New Becomings

I'm figuring out how to get on with the rest of my life here without screaming into the void and succumbing to the 'that's-just-the-way-it-is' attitude of many generations before now - This may just be another feminist cry against the patriarchy, wailing in the distance, not enough to affect anything or anyone, but I need to call it out: To the men who subconsciously listen in rapt to the systemic sexism that has been stroking their egos since before they were born, as their 'hard wiring' allows them to treat women as objects and servants, yet wear carefully crafted public masks of allyship - I Call You Out. And, to the women who use their objectification, utilizing the same inherited and ingrained system, to control people and climb proverbial ladders - I Call You Out. Why would anyone try to change anything if they benefit from it? What is the benefit? Superiority? Domination? Survival? This system of imbalance, inherited and ingrained, is yet another privileg...

  Here’s the thing about not caring what happens: it’s liberating.  Don't get me wrong, I float in a boundless well of compassion, but it's detached from personal affect even as I feel things to the core - that visceral heaviness punching the gut doesn't actually impact my beingness. I experience good, bad, and indifference, then watch what happens. And, I still take actions I think might help situations or people in some way or other - whether anyone knows it or not makes no difference to me - I do it anyway for some reason. Sometimes people thank me, and sometimes they get angry about the things I choose to say or do... Whatever.   It's like stepping off a carousel you were tired of riding - you watch the painted horses bob up and down, endlessly looping, and think, “Well, I guess it just goes on with or without me.” And you’re fine with that. You’ve got no grand illusions about saving the world or stopping it from spinning. The world, after all, doesn’t need saving. ...

Releasing, letting go, dissolving, clearing out - a time to reflect on the ways that did not honour my inner awareness. Inklings went unacknowledged until it was too late - too late to simply move with the undercurrent, even though it was the right direction, there was nothing on the horizon to show my location, as in the easy summer days of floating around under the sun and moon, beside the treelined shores. It was a tumultuous view, foreign yet familiar. I was almost drowning, swirling in turbulence, because I didn't trust myself and fought the flow. I popped up at the last minute, gasping for air, to the demands of others wanting to know what happened... those inklings then became obvious obstacles, challenges and confusions to overcome - not the lifeline I expected, but the one I needed. It is a perfect time to become free of those emotional and psychological burdens, to transform once again, to reset and reclaim what's rightly mine - The misunderstandings of anyone, includ...

  "Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art." - Stanislaw Jerzy Lec Arriving at the crossroads of a primal scream and a calm wisdom, the fire of younger days are tempered into a slow burn, flickering into the steady pull of grace; no longer one to rush or chase, and moving with the certainty of tides, this inevitable presence is the setting sun shining on the rising moon. Here is a maturity that does not boast or demand attention, but a lingering specter, heavy with the weight of lives touched, dreams shaped, and storms weathered. Space itself is drawn to this gravity, a poise that doe s not sparkle with the need to catch the eye - it gleams like polished gold, soft and steady, asking nothing more. Time has pressed and wrought a strength that is quieter than steel but infinitely more lasting. To listen more than to speak, yet with a voice, when necessary, carrying the echoes of lessons hard-won and heartbreak understood. There is no bitterness in this wisdom, no...

  When I was around 10 years old, I somehow realized that I didn't think in words, so I asked people around me: "Do you think?... Like, in sentences, with words?" Blank stares and looking upward for an answer, friends tried to describe their thought processes - I asked again just a few weeks ago, some friends and I were hanging out - The answers, basically, were all "yes", they thought with words. I've come to understand my lack of internal wordiness, ironic for a writer, as "unsymbolized thinking." Every moment pulses with an insistence, waiting to be pierced, lifted to the mouth of my mind, and chomped with fervor; life itself is woven with subtle threads of metaphor. The world is a reflection of something more profound, yet elusive - I chase it relentlessly and never quite catch it. There's another term I came across years ago, as an adult, which is "aphantasia" - the inability to visualize. I had read about the power of visualizat...

 "A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world." ~Albert Camus In the wilds of the animal kingdom, 'survival of the fittest' dictates that those best adapted to their environment through physical strength, strategic cunning, or social cooperation, will thrive and propagate their genes. The Darwinian concept, central to evolutionary biology, underscores the brutal and unforgiving struggle for dominance and survival. While this law of nature governs the animal world, it also provides a lens through which we can examine human societies and political systems - a glimpse into how humans, even with our elevated reasoning and grandiose sense of selves, in the evolutionary cycle of things, are still just animals.   The animal world operates on a relatively simple principle: the strongest, smartest, and/or the most adaptable organisms will survive, while the weaker or less adapted perish. Whether it's a lion hunting in the savannah or an antelope evading cap...