WEEKLY WTF
03-04-24 Edition
The Legend of Ferniculous
For all my fellow Vets and anyone else dealing with PTSD
A Battle Within
A collaboration with Farmboy Slim
Desert Demise
Alone at last.
Disappearing Into The Desert
Do you ever wish you had control-alt-delete buttons that would unstick all those fucked up thought programs that bog down your wrinkly pink meat computer? Maybe a reboot button to wipe it all clean and start over? Well, it’s not a fucking thing. And besides, the experiential database we call “me” consists of vast daisy chains of data stored electrically as memory. Good shit, bad shit. Love & hate, happiness and depression, confidence and fear. The user of our meat computer wouldn’t truly appreciate a particular piece of experiential data without an opposite bit with which to compare and illuminate it. The ones & zeros of life if you will. And who is the user of our meat computer you may wonder? Well that’s the big question. One worth frequently asking, just don’t fall into the trap of an answer.
It’s not so much the supposed corrupted experiential memory data we carry that’s the issue. After all, no one gets out unscathed. It’s more of a processing issue, as in, we don’t fucking do it, we don’t process our shit. Maybe we don’t want to. Perhaps we don’t know how. Or, could be, we just can’t seem to find the time. Time is a fierce temporal dominatrix constantly snapping her whip at our asses to hurry the fuck up and we stumble along tired with bloody knees, the rubber ball of conformity gagged in our mouth. Sometimes being a part of society feels like merging onto a highway, you have to speed up in order to sandwich yourself in with all the other hunks of metal hurtling down the monotonous road of repetition. Slow doesn’t seem to be an option.
And so, I am taking an offramp and am disappearing into the desert for a week. This photo of Ferniculous and I was taken 4 years ago in the high frozen desert of Apache County in Eastern Arizona and tomorrow (Monday) Ferniculous and I are headed back to the same place, my place. A long overdue sojourn into the stillness that exists between extreme fluctuations of heat and cold with the implication of death itself folded in between the harsh and unforgiving remote landscapes. A place that boils experience down to only that which matters. Don’t die of dehydration. Don’t die of hypothermia. Don’t starve to death. Don’t die of heatstroke. Don't get bit in the dick by a snake. And don’t forget, whilst not dying, to have some damn fun. Oh, and for fucks sake don’t forget the drinky poos because if you get dick bit in the desert you’re gonna need them.
Although this 37 acre patch of high desert near the New Mexico border is our eventual destination, where we stop before and after is, as of yet, a mystery. Maybe we’ll go through Quartsite, AZ and look at rocks and shit, who knows. You see, if you're going to the desert for a reset of some sort then your behavior should reflect that. Load up, start the truck, press the gas, point our asses towards the South East and see what the fuck happens next. Most importantly though, is to watch what comes up within the mind whilst wayfaring. There may be anticipation or fear there, that’s fine so long as it’s immediately grasped and held by its ears like a squirming desert jackrabbit to be stared down and stink eyed until it tires out and becomes still. Whatever comes up either on the road or in the mind, is allowed to be whatever the fuck it is. That's the key because a mind troubled by particular problems cannot find solutions to those problems whilst remaining in the problematic state in which said problem was generated and holding onto the definitions and labels and judgements generated within said state keeps one bound. You’ve gotta go out of bounds is what I’m saying. Society has clear boundaries of expectation, the desert though, is boundless.
You don’t have to disappear into the desert to change your state of mind by the way, but it sure as fuck doesn’t hurt. We are headed to the desert because it calls us, it beckons us away from the normal currents of the river of life to a place without any current at all. A vast pregnant openness with endless iterations of choice in which to marinate without plans or agendas or schedules of any kind. An intense and oppressive sun exerts its blazing gaze, forcing you to slow your ass down and rest during the day. Often freezing nights who’s inky envelope encloses upon your camp thus drawing you near to the fire, its warm light dancing within both bourbon bottle and glassy eyes in equal measure whilst unseen- all manner of biting and stinging things scurry about just at the demarcation where the soft warm glow of the fire becomes consumed by night. Hypnotic elementals moving their fiery hips in smooth undulations that capture your attention and who burn away the woes of the world which tend to reside in the cold dark corners of the mind. Two worn and normally stoic motherfuckers laughing until cheeks are sore and eyes are wet saying all the things that must remain unsaid in a civilized society.
