A big dark brown spider crawls silently across the rug. My wife’s in bed, so I take no action, even though he’s heading underneath my chair. As with the spider, I’m not sure what this is about. I just want to share a little of what I’ve noticed lately.
For decades I was a voracious political & news junkie. Roughly nine years ago I gave up TV more or less completely. Since Bush got in, I had to stop listening to NPR as well. For an awfully long time now, I’ve gotten probably 99% of all my news from the Internet. That means I was able to control my consumption to some extent, to select the kinds of stories I wanted to read. During the last few years of major crisis mode — personal, national, and geopolitical — blogs provided an even tighter focus: I didn’t have to wade through a bunch of other articles to find the ones I wanted; in fact, I didn’t even need to read them: most of the time, a hot quotation with someone else’s appended outrage was enough. And if I wanted more of the latter, all I had to do was read through the comments and join in. I mean, you can mainline this emotional state.
But it’s almost like I had to take the risk. If you’re expecting a check for a million dollars, you keep looking in the mailbox. Likewise, if you think the dam’s about to burst and you live downstream, you listen for the sirens — there might not be any escape, but at least you’ll know.
Well, for most of August and September I turned off the blogs completely. It was extremely difficult to do, an eye-opening experience that proved the depth of my addiction. Not unexpectedly, I did expand in other directions. Maybe a few loony ones, but still. There is life out there — (”in here”?) — I realized. At the same time, I became curious and took a few backward glances at the daily hullabaloo. Remarkably, everything was just the same, as if I’d never left. That insight didn’t stop me, though. ["Hello, my name is John H. Farr, and I'm a crisis junkie."] And now I’m back to reading blogs again, checking half a dozen on a daily basis. That’s a pale shadow of my earlier involvement, thank God. Nonetheless, I’m getting the news again, observing and dealing with the psychological and metaphysical effects, and so on — only with a wee bit more detachment than before.
I can’t just ignore what’s going on, but I need to understand the context created by the focus: what strikes me most is how the vortex of negative energy, amplified by convergence with an apocalyptic archetype manifesting in the world [No shit! -- Ed.], feeds back into itself and suppresses creativity, i.e., solutions. That’s what makes it a vortex, having no apparent choice. From inside, all options are framed by the downward spiral: what will we do when gasoline is $10 a gallon, where can we go before the clampdown, what about the ice caps, etc. etc. It’s a frigging mess. You can’t get there from here, because there isn’t any there!
This is so close to what it’s like to be mortally depressed, I can hardly believe it.
It’s the same pain. My pain, the country’s pain, the pain of the world. It’s like there’s only one wound. Suddenly, instead of feeling alienated and alone, I’m me but also part of everyone else. It’s all sloshing back and forth a billion times a second. I CAN’T QUIT. NO MATTER HOW HARD WE TRY TO MAKE IT SO, NO ONE IS ALONE. Which is why it has to work the other way, too: heal myself, I heal the world.
Holy crap! As Rob Brezsny’s [sidebar] newsletter signature quote assures me Pogo once said, “We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.”
Go forth and multiply (quickly). Make art. Something else is out there.
Comment by K.J. Webb
1 October 17, 2007, 6:56 am o'clock |
I believe every word of what you say, my friend, but the thrust of it still leaves me a little bewildered. The shit in the world never makes me anxious in that way. The world’s an interesting place, shitty or not. Your own reflections here confirm this on an almost daily basis. Then you make the leap that bewilders me repeatedly - into utter condemnation of this or that feature (actually most features) of the world under broad and abstract categories. If you feel that sort of stuff in your bones, then you feel it. I’m not here to refute it. And certainly not to suggest that, to repeat, the world’s not full of shit. But the shit’s interesting too, don’t you think? It’s always been with us humans. Not any more of it now than in the days of the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, the Napoleonic wars - whatever era you want to look at. Actually in most previous eras folks were either slaves or lived miserably. Life was notoriously “nasty, brutish and short”. What contemplation of the world, what spiritual development, was possible in those bad old days? Excruciating physical pain, starvation and epidemics rendered anxiety about the fate of the world sort of a pale second-place in the agony sweepstakes.
These observations are all kind of middle-brow, I realize. I’m just a peasant at heart, and thank my lucky stars I’m no longer stuck in the mire of my ancestors, much as I respect them. Living honourably in the world as we find it is what we were meant to do, I can’t help thinking.
Any of that make any sense to you?
Comment by John H. Farr
2 October 17, 2007, 11:44 am o'clock |
I’m not condemning anything. Where on earth do you get that idea? This is all about healing! You’re only nibbling on the crust. Go ahead, take a great big bite right out of the middle of the loaf.
And just for you, I’ve bolded the most important line in the whole piece. Wanted to do that anyway.
Comment by K.J. Webb
3 October 17, 2007, 12:34 pm o'clock |
Maybe we’re talking semantics here. If I withdrew the word “condemnation” and replaced it with the word “rejection”, would you still disavow the idea being expressed? (I agree that the original word has moralistic freight. I didn’t intend those connotations.)
Don’t understand the metaphor of crust and center, I confess. Don’t reject it, just don’t understand it. You could help me understand it a bit better by writing about it (if it can be written about). Mysticism is not in my kit, but I’m always interested in putting new things in there. No point in repeatedly drinking the same bathwater.
I admit that I was questioning your praise of the flight from reality. I tend to doubt that this reflects your real experience (since you write about your experience so beautifully) so much as some idees fixes you have acquired over the years. We all have these obsessions that just happen to happen to us, so that doesn’t make you different from me or anyone else.
When you say the state of the world (the crust, then) induces “mortal depression”, well, I’m saying that that aint the way it affects me and I don’t understand the reaction. Temperament’s a powerful force. I’m not challenging the validity of anyone’s innermost feelings or interpretation of his experience, just probing things a bit out of my own innate feelings of interest in an old friend.
Comment by K.J. Webb
4 October 17, 2007, 4:54 pm o'clock |
I very much doubt that any of us forked creatures can be free of - or even operate without - assumptions and delusions, No. 6. And I confess to stumbling and bumbling, likewise to not having much of a clue about the Universe. That’s my point, really. It’s insane hubris to make grand statements about things as big and unknowable as that - there we are in agreement. What we humans ought to be doing is figuring out our little patch of earth (I’d call that reality, but maybe you wouldn’t) and comparing notes with each other. My reality might turn out to be a bit like your reality after all, or it all might turn out to be just an arid semantic dispute. –Anyhow, John’s next few posts have convinced me that he’s returned from these misty metaphysical heights to HIS little patch, well and sharply observed, and for this I give him kudos and take back all those vile accusations of condemnation and rejection of reality (whatever THAT is!).