Dear Diary, today I am still here…
The numinous present is always with us even when we don't notice.
Recently I have been thrust into unusual circumstances. I am helping a dying relative, and dealing with many different aspects/needs of the situation. I have felt overwhelmed by sudden, intense responsibilities.
At first it feels like fear and discomfort and resistance. Disorientation. A desire to escape. Help! I’m drowning! Slowly, this experience is helping me to face and acknowledge my own competence.
I suffer greatly from the fear/freeze response. The freeze response does not lead to action; it leads to inaction. When one is faced with circumstances that absolutely require action, it is sometimes possible to break through habits of inaction and get **** done.
And also notice that you are a person who gets **** done. It’s stepping into the flow—into the numinous present, where all vision and creativity reside. It’s letting go of misguided coping mechanisms, including who I think I am and what I think I’m supposed to be doing. It’s trusting self as conduit.
How human it is to cling to coping mechanisms that don’t work… that might once have worked (though they probably didn’t) and for sure don’t work now. I want coping mechanisms that work! The closer I come to using the art/love/faith coping mechanism, the easier it is to deal with the unknown, with the numinous present.
What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.
~Unknown
Note: one person’s insanity is another person’s expansive awareness.
Dear Diary
I am using the word ‘diary’ this week to suggest that the thoughts I share may not add up to a cohesive whole.
Any bunch of stuff held together by any kind of inherent connection—desire, magnetism, need, even proximity—is, in a sense, a cohesive whole. So much of what we deem to be cohesive or not is, like a diary, more about us than what it’s about.
It is the job (one of the jobs) of art, science, and any human endeavor interested in exploring what is not yet known, to envision and create new cohesive wholes from what have seemed to be disparate elements.
You are lost the instant you know what the result will be.
~Juan, Gris (Jose, Victoriano Gonzalez) 1887-1927
Politics is for lovers
If only… and yet.
It is just the sweetest thing to see a couple of politicians acting like they care and are also having fun. Using the word JOY.
Joy exists in the numinous present.
Sure, Kamala and Tim talk a lot about the future. And they are bringing forth the numinous present in a way the other guys can’t even fathom. If they keep having fun, what a relief that will be! It will feel like a gentle rain on parched ground. It will feel like a warm breeze with birds singing. It is so tiring to be continuously assaulted by a political dialogue in which what is said never admits to its own motives.
No fun in fundamentalism
There is no fun in fundamentalism because it’s all about making other people do what you want them to do, or not do. It’s all about fear and resistance.
As I mentioned in my post last week, I understand that for some people, 45 has offered a kind of turbulent fun that seems to be losing its oomph these days. As charismatic as he is for some people, as a politician he has become a big cardboard cutout with a prerecorded voice box that is wearing out, skipping words, losing the plot—a man whose need for praise and approval is so insatiable that he is easy prey for people who want to advance fundamentalist, authoritarian agendas, as well as all the other minions who just want power and money, or bread and circuses.
Right before I got called away from home and life as I know it, I attended an online workshop offered by the Center for Artistic Activism. I love these folks, and I wanted to get more involved, but so far, no go, because of my sitch.
So often what is missing in political propaganda is ART… playful fun, JOY. So many of the political flyers that go directly into my paper trash via designing, printing, mailing, delivering, are nothing if not joyless. The Republican ones are always fear-based. That’s all they’ve got. Chinese vampire worms will suck your blood and then embed themselves in your brain and turn you into a communist, if you don’t elect me, etc.
I don’t know if I will be able to materially participate in the effort to GET OUT THE VOTE, but I hope to contribute in some way. There is always a new expression of a cohesive whole that is needed, that makes sense, more sense than what came before. Oh my dear ones, we will always need art! We will always need vision and courage and love.
The Republican party these days feels as though it has truly lost its way. To kowtow to an emperor with no clothes, in full awareness of his nakedness, because you think it will serve your fear-based aims… how pathetic is that?
I know how easily we get our knickers in a twist thinking of what might be (less so now that Joe has been willing to get out of the way) but please, let’s understand that what we fear in Project 2025, in he who shall not be named, in all the forces at work that want to inflict their ideology on those who do not share it, and to enrich themselves at the expense of other people’s well-being, and just in general to be super creepy people (weird if you prefer), will never succeed in the long run, because their will and goals are based on the 100% false assumption that you can use force to make the world the way you want it to be. YOU CANNOT! You can only make art!
Art, or trouble. That is what we make.
Life beats you down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one.
~Stella Adler
One more note for this post. We die. I am thinking about that, talking about that, and dealing with that. We die. We all die. I’m sorry, that’s just how it is; and it’s as right as rain. What I say to my loved one who is dying is… Don’t worry, dying is not hard. It’s easy. Any fool can do it. You don’t have to be brave, you just have to be.
This post may be disjointed, yet it is a cohesive whole, because it exists. Just like us.
Thank you. Dealing with death, so called, is what is happening with my friend Guy. He has afforded me the comfort AND accessibility I needed a year before he asked me to be here now, which IS intended as wordplay with your blog title.
Your presence in my world is one item that continues to hold me with the living. Today has been tricky at best. Please keep showing up in my email box and keep me rooted amongst you and the others truly living.
Hi Janina, thanks for the post! I'm beaming you diligence & ease to stay in touch with the joy permeating you, and to stay awake, present, & including Everything (as in when you don't do any of this) as you care for your dying loved one.