THE RITUALS OF EVERYDAY LIFE

VOICES 2024

The rituals of everyday life overwhelm my limits this morning. I can’t shower off what bothers me. My teeth won’t get clean, the clock runs on wacked and it’s impossible for me to keep up. Chaos and misery are on every news feed, each story painful, reconstructing events that have no kindness, leaving my mind fried, convinced I’ve fallen into a doomed world. Life only happens on the edge of death, I think. Checking off the boxes is not enough. Lining up a thought and then fucking it up is a lot more interesting than knowing how everything turns out. A big lawn, a white picket fence, three cars and new appliances don’t provide anyone any protection.

It’s never a good day to feel like I’m just hanging on. River of pity, river of worry. I sometimes pick my rivers without thinking where they lead. To be in love with a once that happened at a particular time, expecting it to happen again, does nothing but lead me to despair. Plants survive pruning and grow into new shapes. Unpruned plants spill over themselves and rot. No one says, “I’m being breathed”, which is odd because I’m not doing my own breathing. When I do my own breathing, count watch listen hold, things happen that can only be explained by having come across a doorway to another world and having a courage and commitment to open it.

I ask who I am out loud and then I listen. Each generation is sensitive to its own needs, needs that those before it and those after it may not understand. Maybe the 2020s are an in-between time, just like the 1840s were an in-between time, an after and a before everything, come and gone, history blowing right by it, forgetting that change doesn’t happen when it’s being looked for. My attitude and outlook wear many faces. The arc of my circle, the karma of my actions repeated, become the habits of my body, a roadmap into the caverns of my own preferences, where Aversion and Want sit confidently, looking like guides, and Truth keeps to the shadows.