Flavor of the Week

James Blake, "The Wilhelm Scream" from his album James Blake.

"Vex" and Infinite Control

I've always found the word 'vex' an appropriate word for that which it describes, namely the feeling of anxiety and its implied neurological and physiological responses to stressors. Its monosyllabic - and snappy - quality as simply a word aptly reflects the constrictive, not to mention restrictive, properties of that feeling we call anxiety. I imagine a rigid torso inflated with breath, expanded and tense, resembling a box full of stagnant, still air and weariness rather than as a balloon, which it ought to resemble. The balloon can retain its form and shape while still accommodating the fluctuating stream of air flowing in and out of it, reacting in its typical and minute but absolutely essential way to its given environment; air and atmosphere as the external enters the body and becomes internalized, but organically. Air in a balloon is a delightful thing to behold because we imagine the pressure differential between the two sides of the plastic wall and wonder how equilibrium can be achieved and how the balloon can withstand those forces which would have it pop or deflate uncontrollably. Yet the balloon does this, and only pops when an intrusive force - which can remain undetected by the observer - acts upon the balloon. This can be dangerous but is entirely avoidable with care. I must remember to always keep my lungs and my chest balloon-like and not as a box. 

The word 'vex' resembles an exasperated breath outward, exhalation with force, rather than as a satisfying pouring out of air like water, and though its final sound is homophonic to the universally-recognized sound of running water, sss, the word also ends with a halting letter-x that makes a prolonged exhalation and that lovely watery sound, sss, inappropriate. There is no vexssssssssss, only vex. That letter-x resembles crossed arms over that enlarged chest, a restrictive force in itself, but internally-driven, a self-limiting and built-in mechanism that not only tightens the word and limits its longevity, but also overpowers the other two letters that make up the word itself. A process defined and marked by its cessation rather than by the entirety of its execution, its consummation. The breathy nature of the letters-v and -e together in that linguistic combination is countered by the concluding nature of the letter-x's pronunciation. The breath, an all-important component for life on Earth and a central figure in the agency of anxiety, is the path and the letter-x is the printed sign on the fence that reads "dead end." To be vexed is to be limited, and denies oneself that essential pocket of air that propels the lungs and body and, indeed, the mind. 

Anxiety is the worst. 

But here's a neat trick to cope: imagine yourself a character in a novel (the main character, of course, though you'll have to decide on whether you're the hero or not) and your life as a series of decisions, actions and thoughts that are being transmitted and expressed linearly, that is, not as a chart of interrelated events but quite literally as a novel being read by some disembodied, faceless reader (or an undifferentiated audience if you enjoy the thought) in a manner exactly like a book. Lines upon lines of you and the things that emanate or are produced from (or by) you. This has a two-fold effect: it eliminates the anxieties that can stem from a multiplicity of pressures, forces and plans that are perpetually tugging you in all sorts of sometimes contradicting directions. (Sure you are going to have to consider where to go every step of the way, but take solace in where you've last stepped and plant your foot down with conviction, no matter what.) And it also gathers your mind and trains it to treat thoughts as possible actions, so that your life becomes quite literally a path. There is only one kind of dead end on this path, and none of them look like what the letter-x does. There is no 'dead end' sign posted anywhere in your life, but there are plenty of opportunities to be deterred by loss of breath, by anxiety.             

March on in life. 

(March is in five days, keep this as a good reminder.)