A Joyful Perspective

The nameless girl had decided to step out into the world and make something of herself. She was ready to do what she had to do in order to get to the next step. It was comforting to know that she at least had a plan, a track on which to continue. She was ready to embark on her pursuit of happiness, and she had a good idea about where to start. 

The first step was making a name for herself. She intended to do this both literally and figuratively. In her mind, she thought of herself as "Nameless Girl," because she had never truly decided who she was. She wanted something simple, and something that would remind her of what made her happy. She had always had an affinity for flowers, particularly those that grew wild, forever untame and always beautiful. Daisy. She would call herself Daisy from now on.

After that, she was stuck. Now what? What did she want to do? What about her "track" that was supposed to be so organized, so perfect? She chewed on her lower lip, processing.

She recalled a line from Roland Barthes' essay, From Work to Text: "The Text is not to be thought of as an object that can be computed."

Maybe planning her future so precisely WASN'T the way to go. Perhaps, like a text, her future couldn't be simply computed. Maybe it was more complicated than that.

Ok then, she would take baby steps. Baby steps and a pursuit of happiness. She could do this. Daisy could do this.

Cluttered

Finally, Nameless Girl felt like she was going somewhere. 
Was it the right direction?
Who knew?
Was it organized and clearly building up to something great?
Absolutely not.
Everything was perfectly, unspecifically, disorderly and awry, exactly the way she wanted it. She liked the CLUTTER. 

Clutter was safe.
There were plenty of things to hide behind if she got lost, or distractions to think about if she got off-track. When the first exploratory corner failed to meet her expectations, she searched for her answers elsewhere, just like Charles Marlow in Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness. When he traveled to Africa, exploring his uncharted territory, he didn't find what he expected to find. 

He had to maneuver the many folds and obstacles that cluttered the journey. If he had found what he was looking for, exactly the way he expected it, there would be no lesson, no story.

Baby steps? No way, Jose. She would LEAP to the next step, perhaps even skipping a few now and then. She was breaking free of the outcast box, into the uncharted territory of her life. There were no rules. There would be no final evaluation. 

Her expectations were AbStrAcT. Her mind was open. Cluttered, perhaps, but clutter was safe. She was safe. And her opportunities were boundless.

She was ready.

Avant-Garde

She went down one step.

The nameless girl had never really felt as though she fit in anywhere. It was difficult to fit in to something specific when her whole life was rather UnSPecific. Sometimes she had expectations of what she wanted to be, but everything she sometimes desired was just too conventional. She wanted to be 

avant-garde.

Normality was outdated. She wanted to look at life the way she interpreted abstract paintings-without a specific picture or message in mind. She climbed another step. Now she was getting somewhere.

She thought about the steps she was climbing. They each told their own story, each had a different amount of wear-and-tear, and each was unique. It's own little building block to something bigger and better. They all played a part in the magnificence of the completed staircase.

 But what was the point? Did each step tell its own story? And how did it find its story?

What good was avant-garde if you couldn't come up with your area of avant-garde on your own? Nameless girl stood still on step #2. 

Then it came to her. Or rather, she arrived at it all on her own. She took another step up. She would continue NOT looking for it. For in life, is it not always common to come across it when you least expect it?

She would head towards a corner, and if she didn't discover what she was looking for then, she would choose a different corner.

SHE WOULD TAKE WHAT SHE COULD GET.