one of my jokes lately has been about Sabrina Carpenter’s song, Espresso. she sings “i can’t relate/ to desperation / my give a fucks / are on vacation” and i quip, must be nice, Sabrina!!! my give a fucks never go on vacation!!!
so far it’s gotten mixed responses. people smile knowingly, look uncomfortable or occasionally sort of chortle.
i don’t feel desperate these days per se, but i am noticing a sort of low grade panic humming under my life. i’ve been over filling my days. this does not eliminate the hum but it does provide a different, distracting franticness. what’s happening in the world feels like too much and too fast, nearly crushing (genocides, ecological collapse, encountering people every day who don’t have anywhere to live, walking by people who are passed out on the sidewalk, digital and political vitriol, the alarming circus of electoral politics, political attacks on trans people, loss, what feels like unrelenting violence, i won’t go on. in what world does Sabrina Carpenter live?).
i wonder if part of me is answering with my own too much and too fast. i don’t stand by it.
Julia Cameron writes: “necessity not virtue was the beginning of my spirituality.” i return to this sentiment when i catch myself trying to prove something, trying to earn something, like goodness, belonging, enoughness. contrary to what i’ve internalized, living in a society as unhinged and unwell as ours, i don’t actually have to negotiate my inherent worth. it’s a given. any spirituality i’m after only serves to make me more fiercely present and compassionate, able to be with and tell the truth, not better.1
writing these notes on enthusiasm week in and week out is a sort of spiritual practice, it is a way for me to train my attention to what is good, as in life affirming. i need this as a person who gets quite preoccupied with what is life destroying.
it’s on! look what has rescued me from me this week. look what has reminded me that the crush is far from total.
and sometimes in a given week (like this one) it’s hard to find something to say. i felt awe on many occasions since i last wrote you and today telling it feels hollow, mechanical, trite; maybe even vapid (lol at the number of adjectives i can find for bullshit. yes, all of them)
at times there’s a pressure i put on myself to deliver, in both the literal sense of wanting to show up to the practice and the spiritual sense of wanting to deliver myself (and maybe you) from the crush. to affirm that it is okay enough, for today, right? look at all the beauty, that’s enough, right? wonder and awe can save me (and you) right?
in a quieter more timid voice, we can still be saved?
somehow i remember that these are not my questions. perhaps the trick is to notice the pressure, give it a friendly nod, and say “yeah, totally” and not let it veer me towards platitude, or desperation. to not let it make me lie.
i will tell you that a friend called to share some sensational and good news on Saturday night and i positively screamed (roared?) into the phone, walking down Flatbush avenue which also screams (horns, construction, music blasting, lights flashing).
that felt true and it felt opening. life again. sound off. it’s on.
Baldwin in The Fire Next Time "If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.” ↩