days, I will write a blog entry freeform style, not worrying about any kind of logic except for dream logic.

Like a David Lynch film.

But until then, I promise to keep doing my best to make sense.

It’s all I know how to do.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.