pit deep bone deep soul deep
i try to kill it with food but it doesn't want to eat
it wants to satiate itself by consuming me like fire
is this why they call it a burning desire?
i've got a hunger to be used, like fuel to a flame
and in the ashes, find out what stays the same
i'm hungry but don't feed me, i don't want to be full
i'm hungry to be whetted so my blade won't dull
and use it to slice me and feed the soil of the earth
eat me to feed me, to my soul give birth
to write lives i've never lived
and slowly feel like i'm never going to be able to live
i want to write about a woman that does everything and has all the energy in the world
and constantly gives
someone who takes care of their dad on his deathbed and lets him tell them his life story before he passes on
my body is so tired, though i may be so young
there are stories i want to write that hopefully will pull me towards themselves
the un-impossible ones
creativity is a salve to my soul - a placebo in place of worlds lost, a preview to worlds that can still be, just not right now.
I've wasted so much time
but in a way, if i write
I might gain more timelines to live lives that are not mine
It's already started. I made one today and found myself reminiscing about the early pandemic days. Has it been that long already? I was struck by how distinct those days felt. There it is: a now and a then. A subtle line in time forming without me noticing until I looked back and saw it.
A few years from now, this now will get muddled up with that then. They will just be the pandemic days, altogether.
The closer you are in time, the more you remember how distinct moments are from each other. The farther you get, you zoom out, some moments stand out, as the capillaries of time, little moments, fade out until you only see veins. Big events. A wedding, a pandemic. Both happened in my life this year. Zoom out even more, and then there'll be arteries. These are my early 30's. And then, they all connect and there's just you. At the end, looking back. All of the then's are one. And there is only one now, as there always was.
Some things will stand out, and many of them from the beginning of the more distinctly defined phases, when everything felt so new. Before the pandemic, very few people wore masks. Even after the volcanic eruption. After the pandemic, people started making bread, caring for plants, and yes, at the very beginning at least, making Dalgona Coffee.
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I have a frother that I use, but I've seen many people use forks. It takes time. It takes the right amount of curiosity and frustrated energy. We already knew what instant coffee tastes like, what sugar tastes like. What foam feels like. Yes, it's interesting to put together; but to spend so much time making it, only to mix it all up with the milk because the foam will be too sweet otherwise, tells us a lot about the quirks of humanity.
Sometimes, it's not about the end result, but about the process. Finding new ways to make things. Sharing something with others, no matter how far away. Trends allowed us to feel like there was still an us during this isolating time.
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It's hard to feel like you're living in the moment, though that's really the only time you ever do live. It's easier to feel like you lived after the fact. That's a little sad, but there are ways to feel present during the moment. It just will never feel the same living something as it will looking back.
Nostalgia is not what it used to be.
Looking at your life and who you are, the memories are what you first see. They're at the very top. Foamy, sweet, strong, but on their own, they are both too much and not enough. You need the stillness and the blandness, and yes, ironic richness of the present moment. You need to let the foam mix and sink deep with the milk is hiding underneath. (Now milk, you can definitely drink on its own. But for many it is bland, because very few of us have the choice to start with a blank slate. We have known sweetness and bitterness before. In fact are you able to truly choose anything before your slate has been un-blanked?)
All of the reflecting on the past can only be done in every present moment, and so we never actually choose between the two. Our choice is to mix or not mix. And how much to mix them up.
Unmixed, you get strong memories that can sweep you away, leave you floating on the surface of every moment, until you have to take a sip of milk to temper it out. By meditating, dissociating from memories and being completely catatonic and removing all stimulation by staring at your immediate surroundings... - this is the type I have been drinking. It's quite an emotionally turbulent way to live life.
If I had enough self control and could choose, I'd choose to mix the way I mix actual Dalgona Coffee. Mixing at the very top, leaving some intense flavors suspended at the top, and some milk untouched at the bottom, make room for surprises, for the end. Consume with a spoon. Take what you need, and be on your way, (and stop crying your heart out).
Of course I could just choose to, you know, just mix the sugar, coffee, and milk all up together, skip all of the frothing part. But I would argue, that though that may be fine for an actual cup of coffee, it's not a way to live life that is natural to humans. In this way, Dalgona Coffee demonstrates human nature pretty well: we could have definitely just taken life as it already was. Left nature completely alone. Kept wandering, scavenging, hunting, hiding, procreating, eating, and shitting. But no. What's natural for us, is to add to what's natural. In a way, we are what is actually supernatural about this world. We add to the natural. And yes, it often ends up going awry, but it's in our nature to try.
To look into history, though it may be long gone, to guide us in our way forward.
To collect knowledge and memories, and record them, for a future us, beyond our individual lifetimes.
To create art, be frivolous, and individualize to an astronomical extent, much more than other species can, because of our abilities to imagine and ideate.
It's always been about the process, and not the point for us. Because the absolute, objective, pre-human point is that we all die, and we will all keep trying to avoid it the best we can, for as long as we can. But the process is that we get to live out moments, and remember them, even when they are gone, and imagine moments that have not yet come. And we so we get to choose the point. That's the real point. Or at least, what we've so far chosen it to be.
That we are human beings with human doings and human thinkings, but first and foremost, we are human beings. At least for a little while. We get to make our coffee however way we like it.
It's hard to find genuine concern and interest in the world beyond when we don't find a connection through ourselves. Empathy hinges on the motion of imagining oneself in another one's shoes. We must be able to imagine the pain within ourselves before we can sense that it must be taken away from another person.
When there is a lot of external pressures to "be altruistic", without using the path from inside, one would be taking action from a place of fear.
Fearing that they are selfish for not thinking of others, for not naturally feeling the urgency and gravity of other beings' needs. What results is action for the sake of action, of course, this is better than nothing in the grander scheme of things - many people doing the same thing for different reasons still results to many people doing the same thing.
But I think that this kind of altruism will not feel as fulfilling, and neither will it be easy to sustain.
What is important to you? What things are you able to do? What causes are you curious about? Do you feel that you have something to offer that could be of use to others? Start with that.
The man who has more coats at home is the one who is able to give away the one he is wearing to a person without a home, and spare a cold walk to his very own.
Fill your cup, and give from its overflowing.
