If you haven’t realized it yet, I’m in the midst of a writer’s block. I don’t know what it is exactly that I have to say. I’m a cis-gendered white gay male living a DELULU life, trying his damnedest to be skillful out in the world and gentle with himself, reacting to external circumstances while paralyzed most of the time by both fear of failure and success. When I initially set out to write Issue 017, fall had just found its stride, an Emily Dickinson October peeking through the ever-thinning crown of more carefree days. I marveled at the Canada geese twice over a two-day period, bearing witness to moving performances of take-off and landing over the tarn at the nature preserve by my house, the geese’s honks harbingers of something else yet to come.
This was during back-to-school time, which tells our brains that now is for reinvention, a fresh shot to show everyone what you’re made of. You’re welcomed by a chorus of my how you’ve grown, an evolved creature in new kicks at the very least. Autumn for me is an opportunity to shapeshift, bending more or less toward a novel and unfamiliar concept — an ideal — of how life might be. There will be a day or two when the light changes in a noticeable way, its quality not unlike the flicker of Super-8 casting our memories as mottled simulacra of what actually was. As the kids say: it just hits different. Melancholy and a good kind of grief settle in as I wonder what the shedding of old skin would leave me with. Who would I be if not this? Who is that? With a rough image in mind, I move in the direction of a future state of self to which I will never arrive. I’ll end up a few towns over never knowing the other me, for better or worse. That was fall, and we’ve entered yet another back-to-school time — the start of the new year, according to the Roman Catholic calendar.
It’s been more than a few months since my earlier reflections, which have sat in my drafts untouched because I’ve been focused and distracted. With fall and the holidays running their course, my musings would’ve fallen flat regardless in the face of Christmas’ upswing and the fatal uppercut of capitalism and force-fed cheer.
Someone the other day asked me, “What do you need?” And I had no answer. Running from the things that terrorized us — whether in daytime’s nakedness or the pitch blackness of night — we speed toward an equally stark amorphous future. Overexposed expectations produce an underdeveloped image of what the future holds and whether or not life past 30 even stood a chance.
Body
Body movements and imprinted trauma responses. For most of my life, I’ve felt like an outsider looking in on my own existence. Out-of-body experience? Is it like in The Others, where I find out that I’m already dead?
Mind
Information diet. I should look at what I allow to enter my headspace, or what forces its way in like the Kool-aid Guy. Reviewing my stack, or toolkit, where do I find inspiration, and what helps me get where I want to go? Or first things first, where do I even want to go?
Soul
The divine spark within. Just having the willingness to change can yield healthy revisions to one’s approach to life and its various trials and tribulations. Otherwise, we risk stagnation. Resistance is fear blocking you from your full potential.
I had a recent talk with someone about even just sitting with the idea of being open to possibility. He said he needed something more concrete to work with. I felt like a new agey woo woo Santa Fe turquoise womyn. My simple suggestion to “manifest” good things from the universe felt ridiculous. But the fact is that the universe did provide in 2023, gifting me the ability to participate in a group called the Lonely Writers Club, brought to us by the amazing Metalabel team. And there were many doses, in fact, of creative inspiration from the unlikeliest of places. Here’s to more making in 2024.
I think of the clarion call of southbound geese, the gentle purr of a kitten on your chest, or the judgmental meow telling you you’ve been gone too long or made some questionable choices. Whether symphony or cacophony, or noise versus sound versus music versus silence, we hear all kinds of things during this life. Sylvia and I commune during the tying of shoelaces. Sometimes it’s a please don’t go, other times a please be safe on your journey. But perhaps it’s just a love of shoelaces or simply of me that keeps her tap-dancing on my shoetops. And then there are some people who are able to tap into the languages of seemingly inanimate objects, trees for instance.
For me, music is a life-affirming force. There were, in particular five albums and one track that kept me going in 2023. Read about them here, in my end of year newsletter.
I believe this is it from the Feral Fringe. Thank you all for listening and for visiting. My forwarding address is here.