Halfway to dead

19 Apr Halfway to dead

My long-time mentor, friend, and collaborator, Julie and I were out for a coffee last week. I have a new photo series that I want to work on with her. One where I embody the elements, not as a reach out and towards, but as crawling down and into each of these forces that are so much bigger than I am. I’ve used the elements before as a guiding light for my work – but have used them as a way to beautify or enhance my own body – and I wanted these new images to be about the elements overtaking me, burying me, consuming me, and making me smaller inside of them.

I wrote the following words for Julie because she asked me to clarify my ideas for her. When I sat with them, I wanted to share them here. Because they hold some gasp of a truth. They make some semblance of sense for me. And they illuminate something that I have been saying on this precipice of turning 45 in just a few months. I’ve been joyfully declaring that I am “halfway to dead”. To me, it feels like a hot, breathy call out of delight – a freedom, a liberation. I am halfway to dead, it’s time to be alive. And I feel it too, as the crushing weight that Hercules must have felt, standing at Gibraltar, holding the continents apart, death on one side, life on the other – meaning on one side, meaninglessness on the other. I alternate between the existential joy of knowing life is so brief and subjective. And the heavy burden of feeling like I am supposed to be something much more significant by now. I wrote a phrase in my series of poems for my 44th birthday (you can read those on my instagram @permissionary) “Adulthood has long since had it’s way with me. Aware, awake, alive, I be.”..,” and this holds to be true. I know just enough now to know nothing at all. 

Paragraphs for Julie, 4/18/23

My desire for this year, for my life in general right now, for almost every moment, for my friendships, for my work, for the rhythm of my days has been to unzip the ground and crawl inside of it. To lay inside of Her until I can hear the heartbeat of something far more ancient, primal, and true than myself. To become my smaller self inside of Her muddy marrow and be reminded of just how long time really is. Just how vast space is. Just how thoroughly and completely every thought has been thought before and how little human thoughts matter in a space that holds the elements, in a world that holds volcanoes, hurricanes and deep, oceanic earthquakes. (as if a feeble, human mind could hold such profundities!)

Such a drive has made my relationships harder. I often feel like I have nothing to say to anyone. It has made my teaching better because when I open my mouth in that context, and get out of my own way, I somehow, sometimes, can offer clear sighted reflections from the beyond. This focus has mostly made my parenting richer because it isn’t ultimately about me or them at all, and the children and I can laugh together and rejoice at the grand cosmic joke that we three chose each other to gallivant around with in this hilariously short lifetime. 

Externally, I am certain that my decision making appears much more externally erratic, with decision matrices that look like toddler hopscotch: for example,  why not get another tattoo? or take a lot of mushrooms on a weekday? or buy a ridiculous purse? Life is absurd and we humans are walking around taking everything SOOOOO seriously. I often reflect on one of my biggest flaws, which is my own tendency towards solemnity, and my desire to peacock like an infinitely pompous asshole sometimes.

I’ve definitely questioned if this longing for Mama Earth and her ancient womb isn’t some elaborate shell game, disguising a bout of depression that I don’t want to admit to. Or nihilism. Or some rehashing of teenage willfulness that I didn’t get to fully express 30 years ago when I should have.

But fuck, it feels so good. So I am running with it. 

I love the idea of laying so long on a forest floor that I become a bed of moss and squirrels make my hair into their home. So, let’s unzip the Earth, and lay inside the streams, and float away in smoke clouds and let the wind make all my words meaningless chokes of tragic folly.