The New York City Journals, Part IV: Broke, Tired, High & Hotwired
Delusion is a chaotic complexity, and cocaine is a terrible drug.
Do you ever find yourself with too many projects? Or rather, more ideas you'd like to execute than performance bandwidth?
You know, two hands, two hundred ideas, and not enough daylight?
Bullshit. You can do it; you can, but you choose not to. You probably have a legitimate reason for prioritizing like so.
But, sometimes, we want to do the thing and possess the physical ability to do the thing but do not do the thing. Nine times out of ten, the underlying reason is fear. Fuck that, ten times out of ten—fight me.
Fear takes many forms: a saboteur and a trusted ally. If fear were a human being, she would be a soccer mom with a dark side; she’ll keep the whole team alive like they’re her flesh and blood, but she might kill an opposing player blocking her baby on the pitch.
Jokes aside, just like a mother, fear will keep you safe, but sometimes too safe—the don't do that; it might hurt—safe.
Like, yeah, Susan, it's supposed to.
All the good shit—every goddamn ounce of it—is on the other side of fear; the mountains you'll move, the house you'll build, the kids you'll raise.
But, man, say you hate children, like a turnkey single-family dwelling, and prefer smooth and flat topography. I have news for you: You're scared of something right now and need to get over it.
If it's any consolation, you don't have to do any climbing. I'm not a fan of craggy terrain inclines, either. You can walk through fear. But, no shortcuts. I tried. No dice.
I have it on good authority that you can't fake it til you make it. You make it; one cannot counterfeit energy. And, whatever you fear—that is the mountain.
The doing of the thing is the thing.
That's all the commentary for this beat; I must conserve performance bandwidth—two hands, approximately one hundred and ninety other ideas sparked and in need of flame, remember?
Here you are, the fuel, dear reader. Universal laws govern this dance transaction: laws of nature. I am writing to you, not for you. Life is happening for you, not to you. It's shocking how many folks confuse the two.
Anyway—
Journalism, for me, is purely penned catharsis, past and present; maybe some piece of it—some beat, familiar semantic, healed wound, paradox, juxtaposition—becomes a mirror and finds a friend in you.
I have found many, along the way, literary love affairs; some are only mirrors, and others are simply multipliers—both saboteurs and allies.
Damn you, perception. Piss off negativity bias. Bye, fear.
I am all my parts; my parts are not me. Every version of myself exists only in service of who I am becoming—who I have always been, barring the arrow of time.
"I tell you this not as aimless revelation but because I want you to know, as you read me, precisely who I am and where I am and what is on my mind. I want you to understand exactly what you are getting: you are getting a woman who for some time now has felt radically separated from most of the ideas that seem to interest people. You are getting a woman who somewhere along the line misplaced whatever slight faith she ever had in the social contract, in the meliorative principle, in the whole grand pattern of human endeavor." —Joan Didion