I won’t wax on further about the desert here, what with its blanket of clouds bruised purple and heavy with snow and the lingering aroma of ancient juniper trees heated in the daytime sun then cooling rapidly in the chilly air of the desert night. A unique fragrance that was also detected by the ancestors of the Navajo tribe who sat under these very same ancient junipers chipping arrowheads and living their ancient lives. Perhaps pontificating about the future people who would one day also haunt these lands. Well, it’s just me and Ferniculous doing the haunting, and that’s just how we like it. Oops I just waxed again didn’t I? Fuck it. Ok that’s really it, I’ll now proceed to the actual fucking desert and wax on about it afterwards. Wax on, wax off. Not to be confused with wack on wack off, although that is indeed another desert activity since time immemorial. Does anyone make juniper scented hand lotion? Never mind.
I don’t yet know what this trip will be about. That’s the whole point really. It’s about not making it about anything. I will however forthwith describe how I mentally prepare for such a journey, and I will do so because it took me a long ass time to figure it the fuck out and if I can save you some figuring time then I’m happy to do so.
First I’ll tell you what I don’t do, or what I at least try not to do. I don’t constantly lean into the future by imagining or hoping or expecting it will be “like this” or “like that”. If we lean into an imagined future made of excited anticipation or of nervous trepidation then we are also leaning out of right now. That's not to say don’t be excited but excitement is best left in its raw form; a tingle in the gut, a pep in the step, a twinkle in the eye. When excitement is coupled with the word “because” it fucks it up. I'm excited “because” becomes an imagined circumstance that takes us out of now. It’s a shiny expectation coin and the other side of it is dull disappointment. To keep excitement rolling we can simply remove the “because” and in the empty place where that expectation used to be an excitement born from not knowing can propagate. How rare it is that we allow ourselves to be surprised and thereby delighted by all the unexpected shit that happens to us when we aren’t constantly measuring it against the past or of some dreamt up expectation of the future? We can just let things be what they are, that’s the secret that’s not a secret. We can only start becoming comfortable with uncertainty if we let go of our exhaustive efforts of trying to control reality every fucking second of every fucking day.
Another thing best avoided is ruminating about the past. If I reminisce about how our trip was 4 years ago when I took this pic, then I will automatically and subconsciously extrapolate it into this upcoming trip and then once again I’m leaning out of now to compare what “was” with what I think “will be”. Plus repeated experiences rarely measure up to the glorified version stored in memory that we subconsciously enhance each time we regurgitate it. Do you see what I’m getting at? If we are memory based or anticipation based that is a pattern of thinking and that pattern WILL repeat and when your “now” becomes the “now” you’ve excitedly anticipated, you’ll be happy for a minute but will soon revert to whatever pattern you’ve forged as neural pathways. In this case it would manifest as arriving in the desert at last, feeling happy for a minute but then almost immediately start quietly lamenting about having to leave in a few days and go back home and back to work and all that shit. We spend our lives leaning towards a made up future that will never arrive and miss the little moments of our life that only ever happen right fucking now.
