amused

a new era is born

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today as we lie our sweet dear mortal, to rest. She has been good to us. She has opened us. She has been a most mortal portal. A home and a meal and a bed with at least four pillows. dear mortal, will be remembered as a candle lit cavern for my restless thoughts; a summer room with a large window, sun bathing the floors and walls; a french doored balcony overlooking a sliver of Moon and twinkle of Venus hovering above the great sea of all that longing. She shall live on in the pieces she helped mother and hold, and now a new name is born…

You see, I woke up today different. So subtly, so barely but certainly changed. My eyes opened before the alarm, the rain tap tap tapping, as if gently knocking to see if I am home. I am. I feel a faint chill creeping through the crease in my blinds; it’s spring and the grey washed sky is pouring its own fertility upon the lands. I lie here for a while before the excitement moves my limbs out from under the covers. Something new is tugging at me. I eat some hard boiled eggs and head for coffee, something I look forward to all night long like it is a drug fix.

And now here I sit, sipping my at long last cappuccino, changing the name (and thus energy) of my substack, as well as turning off the likes feature. Here’s to something new. To hell with keeping count—to hell with focusing on all these little things that eat me up instead of fill me with subsistence. How my writing feels inside your skin is your business. You are welcome to share it with me, or keep it to yourself, or whisper it into the ear of a stranger. Heart icons won’t cut it, you have to really use your own heart. Meanwhile, I will keep on writing like my fingers don’t have dreams of their own.

I did not waste time pondering this decision at great lengths, I did not weigh if it made sense or was right or wrong, nor did I even really “decide” this was happening so much as sense that my writing/sharing practice wanted to shapeshift. And now here we are...

The new name born for my substack is amused by Samantha Morgan

I feel at once amused and amusing, and thus a muse myself. A muser through and through and beyond. Not just towards myself, but the whole everything.

Isn’t it funny, you can be pregnant and not even know it? You can birth something when you’re not even trying. A baby can fall right out of you. Sometimes even more than one. We don’t have to always try so hard. We can trust the whimsieness of our whims. We can follow the footprints of our own heart, pooling whole worlds with the help of the falling rain. Each step beats like a drum on the soil—to whom we owe our deepest respect, squirming the earthworms up towards the surface as if by a two stepping trance. We were born to sing alive.

It’s so distinctly Earthly, the textures and smells here on Earth, even the microplastics add some sort of note in the balm. And while I do mind that a small handful of the population is directly descimating this wild and holy world, altering her in ways I don’t prefer—I know change is the name of the game. This is what keeps the game alive and also free. Which means I have my own projects to focus on, the difference is that they are not merely my own but one’s born from legacies before me.

Somewhere, someone told the truth and I heard it—that agency isn’t about control and never it was—not over them and not over myself. I am invited by a new order (which is the oldest order) through which my being can wiggle and worm~~to enjoy myself and my life and all of life while I have the great privilege, as much as possible and at all costs. This is my new dedication and discipline. A new direction not outward but inward (which goes back outward, of course).

Devoting my life to the enjoyment and amusement of it does not mean I am only seeking comfort and happiness or cowardly turning away from the malaise of evil, we’ve had a bad cough for a while now, we really need some rest and vitamin C. Nor am I attempting to avoid pain or pretend the ending is happy. No, no, it’s quite something else. Instead I am committing to being a fully supportive mortal being, not only to myself but to others as well. To my brothers and sisters and lions and tigers and bears. I will fail sometimes but now I know the dance of return; the force de return. That I cannot be lost as long as I remember where I am by forgetting who I am and trusting my feet on the ground beneath me. I will do good and I will do some bad, too, and I am letting this be enough.

I have given up hope on saving the whole, entire world; world’s end (and begin) all of the time = death is certain. You cannot save what does not last, and what lasts is nothing. I’m letting this free me instead of shackle me. I’m letting this be a death poem instead of a death sentence. I’m letting this be. So be it.

I can be broken (open) without breaking into bits and pieces. I can be fortified and rooted towards life and love (which is also death) instead of recoiling in trembling fear. I do not have to cower or lord over, I can instead simply love so fiercely, so deeply, so unflinchingly. This is my choice and that is my power. If I feel moved to volunteer, donate, march, I can (and I will!). And when I don’t feel moved, I don’t have to move. To move correctly is to first be oh so still.

As for the word amused and musing and muse and muser, it/they have found me with such intensity, I even named my new business musings artistry. I’m not sure when or where or why, but I adore this word(ing)… it’s really a whole thing, and it belongs here, too.

I looked up the etymology of amused and it read:

late 15c., "to divert the attention, beguile, delude," from Old French amuser "fool, tease, hoax, entrap; make fun of," literally "cause to muse" (as a distraction), from a "at, to" (from Latin ad, but here probably a causal prefix) + muser "ponder, stare fixedly" (see muse (v.)).¹

and for muse it’s:

"to reflect, ponder, meditate; to be absorbed in thought," mid-14c., from Old French muser (12c.) "to ponder, dream, wonder; loiter, waste time," which is of uncertain origin; the explanation in Diez and Skeat is literally "to stand with one's nose in the air" (or, possibly, "to sniff about" like a dog who has lost the scent), from muse "muzzle," from Gallo-Roman *musa "snout," itself a word of unknown origin. The modern word probably has been influenced in sense by muse (n.). Related: Mused; musing.²

not to mention the muses themselves:

late 14c., "one of the nine Muses of classical mythology," daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, protectors of the arts; from Old French Muse and directly from Latin Musa, from Greek Mousa, "the Muse," also "music, song," ultimately from PIE root *men- (1) "to think." Meaning "inspiring goddess of a particular poet" (with a lower-case m-) is from late 14c.

The traditional names and specialties of the nine Muses are: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (love poetry, lyric art), Euterpe (music, especially flute), Melpomene (tragedy), Polymnia (hymns), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), Urania (astronomy).

One definition I found even said that amused means to “stare stupidly”, and I love all of this. It’s so Tao and on time and on point. So me. It’s a living post it note to think better which is to think less, to feel it all, and to fervently empty myself instead of constantly filling myself out of the discomfort of simply being.

I no longer need to fool myself, I am a fool. A clown, a dunce, a dweeb, a lowly addict, a sober buffoon. I too am a high priestess, a muse, a goddess, a mystic. An ape, a mortal, a human, a woman, a cosmic fleck of dust. A beam of light so bright it dissolves, and a night so dark Satan himself would wince. I don’t have the answers nor the solutions but I have much to share and to inspire and to indulge.

So, welcome to amused. An ode to staying engaged even when the powers at large would rather us suck our toes in fetal position. I’d rather not. In a way, we were already here, it’s still just me being me, sharing musings on staring stupidly, being distracted (this time on more correct things), and sniffing about like a dog who’s lost the scent—only to find it again, I have no doubt.

1. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=amused

2. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=muse