Ancient melodies of the future

At first, getting old felt like the world knew you had a big dick (and go fuck yourself for wanting to call me on some Freudian chauvinistic bullshit; that’s not how I mean it and you know it). I grew into my strut walking down the avenue, (mostly) stopped fighting—I’m able to be more honest with myself than I’ve ever been—and I care less about stupid shit. Less gossip and negativity, more patience and love.

And, see, here—this is what I wanted to talk about beginning after the first sentence: now getting old bears the stark, unmaskable stain of woowoo. (I’d only ever admit this using my Actual Adult Serious Voice in Real Life to one person in the world, so, unless you’re that person, glaze yr pretty eyes for a paragraph or more.) You there: glaze thine fucking eyes! OK, woowoo: not much to say, right? It’s all piss-stained sheets in the sun in the wind on a clothesline in an over-saturated shot from a flashback in a film. And, since we’re here, it’s time to pour a little out for our Greek and Roman friends: being able to inherit their baseline culture of logic over mysticism has kept me from needing to know my astrological sign until my realization that I wanted to start laying on top of the artist-set. So, now I know I’m an Aquarius, etc., along with a few presidents and best friends. It means I don’t give a fuck about all the shits around me (—and to think, for the longest time I thought it was just because I decided I didn’t give a fuck…). And here I am, on the far side of being over-educated, of having a pretty solid chunk of life experience carved out of the belief that existence precedes essence, and I happen upon vibrations of strings waving throughout the world. I find myself in moments that are so perfect—or at least familiar—that I feel they’ve been in my world, outside of time, waiting (well, they can’t be waiting outside of time, so let’s say resting) for me and then just insert themselves into my consciousness at just the right—wait for it, now…—time. I look into someone’s eyes and felt the sort of preeminence I’ve only ever felt with my self qua self before.

There comes a point like this, here, where I have to take a step back toward the west: I don’t feel this with everyone. I’m not saying I’m fucking benevolent in some zen or JC way. It’s a limited exposure. It’s kind of like feeling more connected to the world—more a part of the world—thru my experience with one single person, which would normally sound woowoo but I’m going to call it an example of duende, slap it on it’s ass, and send it out into the world. See, here’s the, in the self-consciously postmodern parlance of our time, rub: describing this type of shit results only in soggy juicers of cliché or tie-dye.

I also make this point about rubbing: for me, there is a very deep value in choice. I, for example, am very patient with people I love. This isn’t a personality trait. This isn’t because I was born at 10:30 on a Saturday morning. In fact, I’m generally speaking a very impatient person. (As any ex-wife or mother will tell you.) Patience has been a skill I knew I was very bad it, and because I didn’t ever want to be my father, I taught myself how to be good at it. Then I practiced it a bunch. Sometimes I got myself drunk over it, both as a reward and in the way one diverts the pain of getting tattooed into a different part of the body so the piece of skin getting tattooed stays flexible, stable. I’m proud of the work I’ve done in this area of my life. It was a choice, and to my mind to call it anything else diminishes the ethics, work, and intentionality that goes in to each demonstration of that learned skill. (Who am I arguing with here?)

Now, here’s another difficulty: In the face of the inevitability of such a shared connect(ion), the cultivation of this connect(ion), and, really, the cultivation of the circumstances that even allowed for such an eternal consciousness manifesting itself historically is the result of careful planning, confidence, understanding, and iron will, which is to say, choice. I think the work and fidelity that goes into such an act deepens its magnitude. The perfection that tingles in it, however, makes if feel too big for a person (or two) to have created independently in such a large, complex world.

And what about my sign—my fucking sign? Kierkegaard’s probably going to get leaned on a little, here, in saying that astrology is just a system that superimposes meaning post-facto, the same way someone from a church group visiting a rape victim in the hospital might say everything happens for a reason. It’s, on some level, just a way of making the world feel more secure/of making how small we are feel less small. But it’s reductive to dismiss woowoo as a horoscope in the free weekly rag, to be thought of as out-of-date as chip’n dips and fondu and shag carpet—or, by now, even brie and sun-dried tomato (adios, ‘90s). The world is a bit more complicated than that. And what happens when one begins to develop an epistemology that regards systems as heuristic? (But—let’s be clear—not in a woowoo way. We’re not talking about an omni-systemic world, but a world where judgment and action are more critical now than ever.) It seems like I, for one, feel like things are more real, like things matter a little hunk more.

Is that Aquarian of me or what?