Now that we are saving oodles of mental energy normally spent remembering or anticipating, we can use it to carefully observe our current state, just as it is, right fucking now. We can catch ourselves drifting out of our moment. We can observe the nature of our thoughts and see the patterns and what emotions they inspire. Whatever patterns you exhibit “now”, will still be there in the oh so sought after “then”. We like shiny shit and a new experience is a shiny penny but the other side of it is always dull. If we can learn to not be attached to shiny shit, if we can come to appreciate the dull side- aka: whatever circumstances or states which arise, then our sought after moments will become irrelevant as we experience satiation in simply living life, right now, and letting everything be whatever it is. Whatever we are now, we will be in that next “now” that we like to call a “then”. I’m not saying don’t make changes or don’t make moves, that’s not what I’m saying at all. Life is meant to be enjoyed. That doesn’t mean chase “good” and flee from “bad”, that’s the factory default package of evolution that comes standard embedded in our meat tractor, we can transcend that to a degree if we wish it. By doing so we realize that most things that happen on the daily have a potential for enjoyment. The things that don’t seem to have a potential for enjoyment indicate either our hang ups or situations that are unhealthy and should be completed and overcome with calm fortitude.
If enjoyment is not your general experience of existing then my advice is to find a way to crack your paradigm. Un-rut yourself. Go stare at the stars and all that emptiness in between or gaze into an ancient canyon. Take your soft meat body out to face the hard and sharp desert. Rub up against something so old or vast or inhospitable that it offends human sensibilities and threatens your attachment to comfort and security and even individuality a bit so that you can get a download of just how vast and strange, rare and fucking extraordinary life actually is. If your thought plane is producing reasons and excuses why life sucks, that’s fine, it’s ok, but instead of being identified with those thoughts and having to live with them, just observe them. “Life sucks” is an unnecessary and shitty pattern to become identified with, wouldn’t you agree? I mean, it’s yours to keep if you want it, you’re the boss of you. That human sensibility I mentioned that wants to exist as an individual separate from the cosmos clothes itself in patterns of thought. Painful plaids, paradigms of polyester, polka dots of panic, stripes of duality, underwear of attraction, an ascot of ego and turtle necks of aversion. It puts on any damn thing it finds in order to clothe itself in attributes to convince itself that it exists. You have every right to wear mismatched shitty itchy clothing if you want. Or, you can try running naked through the desert or wherever else for a bit. Then with the memory of wind freely blowing on your psychological nether bits, decide what sort of thought clothes you want to put back on. Just don’t catch your junk on a cactus thorn, it’s extremely unpleasant.
Well I guess that’s all I have to say about that. We’re bringing just enough shit to not die but not so much shit that I won’t be able to find the shit I brought on accounta it being buried under too much other shit. Soooo provided I don’t die or get my junk permanently barbed to a cactus or eaten by a badger or consumed by velvet ants whilst passed out or get pulled into a sewage tank that’s actually a home to some weird desert fuck whilst pissing into one of those wonky middle of nowhere desert toilets or get startled by the ghost up on the Mesa and fall and splat or get accidentally (or on purpose) pew pewed or if a desert rat crawls into my ass whilst pooping into a hole and makes a nest in my guts or if a mesquite splinter gets stuck in my eyeball and works its way into my brain or if I get so constipated that I turn into a shit bomb and cartoon like explode in a gross and massive brown cloud or murderous clowns discover our camp or if a Wendingo sneaks up to our fire and eats our faces off or if a snake hiding in my sleeping bag crawls up my pee hole and lays eggs in my lungs or I get pulled through a portal into the past near the ancient pictograms and become worshiped like a deity 1000 years in the past or, more likely, get abducted by aliens, then I’ll see you all in a week. Fun fact: my place is somewhat near-ish to Snowflake Arizona where Travis Walton was famously abducted by aliens in 1975 while working on a forest crew. They made a movie about it called “Fire in the Sky”. I’m just saying… if I don’t return from the desert who will play me in: “Dumbass disappears in the Desert”? But seriously, we are all about it- disappearing into the desert that is, but on purpose, and returning at some point even if we don’t wanna. And without the dying or aliens poking around in our asses part. Alrighty then, I’ll see you, tentatively, for sure, maybe, definitely, possibly, who fucking knows. Toodaloo.
Alrighty, well… have the week you want not the week you’re given. It’s up to you. You’re the one livin’.
Toodaloo
