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ETERNAL RECURRENCE

Dear all, it’s been a while since we spoke. In truth, I’ve been filling the time by speaking to myself & succumbing to all sorts of madness, mysteries, psychedelics, and the oh-so-painful act of thinking.

I took a step back from the Earth for a year-or-so. I had become so consumed by waves of anxiety towards external world, that I had begun to lose my-Self in it all. Ironic, especially for me, given my consulting work is built on the notion of IDENTITY.

Thus, I retreated into my own woodwork; and boy has it both been a blast & a damnation. My mind now spirals down fruitful anxiety-fuelled paths, as if the break allowed me to redirect my psychic energies away from the torturous-torture of “doing business”, towards the beautiful-torture of unravelling my pent-up ideas/philosophy on/of Identity (and all that that entails!), that previously were buried in bureaucracy.

I now feel… burdened, but freely-burdened by my own acts. I can finally exist without feeling outside my own skin; I can finally think without pushing thoughts away like infected Lemmings©; and I’m able to write with the madness, instead of being consumed by the anxiety of expression.

And now — finally! — : my work & praxis of Identity are able to work in tandem with my writing — the essays, the books, the aphorisms, the poems, the more-&-more —, my thoughts, as opposed to an inexpressible block living between them.

Hell…, I don’t even mind sounding a dash pretentious anymore. Ain’t that liberating, especially for an all-too-English human?

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AVOIDING YOURSELF AT ALL COSTS

“I know you [ ] swore by the enlightening benefits of meditation, but I was just alone with my thoughts for 17 minutes. It was unbearable.”

– Eva Woods, played by June Diane Raphael in the TV show Elle

Each moment I am left with the thoughts in my mind, the world feels utterly unmanageable. Life – in a few condensed acts/life-sentences – can be summed for me as the avoidance of anything that leaves me alone with myself.

That does not mean mindless numbing of an alcoholic or drug-dance variety… (although, I have partaken). Nor does it mean an avoidance of thinking thoughts, the spurning & segregation of/from anything “educational” in nature. Instead, it means I have introduced anything & everything to block an encounter with “myself”, and all things that would/should tumble out of that crossing of paths.

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TO THINK VS TO HAVE THOUGHTS

In my mind, to think and to have one’s own thoughts are vastly different things. We’ve been taught/inculcated/mindfully-whipped into a submission of admission (as opposed to an admission of submission).

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CULTURAL VETTING OF ACCEPTABLE NARRATIVES

From ages zero-to-death, each bouncy little fragment of thought that enters between our ears has been vetted by the world at large (whether you label that as “The System”, “Morality”, “Patriarchy”, or “Determinism”, we are all pointing at the same thing, except with different vowels & consonants on our fingertips).

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TRUST/DISTRUST YOUR INSTINCTS, CRY THE GURUS

Frames-upon-frames-of-reference, alongside clean/tidy narratives have passed down to us through our very existence, forming the infinite variety of speckled glasses we call the-one-home & the-single-truth; and once one’s glasses become injectable (or, more concretely, surgically seared into our corneas), you can’t doubt what the “body believes”. That’s what gurus say, aye?

Trust in thy instincts, thy body, and all will be right. But, also, don’t forget to trust in the holy education (even when it’s distinctly unholy), because it will lead you from erroneous errors of this untrustworthy body of ours. Course-correct your own assumptions by assuming knowledge is out-there, transmissable, and can provide un-cheating guardrails to keep you on the “right course”. Think of yourself as ye olde bowling alley, except with sidebars to prevent you from ever going elsewhere. How joyous to always be on target, even if the target is not of youses design!

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NOTHING NEW BUT NOVELTY

Yes, you’re right in one regard: none of what I say is revolutionarily new. Truth is a lie and lie is a truth – yadayadayada, with a #postmodernistbabe thrown on the end for good referencing alignment.

