What is it going to take for me to write every day? I am being really hard on myself right now. But really, it feels like now more than ever there is material that floats on through this vast, full space between my ears -- words that I listen to myself say into a voice memo of (sometimes), but then don't write down or type anywhere. I journal maybe once every 2-3 days, but it feels like it's more for recording purposes and, while cathartic, that feeling part is secondary. I'm writing things down so that someone can benefit from this. That feels important to me. Why can't I benefit from this? Why isn't that the most important to me now? Perhaps it's the oft-suppressed healer within that hopes others can benefit.
There are so many stories that have come to me that I haven't put words to. It gives them more power and makes me fear of them more real. I wonder if they would release if I gave them voice. When I do give voice to these fears that have become feelings, they feel less powerful but they don't really wane.
Science in a sort of Frankenstein's monster form feels to be taking over the world on a large scale -- we spray poison on our crops and call what pops up food. (I read something about Portugal, a country once abundantly green and self-sustaining, alive with its people selling their goods at market, recently being essentially a GMO-farm wasteland due to U.S. importation demands and its citizens essentially completely displaced, selling their souls so that Americans can have our palettes satisfied with off-season, chemical-laden crop. This is just one anecdote. I believe it was actually a VICE episode. One of the few shows on TV worth watching, it seems.) We turn to doctors to tell us what we already intuit about our bodies, to scientists (whose answers are dependent on whomever it is they're employed by) to tell us how to exist in the world due to whatever "evidence" it is that they uncover. We listen to them or don't listen to them depending on which "side" our political allegiance falls, and the outcome is all the same -- it's all a game, but the twist is that no one wins. We turn to our iPhones for answers, for contact, for distraction, rather than to books, to the person next to us, to our innermost selves so that we can learn we don't have anything within (or without) that needs fleeing from. I walked Scout downtown today and passed a father with two young kids under 3 in the backyard engaged in an animate conversation on his cell phone. This time might have passed for a quality afternoon with his children, except for there was little genuine contact between generations shared in that backyard. Science has become a blind, ravaging monster in this culture, and anyone paying attention knows it.
Science affects art as well, and it feels detrimental to me. How much harder is it to write with the constant distraction of the internet when one logs on to blog, or goes to write but finds it much easier to record a memo to oneself and then never ends up writing down that thought or message or idea at all?
Monday, June 29, 2015
Monday, June 15, 2015
Fear of the Unknown (and How Santa Claus Might Be In On It)
Spoiler alert: Intimately personal, transparent stories told here.
How did I get to this place? I have recounted so many events in my life of late, have felt filled with regret, have wanted to apologize to so many. And then I come to: perhaps I was doing the best I could have with what I was given. I grew up so privileged; huge house in a safe, lovely college town. We had four acres and a creek running through our backyard. As kids, my sisters and I used to pick up crayfish from the creek with our neighbors next door. They had a trampoline and a tennis court and a sauna. We had a puppy and a ginormous playground with sand imported from the coast. Santa was always very, very good to my sisters and me. The house I grew up in, once it was renovated, was on the home tour in our town. My mom always outdid herself with decorating our home for the holidays. -- ornate pine trim throughout, gorgeous wreaths everywhere. I remember nights nearing Christmas tree always being such a cozy, safe experience. Leaving homemade cookies out for Santa, carrots for his reindeer. In Jamaica for Christmas this year, I asked everyone in our family to share their favorite Christmas memory. (Decidedly, that question was my gift to my family this year.) Both my mom and dad shared their memories of Christmases growing up -- of their own childhoods, long before my sisters and I were yet us. I loved the Christmas that I came downstairs to a Kirsten American Girl doll -- just what I had diligently spelled out for Santa in the letter I had sent him weeks before. Our conversation drifted into when we first found out that Santa wasn't "real" -- this is when, I think, many American childhoods start to drift away. My middle sister, with whom -- to put it mildly -- I have an extremely strained relationship, if you can even call it one at all, showed emotion for the first time, I think, in years. Her face sort of cracked as she recounted learning this truth ... that the sort of magic that brings so many children in our culture to believe in a fat man in a red suit who flies around the world in one night bringing mounds of wrapped toys to good girls and boys via reindeer transportation isn't real. The tragedy here, really, is that this isn't the only sort of magic that exists -- the kind that works for a little while in our youth. It's just the only kind that so many of us are taught to believe in. When we learn it's not real, our entire view on reality takes a sharp turn, sometimes never to right itself back on course again. Children grow into jaded adults. We were LIED TO for years. Is this our parents' fault, or society's? For keeping us "safe". Does Santa help to feed the system? To keep us oppressed? Is it the same sort of lie that is told to us about freedom -- that we're taught to believe that we're "free", thus continuing to engage in a broken structure, one that actually keeps us in fear?
