WEEKLY WTF
03-18-24 Edition
Back From the Desesrt
Some experiences leave you speechless. Not necessarily for a lack of words- an inadequate string of vowels and consonants used to wrap a narrative around a memory in order to present a version of the past. Some experiences rob you of the desire to speak itself. 7 days in the desert and I am in such a state. And yet here we are, on the precipice of me saying a whole bunch of shit about how I don’t have shit to say. An old Chinese dude named Lao Tzu advised long ago to close your mouth, to not speak. And yet he had to speak it so that some motherfucker could write it down so that this motherfucker could again write it down and… here we are.
I’ve already dropped the theme of this digital soliloquy twice, did you catch it? It’s very easy to miss, we all miss it on the daily. I saw it that first night whilst sleeping in the back of my truck just South of Joshua tree National park. Or more accurately, I was not sleeping in the back of my truck I was wide fucking awake watching the machinery of my own thoughts grind and whirl and shift. Sparking gears, swinging arms and pulsating pulleys pumping the hormonal mind fluid into my meat tractor eliciting various responses in the form of nebulous emotions. And then comes the inevitable feedback loop of labeling said emotions, in this instance as a mostly bad or unpleasant thing, as is often the case with those late night thoughts that flash unbidden within a prone human form that should be sleeping but is instead compelled to ruminate on the fitful edge between wired and tired. A red eyed haunted mental meat house.
In other words instead of drifting off into the regenerative little death that the night provides I was instead tracking a tendency to worry or stress or look ahead or plan or remember or any number of psychological tendencies we all have, gifts of evolution, some of which are now mostly superfluous. Sometimes I don’t sleep well and this night since I had no reason to wake up early I said fuck it- I’d use the time to lay there deep in the cold black desert night to dig into my wrinkly pink meat computer and see just what the fuck is going on. I mean here I was a tiny amoeba within the endless cascading black sugar bowl of the twinkling cosmos laying out in a silent airborne pool of desert ink surrounded by strange Dr. Suess looking trees silhouetted by starlight and most importantly a clear and stated plan to have absolutely no plan for the next 7 days other than reaching my little patch of high desert in Eastern Arizona. And yet I became aware of a background static: I was feeling some kind of anxious.
“Wtf do I have to be anxious about out here?” I wondered. I watched the clicking and whirring of my overheated and smoking thought machine until an epiphany struck. I had come to the desert to be fucking free. Free of the familiar, free of triggers and worries and responsibilities. And yet here I was feeling the same oppressive static that I unknowingly carry around in the day to day of civilized life. I realized that this idea of freedom in the desert wasn’t what I thought it would be, not exactly. It’s simply an opportunity for contrast. An environment so devoid of familiarity that in its blazing and blurry heat mirages and icy nights we can better see the workings of our own mind. When you feel a familiar feeling within an unfamiliar place, that’s a fucking clue.
Since time immemorial people have gone to the desert to become free. But perhaps free not by virtue of a particular landscape or climate, but free by virtue of seeing that the prison we all want to escape is one we carry within us. Stone walls of belief and of belonging and of being one thing or another. A cage of forged thought wrought into paradigms like metal bars with which we angrily grasp and lay our foreheads against and lament our incarceration or rattle our tin cups of unfulfilled desire and need back and forth against the bars as if our captor was someone or something or somewhere other than ourselves.
We go to the desert to be free, but we carry our prison within us. It’s difficult to see that when we normally have somewhere to hang our stress hat. Work, relationships, responsibilities, expectations. All pegs for our many fucked up hats. In the desert there are no familiar pegs and so when we try to hang a stress hat on something that isn’t there it just falls onto the desert floor and we stand there like a dumbass staring at it momentarily before realizing that the way we feel and think isn’t actually about “out there”. It’s then that the pendulum pauses and we either fabricate some new reason that “out there” is the cause of our issues “in here “ and we get to blaming and justifying why we are not free. Or, ideally, we take a fucking minute to realize that we carry our prison within us. Then a hot dusty desert wind comes whispering through the saguaro spines and picks up our stupid stress hat and sweeps it into the distance like a tumble weed and finally the freedom sought is understood and then you feel a kind of lightness and you look around and you say “well shit, here we are.”
And so, here we are. The question that normally follows that sentiment is “now what?” But “now what” is just another bar in our thought prison. The only answer to “now what” that I can offer is: “now, that’s what”. That's it, now.