But… I believe there is nothing new upon this planet/world/universe/cocoon-of-existence. That does not mean insights & ideas & development & “movement” in certain directions (I refuse to use the word “progress” where possible) cannot occur – or, “feel” like they occur in the same way they supposedly always have. Instead, I see us all participating in a single language, a language with infinite words but only one meaning beneath all those words; each word is a synonym of another (to a greater or lesser degree); and each word on its own is a riff off of the single “meaning” beneath all acts of communication, action, and existence.

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ACTS OF COMMUNICATION

I often find it easier to reference all things as “acts of communication”. All things – even silent things – are trying to say/express/mean/approximate something – to speak in so many words or breaths or sighs or signs, of the unspeakable.

All acts of miscommunication are acts of communication achieved just as perfectly/imperfectly as a “successful” act of communication – as all attempts to bridge the Self and the Other are doomed/privileged to fall eternally far/short.

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HERACLITAL LIQUIDS FLOW BOTH WAYS

Even a “shared understanding” or “united consensus” is but a bridge over Heraclitus’ river… albeit, this river is as still as a stone and as moving as a symphony. You can dip your toes in the waves, and will find the same wave greeting you with infinitely different waves; or you can dip your toes in the waves, and you will find the infinitely different waves greeting you with the same wave.

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UNDERSTANDING NON-UNDERSTANDING VIA GIGGLES

To continue the swaying sounds of water metaphors: to think like this is to contribute to your own erosion. The supposed “contradictions” of the world begin to fall at your feet as nonsense – not nonsense in the usual sense of “you’re just speaking nonsense”, but nonsense in how we have allowed two “poles” of the same pole to fight against each other/itself for so long, without laughing as it punches itself in the face with pain/pleasure.

Then, your own laughter will emerge: as you cannot express this understanding of non-understanding; the contentment with discontentment; the sense of the nonsense – in any way but silence & laughter.

With that, you will see why they say the wisest people speak the least… Because there’s absolutely everything – and also fuck-all – to say.

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CHILDISH BAMBINOISMS

Childhood was an annoying time for me. And likely for others who experienced it (my childhood, that is) – albeit, I never quite “experienced it” more than was forced through its contusions and protrusions like a liquid ragdoll (semi-self-deprecating abuse-pun semi-intended). I was flung between deep flashes of understanding – of pure knowledge, of having things cracked/slotted into place; of having no doubt that my doubts would eventually be assuaged, if I just collected enough books, information, and credentials… I would get it – just like how everyone “grows into their skin”, I’d grow into being a fully-downloaded human-being, right?

Take, for example, my utterly-butterly ecsaticisms at getting the word “photosynthesis” right when shooting up my hand for attention when I was 10 years old. No clue where I’d heard the word before, so it sounded like it had slithered out the ether & into the gap between my yet-to-be-chipped-teeth. I was God amongst the mortals in that room with me: a scientific God, though, as the anti-Bible-belt had whipped any consideration – let alone acceptance – of anything religiousy-&-woo-woo-wee, firmly from my growing buttocks; thus, the only thing to escape my cheeks was the firm flatulence of science & logic…

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THE (ICKY) MATHEMATICISING OF ALL THINGS

Alas, the beauty of science & logic – and, in some degree for all “points of view” and “ways of living/seeing/breathing the earth/the same air”-- is that at a certain point, you don’t have to keep forcing yourself to force the facts into submission. Contradictions and questions fall like the 87,000th domino in an infinite domino-line: they become null-numb-&-void on all counts, as if you can make a pattern last that long, probability says it’s gotta be right, right?

That’s why a good grounding/mis-grounding/blanket-grounding in the STEM worldview starts with the counting of things… the mathematicising of all things… as it allows for the quick problematising of things (a “miscount”) and the subsequent hegemonic expansion from counting to curtailing via the so-illogical-it’s-logical “probabilty-ising” of all things.

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THE PROBABILITY OF PROBABILITY BEING PROBABLE IS SLIM

It seems we did not learn from the divine force that made us – to divide oneself is to multiply one’s problems a thousand-fold. Thus, to state there’s a chance something could be A, or B, (or even C, etc. etc. etc.) is to birth a mis/understanding of all things as potentially one way or another… and with the birth of potential comes the slimy, sticky, & sedulous after-birth of concern… of dispute… of questioning… or uncertainty… of thinly-vieled-ambition-to-escape-it-all… of hope… of so many words, so many phrases, so many despairs and enjoyments: all wrapped up in the closest synonym on my personally-personal lips: anxiety.

