Punching Poseidon

If you can, at least once in your life, punch Poseidon.

When the tide is tall and choppy, curling into water cliffs, charge into the waves. They'll pummel you with salty fists. Stand against them at first. They will start thrashing you. Let them. Let them sweep and scrape you across the shore. Dig your hands and feet into the sand. Be seaweed, rooted down, swaying with the current. Let the foaming mouth swallow and spew you out. Then, when it thinks it's quelled you, run at the waves again. Crash in. Tangle. Switch between boxing with the water and dancing with it. Seize the frothing joy.

The ocean will learn it can move you, but can't claim you. You both belong to yourselves, and will always battle it out or carry each other. You'll return to each other in tides.

Embryonic

Being in the ocean is one of the most soothing experiences. It guides you back to an embryonic lull and stirs with primordial echoes. The danger is that it's indiscriminately nurturing. It cradles you while sustaining your predators. The security and the perils are very much like gestation, because nothing is both as welcoming and dangerous as becoming alive.

Vulnerability as a pejorative

I may have figured out why “Tumblr” is often used as a disparaging adjective (calling a person “so Tumblr”, etc). It’s not just because of associations with far-left politics—although, despite the common perception, it’s not exclusively so. There are Tumblr pages and communities all over the ideological spectrum. The popular contempt for the website also may be because it’s an outlet for emotional first-person confessionals. That kind of vulnerability gets sneered at. Some entries may sound kind of exaggerated or theatrical, but I think what it really boils down to is that the genuinely heartfelt narratives make a lot of people uncomfortable. Readers don’t want to be raw, so they don’t like seeing others that way. That reaction is a kind of non-empathetic empathy.

Such self-expression is dismissed as juvenile because the expectation is that adults talk “rationally” about work and money while teenagers talk about feelings. And honestly, I’m tired of that norm for adults.

There is something about openness that makes some see you as a receptacle. If you’re open, the jaded people want to reach into your space and either drain your substance or replace it with their own. I think there need to be communities where people can talk sincerely with friends or strangers or just a blank page, siphoning off their thoughts into the reflective a.m. hours. Tumblr isn’t perfect, but I’m glad it serves that need for so many.

Economy of obsoletism

I often hear that most jobs will be replaced by robots or mechanical functions someday, and my first thought was that might be a lot more money and effort than continuing to employ people. It would be expensive to create, install, and maintain all that machinery. Mike said the initial cost would be high but that it wouldn't expensive in the long run. That might be true. In that case, the majority of human jobs would be based on building and installing the technology, until machines can do that too. Once that happens, I wonder if there would be a financial meltdown or if the need for humans to have jobs would be obsolete--in the same way we see outdated technology as obsolete? And if that's the case, would we reconfigure our entire foundation of economics? Would there even be a purpose for money anymore?

Crosses and crossroads

When I was about sixteen, somebody from school asked me, “Why do you wear a cross all the time if you’re not Christian?” I can’t remember my exact answer, but it was something like “Contrast.” I saw it as an ironic juxtaposition against a punk or goth-y outfit, and at that age, I didn’t grasp the callousness of using others’ revered symbols as accessorized playthings. But there was another reason behind it that I couldn’t yet articulate.

It was also because it’s a symbol of torture, both in its literal sense and in what the Church had done to many over the centuries, and I was very angsty at the time. Maybe the macabre element wasn’t all that contrasted with my black clothes and skull emblems. But it was also a symbol of rebirth and hope—not hope within a religious context, but in a general sense.

I’ve been fascinated by Christianity’s various forms throughout my life and had a visceral love/hate response to it since early childhood. I don’t talk a lot about the Christian chapter of my early twenties, partly because it may be hard for others to understand and partly because I don’t have much to say about it anymore. (I call it a chapter and not a “phase” because it wasn’t just a fad to me; an accessory cast off easily as a crucifix necklace. It was deeply felt at the time.) 

I don’t call myself Christian anymore, and have not for years, for a few different reasons. One, because I neither see the Bible as a guidebook nor as divinely inspired. Two, because my social values don’t match the mainstream evangelical community’s at all. And three, because the word literally means “little Christ,” and I cannot with any humility compare myself to Jesus.

Although I no longer identify as Christian, I don’t regret that period. For me, it was a stepping stone to liberalism. Raised within secular political conservatism, it was an easy transition to Christianity because the religious right has co-opted the religion and painted their approach to it as the only true north. But within it, I saw social issues in a whole new light. I began to care about people I used to dismiss as lazy or entitled. It was a stopgap to the philosophy I now try to live by. I don’t do it perfectly by any means, and am still learning. But I’ll always be grateful to the more progressive side of Christianity for showing me a path I’d previously only heard of, and had never tried to walk until that time.

From June: Alarm clock haiku

Woke up thinking of an alarm clock haiku:

Over-ripe time fruit
Explodes, splattering loud noise
Onto the morning.

(Side note: I'm actually pretty glad that real fruit doesn't explode. Dream logic, though.)

From June: "You Ripped the Colors Out of Me"

(Explanation--I've been feeling progressively worse the past month and this afternoon I stayed in bed for four hours and did nothing. But then I wrote this and really want to get back on track.)

Spectrum: A Letter to Severe Depression

You ripped the colors out of me
Plunged your hand into my chest
Yanked out a fistful of rainbow,
beams of light
Left me split open, dripping grey
You took my red ambition
Rockets and capes, flight forward
Never a stop sign in sight
You took my orange fruits of labor
My yellow tipsy buzz from
sipping on the sun
(now I can only taste the burn)
You took my purple prose
Leaving only black and blues
Battered hues
and
A ghostly trace of green
Envy for another time
A more colorful self.