The Three Anxieties
My anxiety is made up of a left and a
right bracket, too often containing a blunder. On the left, stimuli is coming
in faster than my mind can process or on the right, slower than boredom can
endure. I often jump off a fast moving train, only because of the speed of information rushing past my window … and
then speed up to leap onto a train … any
train, just because it is moving and I was not ... now flashing, with
increasing speed, more and more facts past my window to the point of anxiety
again. If however I demanded that accuracy, and accuracy alone, determined my
speed, my starts and stops, I would also at times have to endure that anxiety of going against my “nature”
… or at other times, wondering whether or not I was merely seduced by a necessary
stage of compatibility. The priority of
my conclusion would exist at crucial
moments, with its deep but quickly
forgotten roots, as a straw of memory bending in the wind. This fear of leaving a solid deduction behind is compounded by the long history of having
done so, again, and again.