The world is loud as it ever was. It won’t shut it’s mouth, not even to chew its food, which is to say—the end is not near my friends. The unrelenting cacophony that is life/samsara is raging on. My senses are numb and ringing. I can hardly feel the beat of my own heart. I’m beginning to shut down, to pull inward, not with introspection—but for shelter, which is fine by me. Maybe even good, all things considered.
Everyone is holding a mic, the feedback is reverberating heavy through the field. The strobe lights are about to kick on at this karaoke night, it’s just getting started. Everyone is singing at the same time and I cannot hear anything when everything is at once. There’s a special corner in hell where all they sing is Creep. Over and over. What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here. I already sang my song which is this song. My tab is paid. I’m out! Me and my pony are going the long way home, which, of course, is never far at all when you live in your body.
I come to these platforms to say something I believe means something (or is at least witty) and it’s already being said—10,000 different ways. It turns out I am not so special as I once thought, and actually, this is helpful to know. My mind craves input, but my body craves silence—it’s the only space that allows me to savor my despair like a connoisseur, tasting for varying notes and tannins. In doing this I’m letting it taste me, too. We are often told to ward off despair, to not give into it. I disagree. The only way out (or in) is through… or so they say. So I’m letting myself be fully worked through the intestines of despair. It can sink its fangs in me, make me part of its biome. What makes us delicious is not our ability to get rich or die trying, but our potential to be food—substance—for something else.
For me, despair—or the loss of hope, is not nihilistic in the western sense. I don’t believe “nothing matters”. You won’t catch me shrugging my shoulders, pulling long on my sultry, toxic cigarette, exclaiming no one cares, so why bother? Everything matters varyingly. I’m learning to keep my shoulders down and relaxed. I do my best to not rationalize what can’t be rationalized or explain the inexplicable. Cool-coy-know-it-all is too tense for me.
Despair has some breathing room. It may be hopeless, but hopelessness doesn’t have to mean empty like an abandoned room. It can be empty like a summer meadow at dusk. Or the way a tree stands bare through winter, reserving all energy for its inevitable bloom. I wouldn’t dare dream of giving up all my sweet dreaming—my wanting, my desiring—not even if I could. Nor do I wish to cease my huffing and puffing and pouting. I am, however, letting go of any guarantees of fruition—of what all of this must certainly look like. I’m letting go of advancement. Of winning for good. Of making it out alive. I am no longer conflating the fundamental movement of the universe with linear or progressive over-stories. Personally, I’ve never witnessed a river make it’s way in a straight line and I’ve never seen the sun rise without also setting. Even whole galaxies are spiraling, eating their own tails.
Many of us long for a better world, that slippery horizon, especially as we’re confronting the relationship between all that is corrosive and connective. This longing for lasting good is no stranger to me. Of course we want stability in the face of a cosmos that endlessly contorts. Lately though, I’m adapting a state of mind that accepts this is as good as it gets. This very moment in this very chair typing on this very key board is the apex of my life—of the entire universe. I can love it, I can hate it, I can label it any way I need/want to—nonetheless I am living it and this is it.
If this is IT, I can handle it. If the worst is yet to come, then there is no real way to prepare and I don’t want to spend the rest of my days pretending I can1. Even so called “preppers” who have their bomb shelters stocked for 5+ years post apocalypse aren’t prepared. It’s always taken a village. All bodies eventually end up leaping into or being swallowed by other bodies. And as for my body—I trust it will know what to do as it knows. And that death is the inevitable goal. If death is too strong a word, try dissolution—to become something else.
I once heard that people think they want perpetual stability, but we’d actually prefer a world that changes for the worst than a world that doesn’t change at all. Some dude on a netflix docu-episode said this. I am not claiming the validity of his statement, it just popped into my head and left through my fingers. Obviously there is a difference between wanting stability and wanting things to remain exactly the same, just as there is a difference between wanting things to endlessly grow and accepting things have seasons. Yet, it all begins to blur and this is perhaps by design—clever little lies we’ve grown up with. We are continually being told one thing while quite another is at play. For instance—they tell us to use products that are anti-aging, even though we are aging and dying. This causes derangement. At this point, all of us are de-ranged2 to some extent. Literally, out of range. I think that being able to admit this is the first step towards riding the pony home.
Anymore I’m not trying so hard to be right or even wrong, but to loosen my body enough that it naturally sways towards the middle way—the way that can only be found in every new moment by feeling where I am and asking who I want to be, and reorienting, reorienting, reorienting.
Breathing.
