THERE’S A PLACE

VOICES 2025

There’s a place where there are no words, where emotions, sensations and thoughts have no stories, where there is no being, no doing, no next, no why, no how, where there is only an is-ness, an iz-ness, however you choose to spell it, a calm that is, forever, whatever you choose to call it.

Wherever I am, I feel what I feel, I think what I think, I see what I see. Wherever I am, I make choices, one after the other, admiring my preferences, my illusions, my own incantations of myself, forgetting that I know how to dress things up as being something other than what they are.

I live across the street from reality and I’m not crossing over. No way. My need to explain myself comes from having learned a sort of self-defense that most birds find unnecessary. Words hold bullshit as easy as truth, which is good to be aware of, good to keep in mind, hard to shake.

Normal is “what most people do”, although how most people think, feel and behave is far from being anything close to kind, intelligent or healthy. My favorite delusion is that I’m sensible, that I’m right, that I need to say something right now, that I need to argue for what I believe in, for what I’m sure of. The things I do I practice into habits, habits which become the things I do more and more. No one gets born alone and there’s no living alone either. But you can die alone. Even when sitting off apart from the world comes easy, it’s not always the right place for me to stay. If I want to get beyond blame and innocence, and walk along in peace, I need to meet myself wherever I am and I need to meet you wherever you are. We don’t have to say anything to make that place matter.