warmcore, my new way of life
Being cool has been on my mind, and how being cool is kind of like the opposite of being warm, although all oppositions share a spiraling, spectrum, so when I say opposite I mean directionally. Wanting to be “cool” is something we all explore at one time or another so we can fit in and feel like we belong—the sexy lure of what’s trending and in, captivates us, fleeting as it is. Being “warm” though is the other way altogether—it’s the distance inwards. It’s something human—something alive, and we often end up subjecting for popularity instead of honoring and honing.
I understand we all have different notions of cool, for instance, someone who studies animals or math for a living will likely have a varied definition of cool from that of a fashion model. For the sake of my thesis, the “cool” I’m referring to is that of the illusive image of ourselves that floats in our minds, it appears as if from thin air, that represents how we could fit in with the current status quo. As edgy and offbeat as we all like to think we are, the truth is we each obey, at least to some extent at varying points in our lives, the status quo ie. to be thin, to be hot, to be rich, to be successful, to be more, to be better, to be even thinner, to be self-sufficient—all at once. There is nothing wrong, inherently or otherwise, with any of these pursuits on their own, but when we are told these are the sole points we must check for a quality, meaningful life (whilst leaving out their opposites ie. rest, fullness, loss, failure etc.) and then we believe what we are told, we lose touch with our own fundamental warmth—the integrated, animating force we all share that lives deep within each of our cells.
Let’s take cigarettes as an example, and how smoking will always be cool in my mind. No matter how much science comes out about its toxicity, the act of smoking is seared into my brain as cool. I’ve heard people argue, “Is getting cancer and dying cool? No? Smoking is not cool.” To which I find myself thinking, “I agree. Getting cancer and dying is not cool. But smoking—the puckering of lips, my fingers gently grazing them as I suck, the releasing of smoke from lung into the night air, is cool.” There’s a quality to it that I can’t make uncool. And this is because what is cool isn’t necessarily healthy, or favorable for the body or soul, and actually what is cool is precisely cool because it appears so truly uncaring of such things.
Warm on the other hand is too deep to be cool—like the core of the Earth as opposed to its crust. Warm is guts. Warm is pulsing and gushing and carnal. Warm is bleeding hot lava. And because our warmth cannot quite be seen, we yearn for it. For something beyond the icy grasp of looking good and resolving that others think we look good. It’s a heat we can sense inside of ourselves if we’d just still ourselves, yet we constantly search for it in everything and everyone else.
*One will not find the heat at the tip of a glacier*
For much of my life I desired to be cool (and let’s be honest I still do). But now I realize my desire to be cool is not truly a desire at all. It’s an ideal. And there is a distinction to be made between desires, which come from our own body and soul; and ideals, which are implanted into our psyche by the culture at large. Desires are carnal, luminous, and cryptic—they can be satiated when revered and cultivated. Ideals are air brushed, injected, and completely impossible to attain—they cannot be satiated.
Ideals are in the cool direction, and desires are in the warm direction, which doesn’t stop them from being easily mistaken for one another. And now that we know warm and cool are not different essences so much as different distances, cool is not bad and warm is not good, per se. But they allow different experiences which pull from different depths, thus creating very different lessons. Many of us will remain at the lessons of the surface, and there is nothing wrong with this. But deep within each of us there is the potential to call forth the imperishable force that lurks and radiates from within.
As the magicians of the animal kingdom, we are masters at manipulating reality, which includes ourselves. If we have not studied our depths, our warmth, we will forever be at the mercy of whats cool. And even in our misunderstanding in our longing for warmth, we will attempt to make what’s warm, cool. However, I find when we try to make warm things cool, they become imposters. They become something they are not, because cool is the appearance, specifically of not caring, whereas warm is the life force itself, unmoored by how it may seem or look. It is full of hot, brooding power and energy, like that of a star just before its death.
I realize I desire not to warm the cool waters, nor cool down the warm waters.