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CLICHÈS ARE THE SHORTCUT TO THE DIVINE

“Why do birds / suddenly appear / every time / you are near?”

– “(They Long to Be) Close to You“ by The Carpenters.

The more cliched the phrase &/or the reference, the closer we/you/I have gotten to the one-meaning beneath all acts of communication. That grating & cringe-inducing feeling at its usage is but a riff & a warning of the pain/pleasure of getting too close to the Sun of the final/first days. To a “Scientific Fellow” (or a human of the “Scientific-Persuasion”, if you prefer, which is what most of us discriminate/detail/delineate our Identity & beliefs & personhood via on forms & censuses of all forms anyway), this is brushing too close to the coattails of God for their liking – bear in mind that I, Jack Goodson, am not affiliated with any religion or belief system, scientific-or-spiritual, thus when I say God, I am using it as a placeholder for the “Divine Thread” that flows through all things, or, for those who do not believe in a thing that flows through all things, whatever their anti-conception of that is (sub-divisionism? Individualism? infinitim-abysmal?), is still labelled and indicated by the same thing.

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A POSTSTRUCTURAL PISSTAKE VIA A POSTMODERN PANDEMIC

(And, yes, I am well aware of the ironic contradiction of me claiming things about things, when my claim is that the truth of all things are just claims about things… which indicates/invalidates my claims of the claims of things. And, I hope you’ll grant me some minor/major kudos for not falling into the fake-escape-hatch for such relativism & the like, by saying something along the lines of “Well, I must be right as the concept of there being multiple concepts/”answers”/”correctness”/”truth”/”rightness” hinges on the potential existence of them; ergo, my conception of their conception is correct is true, and I thus rule the intellectual roost”).

(For example, Karl Popper justifies the existence of tolerance by saying that we must be tolerant of intolerance – which, yes, is true, but how he could ever claim the reverse is not true with a smile on his face and a cap off his pen? This, and the like, absolutely baffles me, and it is repeated the world over).

And yet, I must admit that every utterance I make might be completely false & wrong – it could be that one of these strands of thinking us humans have developed IS the “true” way of the world/being/universe/divineness… That would be grand. But, as I see it, even if that fact was to be somehow “proven, indisputably, beyond question, via the vocal chords of God/existence itself”... I could not do anything but doubt it. That, unfortunately, is the path that life has me on.

In my own words (yes, finally, MY own words – or as close as possible I have come to expressing/having any), the Divine Mushroom has plans for me, and the level/strand/tendril of its manifested-existence it has placed me on, cannot deviate, or else “punishment/guilt/pain” ensues. (I’ll dive into this further in a subsequent article… but the starting point for this conception of mine is to think on the multitude of conceptions of “Divine Punishment”, of “God’s Will”, of “God’s Plan”, of “Fate”, and the like, under all and any names (and no names at all). They are the linguistic breadcrumbs upon which my madness – mixed with my psychedelic “revelations” & mastications & conceptual masturbations – are erected).

I do not claim to reveal anything more than the world already knows. The aim of all existence – seemingly especially NOW – is form over function, style over substance, and aesthetics at all costs. To speak on the same meaning, but in as many language-dresses & via as many language-games as possible… and to see who/what resonates/vibrates/orbits/connects your way… that is life. It could be a lonely one, at that. For, we are all Cassandra to different degrees: doomed to be both believed and never-believed. And yet… we yap on; hypostatise on; and invest as many metaphors as our zeitgeist can carry before a cultural “cull” begins. And that cull is what I call The Apoptosis.

