Illustration of unarmored algae (dinoflagellate). Kofoid, Charles A, 1921.
in the rearview, after using my fingernail as a scythe for the milia on my chin, i look at myself. Who am i? Am i awake? Am i a bad daughter? Am i trustworthy? Do i suck? Am i good? Am i obsessed with seeking? Is it what it is? No amount of entheogens, podcasts and hot power flows can embalm me enough. I think i’m coming to an EmBoDiEd AwaR3NeSs~* about this million year old concept of straddling suffering and peace. It’s just a fugly dance. Back and forth, up and down, yikes, don’t stay too long on either side because that's weird, and don’t forget about the dark when you’re resourcing the light, and so on.
I am angry that we have to speak in english together. What i want to say does not have a jarring, exclusive, colonial texture. What i want to say is not conceptual. I don’t want to say i feel X and i also feel Y, claiming a separateness. The tired choreography of my hands opening towards the sky, holding No Thing. one hand lowers and lifts, the other does too. It’s my way of expressing both things are true, juggling like the jester i am. In more wise, elderly communication, we know there is a whole constellation of true; that generalization and assumption is a missed opportunity to stretch into good relationship and reason. There’s a reason stretching feels good. after all, i am just experiencing-you-experiencing-me; our past pain points constantly being up-cycled and stimulated in the present. How do we expand from things in opposition can all be true towards deeper layers of consideration? the intricate multiplicity of oneness.
what i want to say does not need a disclaimer or an over-explanation, because it does not presuppose that you do not Know. what i want to say actually isn’t available to be spoken at all. Because it is expressed in our primary language: feeling, sensing, moving. I resent that we initiate through forgetting and remembering; that the remembering is not a valve that stays open and potable between the onion of Self and Skin. I am angry that remembering takes labour because i’m LAZY, and so are my people:
Anger, purely, is not punitive. anger is just one letter away from angel. Anger need not be conflated with contempt. There is respite in discernment, like learning to notice the precision difference between anger and rage. Anger likes semantics and stories, it’s an individual expression. It’s important and often unskillfully administered medicine. Anger is hot when we commit to due repair. rage feels like it extends into the collective, the reason sometimes unclear to the thinking mind, but explicit to our cells. Rage feels like my spirit doing backflips between difficult relationships across time and space.
My ancestors tell me that we deep feelers need to be more bad. This rebellion looks like a breach, a risk; taking our time, being misunderstood, not agreeing out of an addictive pathway, not responding if we aren’t moved to it. Being bad can look like resisting the mistaken belief that we need to justify or absolve instead of feel the thing. Being bad in this way is erotic; revolutionary, it is a warrior journey, a painful-pleasurable return to love.
As my friend berkeley once said i don’t want any more medicine. I want candy!
In the hall of mirrors, facing the part of me who often pretends to luxuriate in “the process.” It’s actually very hard here. I don’t trust people who are well adapted. And i watch them like a conventionally attractive troll under a bridge, waiting for them to join me in the muck and splash around for a little while.
Young Kurdish shepherd. François-Xavier Lovat, 1963.
Since my last letter, I’ve been chewing the cud. in some animals, cud is partly digested food returned from the first stomach back to the mouth for further chewing. I am just a silly goat after all. there’s a part of us that knows that idealizing completion is unnatural. We love to identify with our material selves, so let us identify with the proteins, acids, bubbling soundscapes and indiscernible morsels. What can my thinking mind give to my bile? What can be weakened, neutralized and carried away? What disturbs my thinking mind relentlessly, and can just be another bolus to my gut? What can i send DOWN to be processed in a different way? And how do i give thanks? Our organs are not just serving a unique, one directional, autonomic purpose. And our energy centers are not new age esotaria. in all ancient cultures (don’t quote me, i love drama), as well as in contemporary microbiome research, our stomach is a brain. In recovery from surviving generations of abuse of disembodied thought- any opportunity to remember our entire body as a system of knowledge is an invitation to extend, to empty, to flick out of our fingertips. To titrate and to catch deeeeeeeep… sloooooow ….breath….
Sincerely,
Patiently Operating On Prefrontal