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Anxiety shows up in the body as excitement. Or rather - excitement shows up in the body as anxiety. They both tickle the heart, sweats the palms, even shakes the voice. They're a physical response to being ON THE EDGE. The edge of what? The edge of something. Uncomfortable, risky, important, private, radical... the edge of our lava as it nears its burst.
I, right now, am feeling that edge right now. Days are short, time is slipping... but not because it is short but rather because it is rich. And richness tends to slip from our fingertips if we hold it too tight. The practice of the edge, is the practice of LETTING GO OF THE EDGE. To not hold too tight. To 'zenify' the fuck of it, so the nerves will shed away, leaning only the rare feeling of planting our feet deep in the ground. Being rooted like a tree. Linked forever to earth, and yet standing tall amidst the sky. I invite the edge in all its glory. Not because it is the path of richness, rebels and queens and poets and artists, but because in the edge is where one can see both above, and both below. The edge is where we gain perspective. Cruel, brutal, real perspective. The edge is where we learn to SEE. Seeing clearly. With no distraction. The edge is where we jump into our being, into the risk to fail, and the willingness to be heard. But more than all, oh how I long TO SEE.
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Oh, to be sixteen again...
Listen to Joni Mitchell incessantly. Fall in love with boys instantly. Write poetry ferociously. Some nights I would sit in my bedroom window, with my legs hanging down. I'd gaze at the neighbor's shower window that was always sealed yet always tempting to my teenager's eye. I'd smoke weed and worse: CIGARETTES. I'd play Radiohead and Santana and unspecific jazz tunes that kept my angry heart calm for a few tender moments. I'd wonder if I would ever be understood. I wished to be somewhere else. I hated the days when every moment was crucial. Every memory had to be made. A month in my sixteen year old's life was a lifetime of heartbreaks and wows and troubles and excitements and pain and sorrows and joy. Oh, to be sixteen again. And lose myself again. And question life again. And have my whole life in front of me... again. It is true what they say: Youth really is wasted on the young. Once upon a time there was a time, when I longed to be understood.
But with age, all that nonsense went away. To be understood... what a sweet yet silly childhood craving. Now from where I'm at, which is still young but far from being a child, being understood isn't a craving at all. We only understand the predictable, the familiar, the mundane. But the wonder? Imagination? Joy? LOVE? We don't understand those things. And now I crave to be all those things. Nothing but all of those things that humans are not capable of understanding. Give me magic. Give me mystery. Give me possibilities. Everything known is overrated. It's the UNKOWN that excites me. That drives me to wake up in the morning with a roar: I am alive. I am alive. I am alive. Screen savers are like tattoos.
A screen saver is like a temporary tattoo that for the time it is ON - it is stamped on one's whole being. What is on your screen saver = what is on your heart. So when I look at my screen saver - my heart keeper - my tell-all...: I see Charlie Chaplin's eyes glistening, touched and about to tear up because it is the moment when his love interest - a blind woman he has been kind to - finally SEES him for the human that he is, and not just a homeless nobody the rest of the world sees him as. That is, of course, from the classic film 'City Lights.' Words can't really describe the feeling I had when I saw this moment for the first time, and felt that Charlie Chaplin himself, even though he was long gone at that point ... actually saw ME with that gift of that film. If I can create a moment like that... a moment that will last in someone's heart for a lifetime... then I will leave a piece of me that will live forever. And as I leave this world, I leave it with a piece of me here, forever, reaching someone's heart. From my heart to another's. This sounds like the ultimate exercise of purpose. Of community. Of reach. And of - what else - ART. It is said that an end is a beginning. But sometimes, an end is just an end. A brutal, burly, boiling, burdening, begrudging, brain-twisting END. The heart breaks and those pieces cannot be mended again. Perhaps some pieces will come together, over time, to create a new heart. Maybe more weathered, more weary, more weighted heart. But perhaps it can be whole again, with time. But the heart breaks nonetheless. That’s a finite futile fiery end. The tears follow and sometimes the rage. And the hand reaches to a pint of ice creams, or a bottle of wine, or some other form of escapism. If only to escape the pain of the end. But no escape changes the fact that an end is an END. An eery, elusive, emerging end that is unrepairable. Broken for good. But there is nothing good in an end. Until we are long past it, and then maybe the end from far in the future looks meaningful, moving, marvelous in its lesson. Maybe only in the future we see the end as a beginning. Of something. Of what, we do not know. We have to wallow, get lost, dwell on the end first.
Only through the tunnel we can get to an exit. Productivity is my drug. My dependent. My dopamine.
Checking off my to-do list is my Oh-Oh-OHHHH orgasm. Getting shit done makes me feel hot. Horny. Hellish. In my 20s I went clubbing, fucked, snorted, smoked, got wasted, got lost.... and in my 30s here I am researching 'which calendar is the best calendar for 2022!?' Buying organizational gadgets like they are crack. Choosing to stay home on my night off. Any night off. Baking banana bread because the internet told me to. Watching a lecture on philosophy on youtube because that's my idea of a good time now. Adulting. Adulting is a process one has no control on. It just suddenly happens. And one then is flabbergasted by where did the years go... oh, adulting. It is a bitch but also not as bad as you thought it was going to be, but also far far more dreadful, but also not as much, but also exactly how much, but also not... but also yes. In my 20s I lived in my dreams. Now I make my reality of laundry, errands, insurance, meetings, voicemails, tasks, chores, deadlines... a dream. Adulting is turning our reality into a DREAM. I used to think of power as a nasty word. A nonsense word. A nihilistic word.