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OH SHIT, THE TOPIC AT HAND IS RETURNED TO

Deeply ironically & ironically deeply, I have not yet spoken on the topic that is the title of this piece of rambling: Why I Write. I have buried the hatchet & the herring in so much sand, that my rotting, anorexic-esque fists cannot outpace the outpour of additional sand falling from the hourglass’ pinched waist above my noggin. Whilst I seem to have a straw in my mouth, poking above the dry golden waves, I should rapidly speak on it:

I write because I wither; and I wither because I write.

Without one, the other does not flow. And whilst another kidney stone forms immediately after the previous one’s departure from this body-o’-mine… I’d rather pass a million specks than a thousand globe-sized globe through my gonadic-area.

In less visceral terms: without (and still with, but less-so) writing, intense angst & despair pump up the remaining space in my blood vessels. Those emotions – and all that live under different names but very close levels/strands/tendrils to the unspeakable single meaning of existence, including: pain/anxiety/depression/panic &, of course, existential dread – become so overwhelming, that it forces energetic expression from me. I used to experience this in the “standard” manner/conception that is a phenomenon for many who (try to) write… Doubt; inferiority; pointlessness; knife-point-pain in temples & forehead as thoughts of decaying self-worth strum against the skull; the list goes on & on etc. etc.

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TORTUROUSLY-INCONVENIENT FLASHES OF GENIUS

However – now, the act of not writing is an act of communication that the Divine Mushroom has made increasingly unbearable, has made the “choice” to not partake at any cost in the act condemned to me such a tortuous affair, that I find myself spewing out beautiful-wonderful-genius & life-changing lines in the most inopportune of moments (e.g., driving, or engaged in a task that is meant to require my full attention), requiring a panicked sprint of retention, followed by a deluded dash to my phone’s notes to try and capture what was so fresh, sparkly, and God-like 20 minutes ago.

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MIS-LIVED LIFE IS PUNISHABLE BY LIFE

However – now, especially given my bout of recent psychedelic experiences, I am forced to write otherwise the rot will consume me. I can feel the decay creeping at the gates… I can feel the call of the wild nothingness knocking at the door… I can feel the siren song of the Apoptotic force pulsing in every direction, cell, & sinew.

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READING, I.E., THE INTELLIGENTSIA’S TELEVISION

It used to be that I could avoid these internal/externally-internal pressures to write/create/exist/persist/unpersist through the greatest act of distraction & submission: reading. Alas, the years I’ve been through have not been kind to my already disgruntled situationship with le great act of miscommunication absorption.

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ARE YOU NOT DIGITALLY ENTERTAINED, JACK?

At first, the lure of more entertaining acts of communication stole my focus: (in no particular order or weighting) computers; video games; TV shows; movies; pornography. What bland worlds & the cheaply-printed words that make them could compete with the blaring blankets of Pokemon to smother yourself within, coupled with the warm embraces of two infinite rules of the internet:

• Rule 34: If it exists, there is adult content of it.

• Rule 35: If no such content exists yet, someone will create it.

Then, once these digital “brand” worlds infected/invested me with their form of love, I became an addict to those formats (love’s a tricky thing, after all; especially when you’re riding roughshod on that line it shares with hate). Whilst the tales of woe from all that jazz are intriguing, I’ll save them at present & will jump into the great turning.

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FICTION BOOKS, I.E., WELL-MARKETED MUCUS

At first, the stimulation & disappointment led to a falling-out-of-love with the world of written fiction. Drab, unconnectable toilet paper, pumped out like mule shit with (slightly) less smell yet at a greater volume, encased in a mucus layer that I soon learned to call by the false god’s name: marketing.

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DEFICTIONALISATION OF FICTIONAL TRUTHS & NON-FICTIONAL FALSITIES

Only recently – and still utterly sparingly – am I able to read fiction. My change of heart stemmed from my abandonment of the false dichotomy of “fiction” and “non-fiction” as categories. And by this, I do not mean in the vein of “semi-autobiographical fiction” (whatever marketer developed that term deserves a raise upon a raise upon a raise); nor do I mean fictional stories that turn out to be true; nor do I mean non-fiction that turned out to be complete fiction (albeit, this is the closest description to what I’m trying to say). Nay, what I’m trying to get at is that there is no meaningful divide (i.e., there’s no meaning in the divide; nor is there any divide in the meaning) between fiction and non-fiction – both are narrative workings/shirkings/smirkings of its author; I mean… if one was to start labelling Nutella as “Dark-Brown Peanut Butter”, are they wrong? Are they right? Does the question of wrong or right make sense?