I started this blog post to go into fear. I am in a lot of fear right now. This place -- it feels all-consuming at times, like it's eating me alive. It feels hard to put into words. I feel a bit out of practice in my writing, so I've been recording voice memos, but even those can hardly scrape the surface of this experience. The artist in me tries to observe, and this is perhaps one of the few factors that is keeping me afloat. Something is happening here, and I talk to so many people about it that I continue to reactivate everything, continue to make drastic decisions, continue to create chaos in my internal world (as if enough didn't exist there as is, with how little mind-training I've done during this lifetime) and also create it around me. I often feel scared to go to sleep at night -- really, I'm scared of nighttime all together. The absence of light ... and it's because finding it within myself right now feels futile at times. Other times, the nighttime is all I find solace in; everyone is tucked in and safe for now, it seems. Another day my loved ones have lived. But what about me? Is this actually living? Looking forward only to the lovely dreams I do have rather than a lovely dream in waking life seems so dismal. I am revisiting a place I've been. It's been a toss-up as of late: I either lie awake imagining all the scenarios play out that I picture for my family, perhaps to fulfill some karma we each have, or even the score with how underprivileged so many others are or, if I do sleep, I have vivid dreams. Messages written out to me that answer questions I didn't know I had. Detailed scenarios outlining fears, desires, all through the supposed knowing of a dream subject's soul. Prophetic-feeling dreams ... though they're never completely literal. I feel terrified about the messages in many of them, and even terrified to put into words here of what could happen. Early last week, as I frantically drove back through the flatlands of the Midwest to my hometown from Boulder (a full 3-day trip with stops along the way), I recounted and created new scenario after scenario. I drove faster and time slowed down on the clock and sped up in my head. At a rest stop somewhere in the middle of the littered freeway wasteland of Illinois, I found a tea bag label on my seat that read "I don't want to not live because I fear what could happen". I don't remember reading this tag before; it emerged from wherever it had been before on this particular drive. I'd been sitting on it the whole way since Boulder. The last day of driving I entered a space of calm, finally. I consciously entered the unknown. I continued to come back to what was right in front of me: there's a red van, switching lanes. A blue car in front of me, a white truck in front of it. Here from behind me comes a white sedan, switching lanes to move around me. My mind drifted sometimes into what I might do. Move to another country -- aid work in Africa, or medicine work and jungle-trekking in South America. I picture myself seeing a lion in the wild in Africa and I began to cry -- how magical would this be. My thoughts switched to the state of the world, to the destruction created at the hands of humans. I think about Joel, about plans we've talked about for how to thwart this downward spiral so much of our culture is enduring, so much of our world is paying for without even knowing it. Radical stuff. I bring myself back to the present -- back to the blank solace of the Illinois highway. Tan-colored van switches lanes in front of me. I look at license plates. Not in the fear, here. My fear had been driving me for much of the drive, and now a phrase returned to mind that a friend had spoken to me the day prior when I was completely immersed in fear and sure something tragic was going to happen that night; it goes something like this "nature is the engine that drives the vehicle of love". Looking at the trees on that drive brought me a little bit of peace. Not looking at my phone did as well. A text message beep sounded; I continued to look ahead. I don't know, I don't know.
