Nostalgia tastes like toffee. Like butterscotch. Like caramel. And that’s the danger of it. It’s confection. It’s empty calories. All sugar and no substance. The longing for something that isn’t real.
Spent all weekend working on a project that failed. Today’s newsletter almost didn’t happen. It’s hasty and haphzard. When it comes to luster, it’s lacking. But…it’s here…
We aim for self-knowledge, to have some level of self-assuredness. A degree of certainty. But is that more of a hindrance than an aid? When we tie ourselves to static identities, what happens when we confront the reality of the way things change? When like everything else we cease to be the same? We are an event rather than a name.
Everything is made of small things. Electrons. Atoms. Nuts. Bolts. Screws. Prayer beads. Everything carries bits of something else. Nothing arrives fully formed. Everything starts as something other, becomes one thing and then another. Shifts. Changes, and then becomes something different yet again.
Somedays we push, and pull, and pry. Most days we blister and ache. We feel the weight of every failed attempt like sediment. Like coarse conglomerate. Immovable granite and bouldering clay. It's heavy. It's hard to carry. It's hard to move, but even a little bit goes a long way...
We "assemble a life from the usable fragments", Lewis Hyde says. Sacred relics of the wreckage, gathered and connected. We experience the world as wholeness when all our pieces have a space.
Where has the year gone? It feels like the new year just started! Alas, we have come to the end of 2023, and there is no better way to cap off the year than with a selection of fantastic reads!
US Releases: bit.ly/3GGnzsg
UK & Irish Releases: bit.ly/3TifwcH
Repression is a rite of passage, they tell us. It’s called being an adult, they say. It’s all part of becoming a semi-well-adjusted member of a society. Smile. Nod. Stay in your lane. Dress for the job you want. Do as you're told. Pay your taxes and your rent. And, most importantly, stuff all your otherness way the fuck down so no one knows, and no one sees...
Something happens when you're unhurried, when you escape from acceleration and speed. When you give way to haste-less activity.
Something happens when you tarry, when you linger, when you pause.
You were never trying to escape your life, only what you thought it was supposed to be. Your real life has always been in the attention you give to slow things.
We collect the instances of what's expected of us. Air-quotes-normalcy. Air-quotes-conventionality. Air-quotes-respectability. In other unsaid words, side-eye-conformity. It’s the breakfast of champions, they say...
It is a rare bravery to face the factors of our lives that have fallen down, fallen short, and fallen apart. It's being present with unflinching resolve. It's grieving without giving up or giving in. That's what gives us a chance. A chance to be new and renewed. A chance to be deeper and different. A chance to begin and, more importantly, to begin again.
You put yourself together. Bit by bit. Part Sometimes you do it with clarity and precision. As if by a manual. As if provided with a step-by-step guide. At other times, in total darkness. In the midnight hour. Grappling with esoteric secrets. With hieroglyphics. An impenetrable mystery. Like Ikea instructions for building anything...
“It is so much more comfortable to think that we know what it all means”, Anne Lamott says. But, sometimes the really magical, top-shelf, good shit, sometimes WE PROGRESS when we realize we don't know a goddamn thing. I came to collage to stop overthinking...
"Das Gehirn des Tages ist ein #Bienenschwarm. Es brummt. Es summt. Es flitzt in alle Himmelsrichtungen gleichzeitig. Unmöglich, einem einzelnen Gedanken zu folgen, weil er sich sofort in der schieren Menge verliert. Ein Zustand hoher Entropie und niedriger Produktivität."
Start der Reihe "Gehirn des Tages", in der ich mich mit einem anderen Seinszustand meines Gehirns auseinandersetze.
"The ongoing challenge of the creative life is how to balance the outward sharing of one’s gift with the inward stewardship of the soul from which that gift springs." - @mariapopova
You have a condition. A sensitivity. The symptoms are invisible. Whether you were born with it or came to it. Something in your genes or something that happens as you age. Who knows? Who’s to say? It’s a kind of osteopenia. A loss of inner strength. A kind of poverty. You can’t rebuild quickly. A reduction of volume, of mass. An inadequate density.