But I knew NOTHING. As time goes and moves and shifts and I go nearer and drearier to the grave, I find myself aching, arching, aiming to be in my power. To be polished, precise, sitting pretty and pleasing no one but my all powerful self. Done are the days of the undecided. The uber cautious. The unmistakably desperate-to-be-approved self of mine. Power is a pendulum and it swings to the beat of my heart. Power is a panting lioness doing what she has to protect her cubs. Power is a pony who feels it's a horse even though it is four feet tall. Power is sultry. Sensual. Salty. Sassy. Seductive. Sparing. Sneaky. Smoldering. So so so unbelievably HOT. But no, if you were wondering, power to me is NOT the big C corporate power. The cock power. The cunt power. That so-called 'power' that belongs only to the kings and queens who are detached from the world. They may call it power but I call is DENIAL. No, power isn't that. Not at all. Power is the ground you walk on when you are absolutely sure of your next step. You may not know where it will take you, but in your power - you KNOW you will take it. Power is the decisive, distinctive, delightful knowing inside of you that longs to be front and center. It doesn't harm. It doesn't cheat. It isn't mean. And no, contrary to popular belief, it isn't queen. Power is you in your truest, toughest, tenderest self. May you go in POWER.~ I, woman.
I have body, mind, soul. I swim with mood every passing month. I sweat in heat. I wrinkle when I smile. I feel pain. I feel joy. I feel passion. So when the world's men tell me that my body is not my body. That I am a vessel and nothing more. That I better sit pretty and shut my mouth because I should be lucky to be allowed a seat. When they tell me that - I get stunned. I choke. I suffocate. And then I tear up. Tear apart. Open wide. And what comes out is decades long rage that is running in my body. In MY body. It fills me inside, like a child, knocking on my belly begging to come out. And then I roar. I protest. I yell. I give birth to all my despair. To all MY body's tenderness. And roughness. And achiness. And I shout out to the world that I will no longer sit pretty. I will no longer shut my mouth because I should be lucky to be allowed a seat. I yell for the world to get its heart out of its arrogant ass. To get a grip on reality. Not the made up one but the real one. The reality that you see in your mother. The reality that you see in your sister. In your daughter. In your wife. In your friend. In YOU. I, woman. I have body, mind, soul. And they're mine. Mine. They're all mine. Every day I wake up with the soft melody of my phone's alarm clock.
Then I turn it off just to turn it on while my eyes get adjusted to the new day, and browse through the daily news and listen to my current podcast episode or chapter in an audiobook while I turn on my electric toothbrush and then proceed to cut some celery and make juice in my juicer. I sip on my juice while I open my laptop and check my emails and browse through my calendar. I then turn my filtered shower head on, take a shower, blow dry my hair with my diffuser, and head out to walk where I proceed check the amount of steps I've made on my phones' Health app. I would spend some hours do some work on my laptop and take breaks escaping into social media or various youtubing or internet browsing. ALL WHILE CONNECTING TO GADGETS. Gadgets. Gadgets. Gadgets. And more gadgets. Our lives in these times are governed and constantly include some form of technological dependency. In most cases - the phone and the laptop. We are all addicts! Living in a gadget-infested world. Eager to connect and yet by connecting digitally we disconnect physically. Gadgets. Gadgets. Gadgets. We think they'll make our lives better, but we grow so dependent on them that we become their employees. Their everlasting help. Their elusive servants. Gadgets. Gadgets. Gadgets. When one is young, youngish, younger than sixty something, and one adopts a CAT - one isn't afraid of commitment. More so, ONE - in this case - moi - welcomes commitment with open arms. After all, the commitment to adopt a cat when one is young, youngish, younger than sixty... is the willing and open invitation to lose. To love and then to lose. To liven up and then to let go. To lure and then to lament. A cat lives... what? Ten, fifteen years? eighteen if she's lucky? So when one AKA moi adopts a cat, one says 'Hello. I'll be your mama. We'll get close. I'll take care of you. I'll feed you. I'll clean after you. We'll snuggle. You'll kiss me every morning. Sometimes you'll puke, and I'll clean it up. Sometimes I'll puke, and you'll just stare in dissatisfaction because you are a cat and not my caretaker. But you'll love me. Because I'll feed you. And I'll love you. Because you're fluffy. And adorable. And mine. And then one day you'll die. Or you'll get sick. And then you'll die. And I'll be left here, alone. Without you. Grieving you. Remembering you. Smelling you still because a cat's scent takes years to wipe off. To wither. To wander off... So hello, cat. AKA my hereby commitment to love. To loss. To litter."
If one says they have a fear of commitment, but they have a cat, you should know: one's a LIAR. |
AuthorIn April 2020, while experiencing her first ever global pandemic, Tamar Pelzig pledged to write something every day, even if it's only a word, so she welcomed to the world a daily blog to keep her creative writing wheels rolling. Categories
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Header Art: Daniel Landerman |
Photos from chocolatedazzles, Jocelyn777 Love Europe, ONE-MILLION