How did I get to this place? I have recounted so many events in my life of late, have felt filled with regret, have wanted to apologize to so many. And then I come to: perhaps I was doing the best I could have with what I was given. I grew up so privileged; huge house in a safe, lovely college town. We had four acres and a creek running through our backyard. As kids, my sisters and I used to pick up crayfish from the creek with our neighbors next door. They had a trampoline and a tennis court and a sauna. We had a puppy and a ginormous playground with sand imported from the coast. Santa was always very, very good to my sisters and me. The house I grew up in, once it was renovated, was on the home tour in our town. My mom always outdid herself with decorating our home for the holidays. -- ornate pine trim throughout, gorgeous wreaths everywhere. I remember nights nearing Christmas tree always being such a cozy, safe experience. Leaving homemade cookies out for Santa, carrots for his reindeer. In Jamaica for Christmas this year, I asked everyone in our family to share their favorite Christmas memory. (Decidedly, that question was my gift to my family this year.) Both my mom and dad shared their memories of Christmases growing up -- of their own childhoods, long before my sisters and I were yet us. I loved the Christmas that I came downstairs to a Kirsten American Girl doll -- just what I had diligently spelled out for Santa in the letter I had sent him weeks before. Our conversation drifted into when we first found out that Santa wasn't "real" -- this is when, I think, many American childhoods start to drift away. My middle sister, with whom -- to put it mildly -- I have an extremely strained relationship, if you can even call it one at all, showed emotion for the first time, I think, in years. Her face sort of cracked as she recounted learning this truth ... that the sort of magic that brings so many children in our culture to believe in a fat man in a red suit who flies around the world in one night bringing mounds of wrapped toys to good girls and boys via reindeer transportation isn't real. The tragedy here, really, is that this isn't the only sort of magic that exists -- the kind that works for a little while in our youth. It's just the only kind that so many of us are taught to believe in. When we learn it's not real, our entire view on reality takes a sharp turn, sometimes never to right itself back on course again. Children grow into jaded adults. We were LIED TO for years. Is this our parents' fault, or society's? For keeping us "safe". Does Santa help to feed the system? To keep us oppressed? Is it the same sort of lie that is told to us about freedom -- that we're taught to believe that we're "free", thus continuing to engage in a broken structure, one that actually keeps us in fear?
I started this blog post to go into fear. I am in a lot of fear right now. This place -- it feels all-consuming at times, like it's eating me alive. It feels hard to put into words. I feel a bit out of practice in my writing, so I've been recording voice memos, but even those can hardly scrape the surface of this experience. The artist in me tries to observe, and this is perhaps one of the few factors that is keeping me afloat. Something is happening here, and I talk to so many people about it that I continue to reactivate everything, continue to make drastic decisions, continue to create chaos in my internal world (as if enough didn't exist there as is, with how little mind-training I've done during this lifetime) and also create it around me. I often feel scared to go to sleep at night -- really, I'm scared of nighttime all together. The absence of light ... and it's because finding it within myself right now feels futile at times. Other times, the nighttime is all I find solace in; everyone is tucked in and safe for now, it seems. Another day my loved ones have lived. But what about me? Is this actually living? Looking forward only to the lovely dreams I do have rather than a lovely dream in waking life seems so dismal. I am revisiting a place I've been. It's been a toss-up as of late: I either lie awake imagining all the scenarios play out that I picture for my family, perhaps to fulfill some karma we each have, or even the score with how underprivileged so many others are or, if I do sleep, I have vivid dreams. Messages written out to me that answer questions I didn't know I had. Detailed scenarios outlining fears, desires, all through the supposed knowing of a dream subject's soul. Prophetic-feeling dreams ... though they're never completely literal. I feel terrified about the messages in many of them, and even terrified to put into words here of what could happen. Early last week, as I frantically drove back through the flatlands of the Midwest to my hometown from Boulder (a full 3-day trip with stops along the way), I recounted and created new scenario after scenario. I drove faster and time slowed down on the clock and sped up in my head. At a rest stop somewhere in the middle of the littered freeway wasteland of Illinois, I found a tea bag label on my seat that read "I don't want to not live because I fear what could happen". I don't remember reading this tag before; it emerged from wherever it had been before on this particular drive. I'd been sitting on it the whole way since Boulder. The last day of driving I entered a space of calm, finally. I consciously entered the unknown. I continued to come back to what was right in front of me: there's a red van, switching lanes. A blue car in front of me, a white truck in front of it. Here from behind me comes a white sedan, switching lanes to move around me. My mind drifted sometimes into what I might do. Move to another country -- aid work in Africa, or medicine work and jungle-trekking in South America. I picture myself seeing a lion in the wild in Africa and I began to cry -- how magical would this be. My thoughts switched to the state of the world, to the destruction created at the hands of humans. I think about Joel, about plans we've talked about for how to thwart this downward spiral so much of our culture is enduring, so much of our world is paying for without even knowing it. Radical stuff. I bring myself back to the present -- back to the blank solace of the Illinois highway. Tan-colored van switches lanes in front of me. I look at license plates. Not in the fear, here. My fear had been driving me for much of the drive, and now a phrase returned to mind that a friend had spoken to me the day prior when I was completely immersed in fear and sure something tragic was going to happen that night; it goes something like this "nature is the engine that drives the vehicle of love". Looking at the trees on that drive brought me a little bit of peace. Not looking at my phone did as well. A text message beep sounded; I continued to look ahead. I don't know, I don't know.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)