I don’t need what’s warm to become cool, and I don’t need what’s cool to become warm. In fact I argue they stay oppositional (outward from inward) to be able to maintain their potency. I want what’s warm to stay undaunted by what’s cool, because caring for what we truly care for is a dare in a world intent on first looking good. I don’t want slogans like, “It’s cool to care.” to grant me my own permission. I want to dig deeper within myself and find what I care about without first being told that the coast is clear.
For me personally, I’d rather let cool be cool, slyly smoking a cig on the street corner in the dark of night, blowing toxic vapor from its pouty pink lips; and let warm be warm, asking for help while the tears stream down my face, opening to god (gob, gweeb, the living universe) without shame, and embracing the fact that the ground beneath me is not stable and never will be, and that I need a hand to hold, even, oftentimes, if it must be my own.
I realize my longing to be cool is really a longing to linger at the surface where I feel the most familiar and thus the most safe. I grew up fearing my own warmth, for we are not a warm society so much as a cool society. We are obsessed with the surface, with how things look rather than learning the process of fanning our own heat which requires traversing our own unknown. We are most often dwelling right at the crust of not only the Earth, but our own being, which makes sense because from a young age we are taught to fear the depths; to not touch the fire or stare into the sun.
I am not young anymore, and what I was taught then does not have to be my rulebook now. As I plunge into my own depths, my own mysterious matter, though daunting and prickling cold at first, I feel myself becoming warmer and warmer. As I submerge into my own discomfort, I soften and soften. My edges become less rigid and exact as I become one with the abyss. As I learn to hold my breath and sink—deeper and deeper, I expand my capacity to live less afraid of my authenticity. Instead of needing to be cool—obeying some ideal version of myself someone else told me to achieve, instead I dissolve.
I thought being cool and looking good, or staying at the surface, would secure me safety from what lurked below, but floating at the top doesn’t reveal to me the universal truths that holding my breath beneath does. I thought the surface was safer, and that the more safe I am the more free I am. But now, after a few years of diving and paying a particular attention (the curious kind), I learned we are not actually ever truly safe. We are all going to die. And that sometimes we must permit ourselves to be unsafe to be the most free.
I find the warm, deep holds the real power. The deeper I go the more informed I can be when I resurface. And of course I must resurface to breathe, but now when I do I can land more fully in my own imperfect incarnation, more embodied with bliss and gratitude for having submerged and returned. My cool exterior can be informed by these new depths—new revelations. I can integrate my being more fully when I learn to dimensionally travel within myself, and I think that’s the whole point—if such a thing exists.
On my mind:
This quote:
“We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who is awake, that’s death. Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self contained and comfortable, is some kind of death. It doesn’t have any fresh air. There’s no room for something to come in and interrupt all that. We are killing the moment by controlling our experience.” - Pema Chödrön (from When Things Fall Apart)
I’m traveling in Spain in Portugal right now. I love no matter how far I travel from “home”, no matter how I think I leave certain things behind, the comfort of my neurosis follows. I’ll be sharing more on this next!
I tried to fit this in the above essay, but I don’t think it worked anywhere, but, I still think it’s an interesting thought: Cool offered me the deceptive notion that I could somehow be special by fitting in. Yet, when I attempt to follow what I am told is cool—cool as an ideal, I am actually denying my own unique expression—my warmth. Incidentally, I end making myself less special by trying to be cool. And the beautiful truth is, none of us are special on a universal scale. The center of the universe is, in fact, everywhere, and this doesn’t stop me (or anyone else) from wanting, at least sometimes, to feel very much like the smack dab center. And of course we are the center of our share of the experience—this is precisely what makes us inherently special! But this is happening to everyone, everything, everywhere, so we are also not special! We, human individuals, are never ever the most important, chosen thing. Gob chose everything. Gob prefers everything. Gob is a kinky paradox.
Give yourself a hug and a slap on the ass, trust me—you want it. XO