In a sea of online writing, the fact that anyone reads mine often feels one of two ways:
A. like a knife: as though it’s never enough readership, that with all the people out there it should be more/higher.
B. like the touch of a lover in the morning: as though in a sea of readers and writers, someone not only found my writing but also chose to read it, sometimes they even like or comment or email me privately, and how this isn’t shy of a miracle.
I tend to align more with B. these days, even if it’s by force (force de return). The obsession with numbers is just another sleight of hand. It’s up to me if I will let the numbers be supportive or abusive, regardless of what they are. It is up to me to draw a conclusion from their sterile symbolism. It’s up to me to treat myself and my art practice with dignity.
And so, I’d like to take a moment and say thank you for reading… it means the world to me.
.˚⊹. ࣪𓉸 ࣪⊹˚.
What started as a way to understand reality and potentially save the whole, entire world (and be renowned for it) has turned into, or perhaps returned to a love affair with my own ability to write and share said writing, an undertaking that’s been with me (notably) since the third grade. Writing and sharing feels as much a part of me as my own green eyeballs. Even in the fifth grade I submitted a hand written graduation speech and out of the small handful of other children who did the same, I was the one chosen to give it at our graduation. There is an archive of Samantha Morgan Hancock in every room I’ve ever lived in, journals through the ages stacked away in a pile or shoved in a suitcase or drawer. I revisit this writing often, it makes me laugh and smile and cry, and I realize the writing isn’t about me so much, but someone who loves writing and apparently someone who writing also loves. To hell with being the best or most relevant, my writing feels alive beside me.
In other news…
I’ve been noticing somewhat of a beard forming on my lip and chin, small grey hairs in my eyebrows, and my neck skin is creasing in new and unfound ways. It’s happening. I’m living and aging and dying. Like honey slowly drizzling down the side of a tea cup, I am being returned to the Earth, one particle at a time—and there isn’t a fucking thing I can do to stop it. To take great lengths (and copious money) to slow it down by injecting substances into my face or loathing who I see in the mirror every new day won’t cut it either. Instead I take some deep breaths and do my best not to panic. Or if I panic, I don’t do it for too long. I rub the lotion on my skin and remember there’s too much to live and to love, my own being isn’t the least of these. Precious.
I’ve also begun my final semester for my associates in philosophy. I shall end on a most heady note of formal logic, morals and ethics, and intro to sociology. In class the other day, as the professor is rambling on in her sometimes cringey way, a sensation finds me, one where I am exactly where I need to be at exactly the right time, just sitting here. We’re becoming rather good acquaintances, this sensation and I. Sometimes I just can’t believe how well things work out, as if everything is functioning together perfectly as it should. Not because I alone made it this way, but because so many things inside and outside of me came together like wine and cheese, to feast and be merry. To dance. To play. To be delicious. Logic and ethics pair so nicely, like grenadine in sprite or bread on butter. Was it chance or will—more importantly—who cares? Maybe I am the one who’s able to be in the right place at the right time simply because I can notice it—I can feel it.
All humans share life.
I am a human.
Thus, I share life.
I met a friend at the park last night. We sit slightly shivering while discussing life, the sky is doing it’s own colorful thing, turning from pink to purple to grey blue. The lights of the city are flickering off the water like glittering gold, and I wonder how there is this much beauty in such simplicity? Our sobacha tea pairs perfectly with this moment as she expresses an epiphany she recently had while in savasana at the end of a yoga class. Uncontrollable tears began streaming down her face as she realized that the joy of the tree, and the human next to her, and all joy in the world is indeed her own joy. And that yes other people’s pain is also her pain. And how beautiful this is. I nod in agreement, thinking yes yes yes. I know exactly what she means.
Lately I’ve become a stranger to myself, someone who delights in the success and fortitude of others without making it into some kind of competition or way to prove my worth or failure. I’m saving proving for where it counts and canceling the count on the worth of my very life. My being cannot be measured. I mean, I do still do this—compare and measure myself—but it isn’t as heavy as it used to be. It no longer lingers over me in it’s usual ominous way. The animal of comparison touches down and lifts itself off my consciousness like a bird skimming the sea for prey. Sometimes it catches something and sometimes it doesn’t, but either way I know it’s a script of mind that I don’t have to run on repeat, over and over, and on and on. I can just let the animals of my psyche feast or miss and then move along. I don’t have to cage them, and domesticate them, and put them under a magnifying glass and dissect them for the cure.