I’m back home and after a day of unpacking and another day of packing again I’m already back to work for the next 5 days. Though it’s all still very fresh in my mind It’s difficult to express anything about “back then” because the distillation of this time spent marinating in the strange desolation magic of the desert is simply a deeper sense of now. Not a “now” that is better or worse than “then”. It’s more of an acceptance that whatever is, is just fine being whatever it is and if you don’t like what is then wait a minute until what is, is not. By not being overly attached to, or trying to control the moment we can observe its ever changing nature. By letting “now” be whatever the fuck it is, will we be better able to appreciate a favorable or pleasant “now” at all, or endure the inevitable difficult or unfortunate “now”. And so, here we are, and where is that? Fucking NOW.
That’s all I have to say about that for….now. The desert leaves you raw and exposed. Vulnerable and insightful. Where I was tight before I now feel more loose. Where I tended to rush, I am now unhurriedly slow. Hints of tumultuous and suppressed emotions buried deep in my sequestered depths bubbled up in the desert and like a corpse dog I sniffed at the odor percolating from the ground of my subconscious into my waking mind. I’m on the scent but must dig slowly and carefully. The smell of ancient emotional decay literally makes me dizzy. That is the culmination of how now is presenting and it’s fine by me. But I know that all things change and a different amalgamation will be fine however it presents as well. And if it’s not fine, that’s fine too, do you see? I went into the desert without plan or purpose other than to experience what happens in the desert without a plan or purpose. A whittling occurs, or perhaps a digestion of sorts. I spent a lot of time just existing and experiencing unhindered moments. I wandered in silence. I frequently didn’t even think to film, but not to worry I still took a shit ton of pics and videos and when inspiration strikes I’ll do that thing I do and make something or other out of them for your viewing pleasure. Perhaps you’ll have a laugh or even be shocked by some of the dumbass shit Ferniculous and I got up to. But what I hope most is that you gleen something deeper. That you might drink a shot of freedom freshly distilled by our desert still(ness) and realize you don’t actually have to “go to the desert” to be free. You just need to see that you carry your prison within you, we all do. Freedom isn’t a thing granted or gained, it’s a thing exposed by dismantling the bars and bricks of our thought prison. The inside of a cage is emptiness. Once we tear down the walls we realize that we still inhabit the selfsame emptiness. Emptiness is not created or destroyed, and by emptiness I mean that thing that’s not a thing, the indescribable substratum of experience and awareness, the center of that stubborn fucking tootsie pop we insesantly lick. But the thing is, we need to be shown the bars of our thought prison in order to tear them down and we must tear them down to realize that we were actually free all along. Freedom was always there, it’s never new. Ok that’s it, see ya soon, Toodaloo.
Desert Soliloquy
Wanna come chill the fuck out in the high desert with me? Lets goooooo
Peek-a-boo
You know that feeling?
That tingle on your neck?
Something is staring at you.
I get that out here,
whispers in the wind,
something is watching- it’s true.
Is it that peeping desert sun?
Is it a shape in the cloud?
Do ghosts hide in a shadows lee?
Is it eyes with teeth and fur?
Is it a he, is it a her?
Oh yeah, it’s all just fucking me.
The ancient junipers have eyes,
reality is you in disguise,
enter the desert oven and bake.
The grass knows your name,
the scythe cuts just the same,
reality is awake for fucks sake.
Lighten up- have some fun
find a glory hole- fuck the sun,
let mind and emptiness fornicate.
You can’t do it back then or later,
a raw thought based masturbator,
right now is all you get- why wait?
Every photon is an eye,
your mind is a sky,
reality is a thought shaped cloud.
Turn it outside in,
you don’t end you don’t begin,
peel the egoic cosmic shroud.
Reality has no seam,
an illusory persistent dream,
one dreamer dreaming- about you.
Wake the fuck up- look around,
you are sight and you are sound,
dream the dream, that’s all you do.
When the sun plays peek-a-boo,
remember it’s all just fucking you,
reality is arranged in your head.
Be still in the desert dust,
or into life’s lush forest go thrust,
existence is experienced- not read.
Cooking Shit~ Liam’s Dead Mum’s Pie
That time the Foodie Chap & I worked on his dead Mum’s pie on St. Patrick’s day. It’s basically just us getting hammered for 10 min.
Alrighty, well… have the week you want not the week you’re given. It’s up to you. You’re the one livin’.
Toodaloo
