Moo

David Hume promulgated the idea that the fact of ourselves is only a bundle of things brought back from daily experience and patched together for a time. It disassembles as easily as it’s assembled. Selfhood is a potpourri of herbs gathered in the meadow of the quotidian. We teem with a collection of ideas and sensations that alter pattern like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. Our time of birth, the culture into which we born, its period of history, our very species are all matters of happenstance. I could’ve been a spider or a crow for all that matters. I reached the fullest blossoming of the person I’d be carrying around in its various guises during the 60s. That would include being atomized by a strong dose of LSD and immersing myself in Led Zeppelin. And oh yes, an afternoon spent with Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac. Roaring creeks and cataracts of language all upsidedown and strange. My head became juicy and my hand busy writing words of nothing, because nothing means nothing, and that adds up to nothingness, which is noumena front and center, and chipmunks and bears. Later, I learned that what I desire is not always good and that what I avoid is not always that bad. 

I used to make great sandwiches for work. One sandwich was composed of thin slices of corned beef or ham slathered with butter and adorned with lettuce and pickles for maximum juiciness. The other sandwich was all peanut butter and butter and strawberry jam. They were delicious and made the work day slightly more palatable. I see this now as a species of jurisprudence, or trying to keep my head on straight, which is a circulation of fluids, and a tongue for injecting or projecting liquids.

Mornings I wake up with a sense of dread, that awful feeling that not only can anything be done to save the planet, it’s too late, stop industry and we lose the haze of pollution diffused over the globe so that the sun’s rays hit us directly and raise the temperature by one degree Celsius thus killing off everything, but nothing can be done to even raise a general awareness of how dire the situation is. And I go on scribbling poetry which is just fucking weird.

Well, why not, as they say. There’s a kind of providence to weirdness. It’s a superpower with a soft light and a present participle.

Since the future is scary I spend a lot of time mulling the past. I picture John Fogerty sitting at a kitchen table working out the lyrics to songs in a seedy apartment. “Green River.” “Fortunate Son.” “Born on the Bayou.” “Run Through the Jungle.”

The present isn’t so great either. Seattle has become a city of sociopaths, narcissists and nail salons. But there are things you eke out of the present moment to make it pyrotechnic and less pustular. Light a candle and study the undulation of the flame. The scent. The melt of wax.

Pain is an awakening. Emotional pain especially. What divining rod do you use to find reality? To find what is of value? I use pain. Sonatas of blood, the grammar of bones.

If it’s raining I stab gravity with an umbrella.

Moo is the sound cows make and is the Japanese word for nothingness. Life doesn’t have a meaning and that’s its ultimate meaning. I like to sit and listen to whatever sounds are out there. A blue jay, a crow, a power saw, someone hammering nails. I’ve attained that age when nothing matters because I’ll be dead soon. My biggest worry is the loss of electricity and running water. The paper towels in the kitchen window.

Who is this person I see every day looking back at me from the mirror?

We live in an age of gigantic egos. We deploy them like dirigibles. I can’t tell you how a television works but I know an abyss when I see one. I know that the catastrophic existential impacts of the 21^st century are unprecedented for our species. That truth isn’t something you can squirt from a garden hose. Most food is literal, but sometimes it’s sublime. Sometimes a truffle can lighten your troubles. Narrative involves an ego. Drop the ego, and the narrative keeps rolling, but it’s less linear, less encumbered. It expands into vineyards. Heat and Hollywood.  

Everything becomes silent before a storm. That’s where we’re at now. Hanging on till the next minute. As always.