All humans share life.
I am a human.
Thus, I share life.
I can feel joy for others joy because their joy is my joy. I can feel sadness for the awful, wretched ills of the world because I share in those, too. I can move through the feelings and motions as the trusted ally I am instead of the abusive tyrant I can also be. It’s a choice. And because I get to choose if I treat myself with dignity or abuse—I am the authority and creator of my experience.
The inner-authority is not to be confused with the inner-authoritarian, they are not the same though I’ve often confused them when contemplating agency and control over our lives. I realize the control is seldom all mine; the inner-authoritarian wants all of the control and this is why it gets so out of hand because it will never have it. It acts as a red laser beam skimming the periphery of every experience looking for danger and trouble. Meanwhile the inner-authority is a sexy lifeguard in a skimpy bikini, I think I can see her nipple, soaking in the sun keeping a gentle eye for people running too fast or not coming up from the water. The sultry, sweaty lifeguard trusts us to mostly figure things out but is there in case we don’t. The inner-authoritarian trusts no one and nothing, this is it’s whole job, and while there is a time for this seat of consciousness, it does not belong in the lofty chair overlooking the sea of life. They can sit off to the side under a beach tent while drinking a non-alcoholic mojito as they scan the sea for the illusive monster that rises out of the ocean to swallow us all.
And indeed, it feels that illusive monster is on the rise. Fascism isn’t just rising, it’s here, and it’s everywhere. A tidal wave, a tsunami, staring at me, me staring back at it, watching it grow closer and closer. It’s overwhelming. And if I just turn around, so too is all the resistance and love standing in defiance. The shore is full of people who care. Deeply, genuinely care. I am warm with inspired vitality at all who are saying NO to the current regimes determined to ruin this whole Earth, to ruin everyone else’s time, to wash over us with a force they think they are in control of but are actually parasitized by. The elite are the biggest addicts of all and we are all addicts to some degree. I have touched addiction to the point of losing myself and so I know it will be very hard for them to return and they may very well not. Still, it is up to me to enjoy and rightfully (but not righteously) defend my life and the life that supports my life and all life.
I’m on some other shit now.
I can’t guarantee how bloody this revolution will or won’t be, but I know it will be the first of it’s kind—the kind that stands up by opting out; the kind that says: You can take my life, you elite fascist monster, you can even destroy the whole planet, if you simply must you can swallow all of this, and in doing so just know you will swallow all of the love inside me and everyone else who knows love and you still won’t be able to digest it, you selfish, greedy little prick. And when you are dust, the world will keep right on going. You will be dust and unremembered and swallowed yourself. And that is very sad for them, not for me, not for us who know love and are love, who are eternal because we accept our fate and love our fate. I know love and I am love and I am loved, and I can say this and feel it and know it because I have returned from my own dark, decrepit bowels of my own mind. It was awful and scary and painful and I know so many are there now—and I have so much compassion for them. But I am not there and I am not going back. I am the return and the renewal. I trust this Earth even though I will return to it, very dead. This is precisely why I trust it.
All humans share life.
I am a human.
Thus, I share life.
The logic proves I myself have nothing to prove. I just get to share life. The joys. The horrors. The beauty. The bloodshed. The tears. The power. The struggles for it. The bodies holding onto bodies and bodies discarding of bodies that can birth other bodies. I am no-body, I am every-body. I am here, and then I am gone, and nothing will take my love away from me, and because of this I have love to share and to give, ad infinitum.
Find the hands searching for other hands and hold them, my friends. I love you, and thank you so much for being here.
"Find the hands searching for other hands and hold them, my friends." LOVE THIS.
‘The sultry, sweaty lifeguard trusts us to mostly figure things out but is there in case we don’t.’ I love this!