so sick of yuh
can't do(om) it anymore
life rx 11 nov 24
the wheel of fortune and a line from Kathryn Davis’ Aurelia, Aurélia:
“You could tell, looking at a dead grandmother, that whatever had kept her alive was no longer there, just as you could tell, looking at the family dachshund, that whatever kept it alive was there in abundance.”
the aleatory
Here’s the thing about wheels: they are wheels. This is how things move: true, not true. Things move themselves forward around a yoke of stillness. One word fails to find another. There is a moment of fervency, then a moment of failure. Movement looks like stillness, etc. If you try too hard to say the truth about something, you will sound 100% insane.
My first college boyfriend broke up with me because, according to him, I was too attached to the things of the world. He had stopped feeding himself. He would only eat when I insisted, when I paid. He told me that I should stop eating eggs. When I think about that time, I find it haunting how easily I took up the task of trying to get someone to live.
About every five years, I think of him again and decide: God, he was totally right about me. I am too attached to the things of this world.
And then, five years after that, I think of him and decide he didn’t have the first clue.
See? It’s a wheel. And that is what keeps it alive.
I don’t really trust transcendence. I don’t trust mastery. I don’t trust the people who want those things, either, because they attempt too much permanence.
I trust: people who can make really good biscuits. People who can make furniture that doesn’t wobble. People who have quietly assumed a body of knowledge or carried out an elaborate secret project. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, all examples of transcendence and mastery—but accidentally.)
The most spiritual thing I have seen since I moved to California: an altar of pop cans in a vegan Thai restaurant in Rancho Cucamonga. Not because they were on an altar, but because someone had put straws in all of them, and straws never stay in pop cans on account of the bubbles. They swivel out sideways. They won’t stop moving until the fizz goes away.
the assignment
Let yourself fizz.
writing prompt
Make a list of that which has been emptied of whatever kept it alive. Make a list of that which abundantly carries whatever keeps it alive.
a chune
“Is it wrong to want to hold on tight?” I wouldn’t say I’m a poptimist, exactly, but I do love the smuggling of questions like this into something that you might overhear in a mall dressing room. (If malls were like that.)
credits: small spells tarot deck by Rachel Howe
Aurelia, Aurélia by Kathryn Davis
NO GMO Mixtape by Dizzy Fae
dear diary, listen, I am sick of doom. I can’t do(om) it anymore. Abandoning the present moment to live instead in a horrible future which has not yet arrived and cannot be proven isn’t an intelligent, socially responsible thing to do. It is delusional. Cut it out. Get a grip. It doesn’t help you or me or anyone. It freezes us, and it holds us apart from the present moment, which is the only place where we can do anything actual. If you still insist on dooming—if you think I’m speaking harshly, or I’m being out of touch myself—you have to back up your dooming with something materially useful, like a skill or a plan or a bucket of nickels buried in the backyard. Anything! But start in reality, or shut the fuck up. XS