Even if one goes beyond the “marketing-as-liberal-licensed-metaphor”... does it even make sense at the level of cold-hard-reason? If stories point at labels and labels spin around and point their dastardly fingers right back at the stories… a seemingly logical loop is established, as two hardcore-defenders of the same “wrong” can convince the world of its “rightness” (just try and argue with two united-&-loving marriage partners; or with a client-and-its-lawyer, and you’ll feel/succumb to this first-hand).

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I DIGRESS / I REGRESS / I DEPRESS

I digress (when do I not? How can I not? Can I not? Can I not and still be understood by readers/the-world/the-my-self? That is the question of full, unadulterated-and-adulterated panic that flows through me religiously… as if it’s my life’s question, tasked to me, to “figure out”, learn to live with, or die trying (perhaps all 3 options are the same result… Alas, I will not know, until I know (or until I don’t!).)

I regress (when do I not? How can I not? Can I not? Can I not and still be understood by readers/the-world/the-my-self? That is the question of full, unadulterated-and-adulterated panic that flows through me religiously… as if it’s my life’s question, tasked to me, to “figure out”, learn to live with, or die trying (perhaps all 3 options are the same result… Alas, I will not know, until I know (or until I don’t!).)

I depress (when do I not? How can I not? Can I not? Can I not and still be understood by readers/the-world/the-my-self? That is the question of full, unadulterated-and-adulterated panic that flows through me religiously… as if it’s my life’s question, tasked to me, to “figure out”, learn to live with, or die trying (perhaps all 3 options are the same result… Alas, I will not know, until I know (or until I don’t!).)

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BLOOD SCANDAL LIVE: ALL OF US ARE INFECTED WITH CASSANDRA’S CURSE

I impress (or wish to? For, to be loved and listened to is a welcome distraction from the lack of being understood… If I can just talk & write & wither until the cows crow, pigs cry, and I sheepishly die in a state of ghoulish panic… perhaps I can survive it all? Perhaps I can make it to the next circle-birth of infinite repetition that is played out in all things at all stages at all times across different forms at different stages at different times. Perhaps if my words can sate me, that is a comfortable enough fate? I do not wish to be Cassandra, but we are all, in one-and-all life(s)/shape(s)/form(s) or another, doomed to be listened to with empty nods, and a pause before our interlocutor’s chance to shine begins… as we listen – without understanding – to their own rambles, lamenting that they didn’t listen to us.

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THE DIVINE MUSHROOM’S ZEITGEISTIC ABYSS (AND WHY IMMORTALITY SUCKS ASS)

Do you agree? And if you do, do I care? And even if I do, was I even listening? And even if I was, were you? Or were you awaiting the next piece of writing (or other act of communication) to arrive for you to digest & repress and keep on both intolocuting & disputing & refuting with in equal measure?

To keep-on-talkin’ through our listenin’, until we reach the end of this road of ours, having built up a measure of all things through our uncontrollable digestion & retention of the acts of communication we have given and have received… left – stranded – in the Divine Mushroom’s zeitgeistic abyss, contributing to this illusive “sum of human knowledge” (with “human” being the most erroneous of words), having been sent from the moment of birth (or prior, or prior, or prior, or prior, or after, etc.) to strike out down our given avenues/strands/tendrils/paths laid out to us by the depressed, anxious, lonely nature of the Divine Mushroom? Who spreads and distributes itself time-and-time again, in the hope of finding an answer, an escape, a moment of reprieve, from the continuous continuation of the continuation…?

There’s a reason immortals go mad, and why vampires are so loved (immortal (some-what), but with a suicidal-escape-hatch built in, if things get a little too… pent-up/bent-up/spent-up…