Friends,

                In these fearful times I keep finding myself doom-scrolling, drowning, desperately trying to stay afloat and find my way through conflicting currents of information and algorithms.  Social media engineered to be as addictive as any designer drug and widely designed to encourage our engagement through outrage and to attempt its own form of virtual people pleasing by making it difficult or problematic to find information that does not feed into our preconceptions and past searches, yet for many of us still a tool for communicating with those we care about and for keeping informed of the world around us. 

                In those few online spaces where the algorithms have not crept, I find myself strangely hesitant.  Reticence resulting from a few too many unpleasant lessons in the true natures of people I had thought were trustworthy once revealed in the aftermath of the turmoil and trauma of recent years; combined with a period of years where I hesitated to let my freak flags fly like the prayer flag banners they are.  All because I had mistaken a job for a career and did not think to split my worksona and persona in social media… or perhaps I still gave too much of a damn what other people thought?

                So now I find myself, and am trying to find myself by, stretching long unused muscles of body, mind, and spirit.  Wrestling with the written word either as the author or the reader.  Going for an all too short walk, which should NOT have worked me over me as much as it did.  In fearful times I am seeking and protecting my peace even as I prepare for the possibility of the culture warriors starting an actual one.

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey

May 10th 2023

Self,

It is good that we are acknowledging our fears, our worries, our misgivings, our grief at the goings on in these Tower times. Acknowledge them, face them, accept them.

But do remember to take a breath! Take another…

While we are at it, let us take some time to remember Frank Herbert’s Litany Against Fear. Let us Remember Frank Crane’s Just For Today affirmations. Let us also take a moment to revel in Max Erhmann’s Dessiderata. Remember these things, and all the others that have provided inspiration and peace and threads of wisdom and moments of reflection and healing.

It is so very clear to us that we need these things now more than ever!

Take another breath…

Recall, if you will that sometimes the body and mind can play pernicious tricks upon us. Nicotine can trick us into thinking we need another smoke when we are thirsty, or hungry, or simply in deep need of a few stolen moments of peace and perhaps an aspirin or a spot of caffeine?

Yes, I do recall that we were over doing caffeine, but we made it to the bathroom in time on all occasions and avoided having to sucker punch guests or co-workers in our terror fueled and brisk penguin ‘walks’ to the restroom. We gave gotten a MUCH better handle on that and do not need to look at the worst possible interpretation of *everything*.

More to the point, we need to remember to nourish ourselves, body and soul. Drink some water. Be gentle with your body and soul but start exercising them both a little bit more.

Despite decades of programing from hurt people hurting you, and a remarkably under nourishing overculture, We believe in ourselves.

Now it is a bit late to be doing chores especially after an exhausting day, so since we are unlikely to fall asleep until we have exercised our mind a bit, go read or write or something!

Best Regards to you and yours,

Pax /Geoffrey

July 18th 2023

Friends,

So a while back The Cryptonaturalist posted something to their social media…

We seldom admit the seductive comfort of hopelessness.
It saves us from ambiguity.
It has an answer for every question:
“There’s just no point.”
Hope, on the other hand, is messy.
If it might all work out, then we have things to do.
We must weather the possibility of happiness.

The Cryptonaturalist – posting April 9th 2023

I found this profoundly touching and meaningful to me and my life’s journey, so I shared it across a few formats. A friend of mine on Facebook took strong exception to this piece, feeling it dismissed hopelessness, reducing it to some sort of personal preference. They also believed it was belittling of suicidality somehow, and was painting hope as somehow being easy. I was a little surprised by this. For myself, as someone who grew up in a dysfunctional family, the son and grandson of alcoholics, someone who in their mid to late 20’s seriously contemplated suicide on at least one occasion, someone who has wrestled deeply with periods of depression and self neglect over many years I had very much the opposite reaction to this piece.

At the same time I was reminded about something that came up in some Journalism and Sociology/Psychology classes I had taken once upon a time around the first time I tried to go to college. This phenomenon that I cannot recall if it has a specific name, was been discovered in studies of crime reporting, related to things like car accidents and fights; where two different people witnessing the same event at the same time and in the same spot can later describe very different accounts of that event. I suppose it is the same for works of art and for all kinds of events and works. What we bring with us to the point of encountering something can vastly impact how we see and experience the thing.

Hope being messy, the idea of it being complex and complicated, like so much of life and truth, resonates for me. The idea that one must ‘weather’ the possibility of happiness… this speaks to me as someone who has often observed that even when things are going quite well, that there is a part of my mind and heart always ready and waiting and looking out for the other shoe to drop. That happiness and hope are sometimes difficult choices, that they can take effort and thought; that there can be many ups and downs that can come with the efforts one makes in that chosen journey; all of these spoke to me deeply. I did not see the post or these ideas as dismissing hopelessness. Very much the opposite; to my mind at least, this post acknowledges and respects the idea of how perilously easy it is to fall into the habit or state of hopelessness. How strangely comforting the idea of giving up sometimes is. That to be hopeful in a society that often does little to encourage or cultivate it can be so very difficult. To cultivate hope in oneself and in others, especially in the face of the sometimes harsh realities of our world, is perhaps one of the most challenging and courageous thing we can do.

I am reminded of my recent post about the Titan Submersible and the Migrant Boat disaster in the Mediterranean, in the opening of it I waxed poetic about the power and importance of stories…

So often at the end of various stories the narrative is brought to an ending via the phrase “And they lived happily ever after.” I think that all to often this narrative device used to close the story that the story teller wished to tell, is seen as some sort of iron-clad guarantee as to the characters lives and experiences ever-after. It says they lived happily. It does not say that that happiness did not take work, or that there were no struggles or bad or difficult times, nor downs and ups and sideways in their journeys. Yet, through ALL of that, our heroes were happy. Maybe not in every moment of every day, but in the long term, the overall.

I think that that overall happiness is worth fighting for.

Bliss and Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey