"it's not my business to know who I am"
Walking home from school, I find my body taking me the long way instead of hopping on the train. Along my cemented footpath I pop into trader joe’s, a boxy land full of bargains and steals, bright colors and catchy packaging. I buy nothing. I walk back into the sun resisting the urge to check my phone. I only want to do this out of habit and I’m trying to break this habit. And surely there couldn’t be anything there that wasn’t there a minute ago. Of course we all know that there is—and this knowing is a plague. We are in the age of BREAKING NEWS which seeks to demand our attention, our emotion, our outrage or championing. I resist by undressing my sweater and feeling the warmth inject my skin. It’s simplistic power takes me over. Finally it’s here. One must enjoy every inch of spring. It can’t be missed! Oh but it can! I close my eyes and imagine my skin cells absorbing the vitamin D, recharging me like a battery, not that I have to do this in order for it to happen. Still, it never hurts.
I walk slowly, taking my time to enjoy the day where there isn’t even one more thing left to do. Since I transitioned to my new salon, and aside from school, I have more days off than on. These are the days of my life and I love them. Somewhere over the Pulaski bridge I give in and check my phone, I suppose out of boredom and habit and that little, glorious bzzz bzzz. I convince myself it’s okay to look away from the water which is rippling in that magical way it does, where it almost looks like liquid silver and chrome. An unfixed metallic sheen, at once reflecting and swallowing the sun’s beams. It doesn’t get more psychedelic than paying attention, folks.
Today’s breaking news is that two people who I love dearly are now going through respective break ups. My heart beats an extra thump, one for the homies. I of course feel saddened, but I mostly feel proud of them. It’s never good to stay when it’s time to leave. And we never know when it’s time to leave until it is. The whole body has to make up it’s mind, and you can’t rush a body. It takes guts like no other to have a broken heart; regardless of whether we’re the one leaving or the one being left, heartbreak is always an invitation into getting really real, which is something we usually avoid at all costs.
Just this past weekend my own lover and I considered it ourselves. Arguing on the sidewalk, we asked each other “Do you want this? Do you want me?” Much to my chagrin, we are indeed “that” couple sometimes. There was a long silence before we gave way to a synchronized “Yes.” followed by laughter and little glimmering tears. Sometimes I think we need tension just to feel it break. We made our way to our destination where we enjoyed our togetherness, our complexities, our problems that very well may never be solved. Maybe someday we’ll break up, but not this day. And thank goodness for that.
There’s nothing so common as a break up. Maybe the only thing more common is getting together. The coming and going, the leaving and staying, well my dears, I’m afraid that’s just the business of life. For all our attempts at consistency, we sure are going against the nature of « gestures hands at everything» Coincidentally (or perhaps not so coincidentally), I’m currently reading Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins, a book that seeks to answer this exact, age old question: How do we make love stay? There’s no answer yet, which I think might be a clue. But the book isn’t over yet.
“I guess love is the real outlaw.” - Woodpecker
One time, many moons ago when facebook was still relevant to me, I posted/asked “When love is gone, where does it go?” It’s a lyric from an Arcade Fire song, and given that age I probably thought I was being whimsical when I was likely just going through yet another break up with R. I suppose two things can happen at once. Nonetheless, someone responded and I won’t ever forget it. “Trick question, it never left.” I think of this often. Maybe it’s the people who come and go, but the love—it ain’t going anywhere. It’s always right there inside of us. No one delivers it and no one takes it, they can just help bring it forth or stow it away.
I think it’s rather natural for us mortals to make a means out of love the way we do with damned near everything. We mistake it and misunderstand it. I’ve even heard people claim something like, “Love will win the war.” This makes me roll my eyes and yawn real loudly without covering my mouth. The real truth is that love wins because it doesn’t join the battle at all. Which reallllly means love can’t actually win which also means it can’t ever lose. Clever. Love is eternally an end in itself. Love obsoletes anything in it’s way because its very nature has already broken all of the rules. Love swallows all other games. Love wins by osmosis. Love wins by addition. Love is an outlaw indeed.
There are two types of people in the world, there are those who question love and thus themselves and there are those who put their hands to work until the work is done. And of course there are many more people than two types of people in the world. One of these people recently commented on a sentiment I shared with, “What if instinct is just the absence of questioning?” Which made me think of a quote from Aurora which says, “It’s not my business to know who I am.” Whip these two together and the batter will get you love-drunk. Yes you can eat it raw, yes there’s still a chance of salmonella.
What if we just said to hell with Kant and Aristotle and Plato, REASON IS FOR FOOLS, YOU FOOLS. No more putting our beautiful bodies and our silly psyches under the microscope to scan for the biome of “Why?” Isn’t constantly probing ourselves rather invasive? Do we really need to scoop our insides out in order to achieve some sense of wholeness? Maybe. Truth is, sometimes I pretend I’m not already whole1 just so I can feel the hot arousal of the hunt for myself out there, in them, in that. Sometimes I like to pretend I can actually have myself figured out; I like sticking my dirty finger in my wounds. I like to pull out my finger and lick it—I like to make others lick my finger. We sample the blood, savoring any hints of life having gone any other way than it went.
To varying degrees, there is something inside of us that likes to be told what to do and what to say, how to properly pronounce it and when. This something inside also likes to tell others what to do and what to say, how and when. This is why the mortal world is the way it is (and isn’t). Perhaps authoritarianism keeps rising in all kinds of low and high places, not so much because people are fundamentally evil, but because people want to be told what to do and tell others what to do. This combo has consequences when we do not properly nourish this something inside of us.
Many people do not know how to ask for what they want or how to express themselves. Instead they focus on what’s wrong with them and what it will take to fix. This is by design. We can’t feel what we want when we keep waiting to be told what we want. Instead of evolving towards our nourishment and the nourishment of others, we cower and harden. We build a fortress from pain and mediocrity instead of bathing ourselves in it. People are lost and it makes sense because we were guided by others who were also already lost. Over the years we’ve lost touch with ourselves—not the egoic “self”—but our entire arrangement of cells and where they are situated amongst all the other arrangements of cells. The good news is we are still right here, close by, awaiting.
The best thing we could do is find ourselves, and no I don’t mean by looking. Ditch the microscope and use the eye inside your chest. The hunt doesn’t end when we find what we’re looking for, it ends when we stop searching. We find ourselves by simply noticing our breath. Touching our own flesh. Purring under the sun. By having the courage to enjoy it2.
I’ll never tell you what to do or what to think. And if I do, don’t listen to me. And if you do listen to me, then do so at your own risk. Because I’ll tell ya what I stand for—inconsistency, uncertainty, and things that bloom and so too decay. I stand for beauty. For love. For amusement. Not so much for right or for wrong—but the path that weaves between and through them like wild ivy crawling up a bricked building. I don’t always know what I’m doing or where I’m going—but I trust it. If you want sense, you won’t find it here. Or maybe you will, but that will have been more your doing than mine. And thank goodness for that.
The sun is beckoning me now. I must go play and play and play.
Love ya.
By whole I mean belong.
Obviously Bjork said this originally.