That's what I'd call this entry if it wasn't just another stream of consciousness day-log entry. Maybe one day I will write the post or essay that I feel comfortable assigning that title to. This is not that essay. These are just thoughts.

What is flux? When it appeared in my head it meant what many people suppose it does, "a state of constant change." I look a moment to look it up now and it turns out that flux has many definitions, the most prominent is flow, flowing, flood, or the rate of flow past a given point.

Am I in a state of change or renewal right now? It's hard to say. It's hard to achieve balance with an eight hour day filled with work that seems to create imbalance in my life. It's all I can do to set the path right in my remaining 8 awake hours of the day, setting aside the other 8 (hopefully) for sleep.

Am I in a state of flow right now? Yes, and the way I know this is indescribable except in metaphor. My imagination sees it something like this:

As I stand in the river, I feel as if I have no resistance to the water that flows around me. It passes frictionlessly through and about my sides. I feel it always there around me, but if I close my eyes and pull within myself the flow has no grasp on me. I stand with my feet firmly embedded on the river bed.

I know this because in a sense I feel now that am grabbing on to other objects in this flow and allowing them to pull me along their path. These people, ideas, actions, and feeling have a substance that I lack. They pull along with the flow, sometimes weaving and bobbing in their own fancy, but always heading somewhere.

These days a hundred arms reach out from my body and claw at the things that appear to be headed in the right direction. Once I get a firm grip on one of these objects, I feel the resistance of the water grip on to me as well. Suddenly the eddies and currents of the flow bat around me playfully and dance over my skin. Suddenly I have motion and my feet are lifted from the murky bottom and I'm pulled as if I'm flying.

I've always been in this river. Sometimes I've had substance, sometimes I haven't. Sometimes, like now, I've reached for those things that obviously do to help me along. Sometimes I have closed my eyes and for seasons at a time forgot the river was even around me.

And that, in metaphor, is my life right now. I wish I understood it more completely myself. Should I be able to feel the flow around me without the ned to grasp around? Is my lack of substance a failing, or just something I don't readily understand yet?

So I'm in flux, definition two. Before I looked up the word, I had no idea. Once I saw it, the connection was as bright and solid as any other fact in my life.

Tonight all the lights in the house are off. Since the whole house has been 70 degrees or greater all week, I turned off the central air fan and closed the door to my bedroom. When I close my eyes and lie back on the bed, my ears fill with the squeal of silence.

Then a single light shines on my face from the glow of my laptop screen and the tapping of my fingers and the hum of a tiny fan is all I've heard for ten minutes. I grasp onto the light, the feel of the keys beneath my fingertips, the dancing of the sound through the audio spectrum, the flutter of the words through my brain.

Now I click "Create"--such a fitting button name--and send a ripple through the delicate spiderweb of my social network and beyond. Perhaps someone takes these words and grabs on as they head off through the flow to whatever their eventual destination may be.

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