Posturing.
Letting go.
This is the work of a body in space. This is bodywork.
Bodies are sensual sensors, not perfect predictors. I don’t know what’s coming anymore than anyone else does—the best of times or the worst—I imagine both. ‘Cause we all know history likes to repeat. Or that old habits die hard. Or that curses often require some common sense to lift—we’re doomed!
The most depraved and foolish are running the world, and this is nothing new of course—just new toys and technologies. Even the bible states “There’s nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) Maybe this true of our sun, but there’s a lot of suns out there. Still—these karmic rip currents are strong. We can argue over where they began and by whom, but nonetheless this is our world and we need it to live. Are you still looking for whom to place your ultimate blame? Have you tried The Big Bang? I’ll confess, I’m not entirely sure what “karma” is other than it is a collective ordeal—not an individual one. And I am certain that the notion of a promised land coming or that it has long past is verifiably false. I know the holy land has always, forever, been under our very feet. Yes I mean each and every single foot. Yes I mean right here, right now—holy. And by holy, I just mean nature. Natural.
When the noise gets too loud once must become ever more discerning. How does one return to being normal, to being “natural”, when these are but cryptic whispers finger painted on cave walls? We’ve changed since then. Man went on to build the most stunning walls, painted their ceilings with clouds dreamier than clouds themselves, and then caved in on himself. What a shame. Men want the “holy” land so bad they’ll bomb it to oblivion just to say through broken bloody teeth—IT’S MINE! I wonder if they’ve ever bitten into an apple fresh off the tree? Just like that lady Eve did. I have my doubts.
Is this where the logic has gotten us?
1+1 is 2.
But what is the sun - the moon?
What becomes of me when I try to eradicate you?
What do we equal?
What if our sums can’t be summed, the truth can’t equate?
What if this can’t be solved, what if truth isn’t fate?
I don’t have the answers and I don’t really think I need to find them out. Some people say it’s about asking better questions. I’m in the phase where I’m not asking at all. Forget fucking around and finding out, me and my pony are riding the other direction towards the ocean shore. There I will untie each and every one of my ships and let them sail. Au revoir! Bon voyage! Off you go! My imagination can only take me so far and I can’t bear to live in my head anymore. Eventually I have to let reality have some say. Reality is happening here, now. It’s the mouth of an ocean, it can swallow me whole. But I can swim. I can float. For goodness sake, I can sink!
From this desolate shore, the only things that feel important to me are that I sit quietly under some trees, dip my body in some earthly water bodies, and keep my thoughts between me and the moon or held in embodied spaces with actual beings. Which is to say, I’d like to spend the rest of the summer off of these social platforms. But let’s see if I do. Let’s see if I really will. Let’s see if I can quiet down (without seeking perfection in a grand sweeping proclamation) and make my best attempt at a life with less screens. Not in defiance or to come back stronger, but because there is nothing less sexy than a screen, especially in the summer when the air gets so thick you can almost hold it in your palm.
Truth is, I can barely sit still at night. Godd is inside me and I keep forgetting. I keep looking out there but godd is the silent gaze within. I can barely hear godd because my phone is an endless expanse of thoughts and feelings, data and facts, lies and lies and lies. I’m losing it and sometimes I think I am lost. But then my pony nudges me and reminds me to breathe. To put the phone down. To feel how I’m feeling. That’s godd, folks!
There are human beings being kidnapped off the streets of America in broad daylight. We are watching. Children are still being blown up and starved. We are watching. The world is at war again. There is no hiding. We won’t call it WWIII until we have some hindsight to look back, if anyone is left to do the looking. What more is there to say? It is a great privilege to turn down the volume—not to fully tune out or deny the world, but to leave room for the sounds of a deeper rhythm, one that can only be heard through radio silence; one that never loses the cadence because it is at once the tempo, the beat, the pulse.
It’s a misuse of energy wondering if this makes me good or bad, dumb or incredibly wise. Either way it’s not my business to know. If there are no guarantees of what is to come, if there is no way to prepare for the worst, not really, well then I may as well live for the world I want which is the world where I ride like a cowgirl on my trusted pony into the bowels of the unknown. Saddled with me are grace, dignity, the flashlight of my heart, and of course some apples. You have to feed the pony with an open palm, and this is true of life, too.
This isn’t to insinuate that there aren’t any practical ways of preparing, there are. I think of in terms of the animals who sense a tsunami is coming. They do so by sensing changes in the atmosphere and then flee when they feel it’s time. They probably look around at the other animals, too. Many still die.