Not Dead, Just Regrowing

Hello friends. It has been awhile hasn’t it?

I thought last year was going to turn around by the mid point, that the horrors would stop or at least stop evolving into such unnecessary ridiculousness, and that maybe this was some kind of collective fever dream we were all trapped in. That surely there had to be some kind of hard upper limit the horrors would run against but that didn’t happen, did it? (It hasn’t happened yet, either.) We all are still stuck in seemingly the most boring, incredibly unimaginative, cruel dystopia who’s vanguard is composed of the most uncool, divorced dad, devoid of any type of curiosity people and I just.

I’m tired, my dudes.

I’m a millennial. My entire adult life has been eating one fucking unprecedented event after another. Last year felt like the year where every economic, cultural, and political disaster I’ve either experienced or witnessed since becoming a full ass adult, was speedrun at a relentless pace. It is hard to create, to write, when the background noise sounds like what even is the point? Nothing I could write or say ultimately matters in the grand scheme of things, plus other people have problems. Bigger problems. More pressing problems.

When everything is on fire, it seems selfish to want to put yourself out first. Especially with the social media panopticon, and the way performative has been warped in such an aggressively, anti academic spin that bears a different kind of explanation and bothering. So I burned. And I still burn. But. There’s a cyclical nature to wildfires. For an environment to be healthy, the old bush needs to burnt regularly. Some plants only grow in the aftermath of forest fires, pine cones won’t open unless exposed to specific low temperature fires, and artificial stagnation is dangerous. Without wildfires there’s an enormous loss of biodiversity; yes there are scars left behind from them but there’s so much life enabled by them as well.

I’m not saying within this grandiose metaphor (maybe a metonymy) that just standing there and letting the fire consume you is the course of action to take. It’s really not. But maybe it’s okay to admit yeah, I’ve been burned to your friends or other people you interact with and they can also say same here or wow buddy that’s rough. That people want to know what’s been happening your life, even if they don’t know how to ask or think to ask. It’s more than alright to exercise some degree of parasocialism to people you interact with on a daily basis because how else are things going to change if there’s not a pre established relationship between us? We are probably more similar than any of the ideologically bankrupt people who are enacting policies or have greater stakes in whatever industry the techbros are ruining now. But we can’t know unless we try.

So my friends. This is my moment where I admit that I’ve been scared while burning since that last time I regularly updated this place. That I just stood there and let chunks of what I thought made me me, burn away and turn to ash without asking for help. The background noise of nothing I do really matters or has any impact on anything, if you just make yourself smaller or more palatable then it might not be so bad. But that’s not how it works. Eventually it runs out of material to burn. Eventually the fire stops. And the fireweed, like some kind of plant phoenix covers the burnt meadows and it’s beautiful again. There isn’t just kilometres of charred, ruined landscape forever because nothing is ever alone. It’s true. We are forever entangled up in each others lives, in our environments whether or not we want to admit it.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I’m glad you’re here.
(Yes, I mean that really, and very sincerely.)

Bonus what I listened to while I thought/wrote this small post.
All is Violent, All is Bright by God is An Astronaut