If I had the choice to come back and do it all again, I’d be a myrmecologist. I’d study ants. Like E.O. Wilson - one of the giants on whose shoulders so many balance.
Of late, I’m going through something. Can’t rightly put my finger on it but when I have a few lucid moments, it is a spiritual void coming from a feeling of being overwhelmed by the immensity, the numbers of it, this all.
I recently jumped from living alone to living among swarms. I lived on a mountain in Nicaragua, not many around. Just me and the vultures and a few cows walking by now and then - I jumped from this to South Korea. A dense anthill of people stuck between mountains, living in rabbit hutches that reach up into the sky. People everywhere. Swarms. Herds. Colonies. Troops.
It makes my head swim. Not good for my soul. But in some measure too, good medicine. My juices flow. I ask, why me, why am I not him, not her? What makes anything special? How can I be special among so many? How does all this movement of people, waves of desire flowing back and forth, how does it fit into any meaning? How are you to keep going, knowing, you are just like any other of the 8 billion out there - living out your fate and then to die, be forgotten, fade left, fade out, fade, fade, fade into nothing. Where does the center, the meaning hold?
We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone. - Orson Welles
I’m just being honest here. It’s not my first time in this mindset, facing this existential dilemma. Nature, being alone seems to calm it down but for now, can’t do that. Really not a square meter on this whole peninsula, you’ll find that peace. My only hope is to go within … it’s all within, when you really think about it.
So I sit and find peace inside. The immensity can do its thing, like ants, we fight wars, we gossip, we build, we destroy, we decay, we are forgotten. But do, we K species do. It’s our role that we play.
And then a light appears.
What is “immensity”? If there is infinity, if there is eternity, isn’t a number just an illusion? Immensity a temporary lie, a lie we allow ourselves, subjectively to be dominated by? One can be immense as 8 billion, if you think about numbers as you should.
At the end of the day, you arrive alone, you live alone and you die alone. You can only be happy that in between, you have some moments where you escape that and feel among, feel like you belong.
I’m going to keep looking for that … despite being overwhelmed by the immensity of it all.
You only get one go around.
I’m a few days over 60
and everything
morning, noon n’ night
smells of death.
This ain’t no Oz Dorthy.
I think of what
I wanted to be …..
to see, to feel, to touch, to do
and there’s just too much to count
or recount.
My $70 bottle of wine is done
and I keep trying to forget
that I’ve already won.
What makes me urge for more?
I’m down to my last $200,000.
Frozen
like a mother forlorn
in the immensity of it all.
I wonder why I bother
to make the coffee I make
each morning
as I ache
to where
I don’t know.
I’m 60 and
wear my pants rolled.
I feel old.
As only
one so in love with youth
can do
‘nd I think of Li Po
on the boat
gently rocking
drinking his wine.
Knowing it’s all fine.
I think of Prince.
I’m just a few years behind
‘nd
Amadeus
I got 20 god damn years on him
‘nd
it doesn’t add up
to that which I want to be.
The crickets this night
they chirp.
I’m glad I can hear
instead of see.
This ain’t no Hollywood, Clint.
You only get one go around.
No applause.
No retakes.
No credits.
No hems ‘n haws.
Just the silence of
well placed laws
‘nd
then it’s over
– my god.
Thank god.
Lost In The Immensity