Exhibit A
It’s labor day here in Europe. Though the Netherlands still prefers celebrating monarchy on the 27th of April over its laborers on May 1st.
This is a choice. Albeit unconscious.
The moon is full in Scorpio.
There’s blood flowing and unchecked intensity lurching about.
I almost didn’t show up to work today because I had completely missed my shift on the schedule.
An unusual error.
That means the time I had planned to write this isn’t really available.
It also also signals: overloaded.
Though not showing up to work on labor day would have been a class act. Albeit unconscious.
Is there such a thing as unconscious protest?
Is that the moment our bodies just shut down?
Or we finally lose our shit? Is burning-out a collective sit-in?
Exhibit B
Take a pen and a piece of paper. Yes, all the way out from that forgotten drawer if you have to. It can be nice to work with some analogue technologies for a moment. Write down your answers to the following questions:
1. Where am I working too much for too little pay? (Think of work and pay from a wide-angle lens: financially, physically, practically, emotionally, psychologically, energetically?)
2. Where am I on overdrive or autopilot and what do I tell myself is the excuse? What is the expiration date on this excuse? When does it stop being legitimate and start being avoidance? In which case, what am I avoiding?
3. In my relationships, where am I doing a lot of work on someone else’s side of the street? If I would just pay attention to my side of the street, what would my side of the street look like? [You can really paint the picture here. Would you get a broom to sweep the gutter? Plant some flowers? Fill some potholes?]
4. Which part of my body needs some serious leisure time? Where would this body part take me if it could choose the place/activity?
Exhibit C
This is a note to self from 8 years ago (which is hard to fathom.) I am in perpetual need of this reminder.
Paradise is Here
I bow down and kiss the ground in gratitude. Searching for something? Look around you. Touch the soil. Gently place your hand on the bark of a tree and close your eyes. Feel the caress of the breeze on your skin. Listen for the melodies rising from the Earth. We get to live here for a while. Does that not blow your mind?
How we have managed to live lifetimes of bondage in rigid social contracts of disconnection remains a mystery to me.
No more. I am done. I am done struggling for a false sense of belonging to a system I distrust. If it makes me recoil there’s something wrong with it. If it makes me expand it’s the right path. That’s my compass. And I will not settle for anything less to make others feel more “comfortable” – undisturbed in normalized states of perpetual covert depression.
Because Paradise is here. It’s all around us. So is hell; it is created in the human mind and projected into material reality under the watchful gaze of human suffering seeking to multiply itself. I have felt myself at times drowning in it. But if the trees can still bear fruit, if the seeds can still grow, if the desert can still produce flowers; so will I.
Metaphysical Mulch 