Our Lady who art Chaos
Give us a fucking break
Thy Queendom comes
Whether we want it to or not
Give us no more than we can survive
At least for now
Because I got a lot of shit to do
Deliver my packages on time
And protect me from porch thieves
For this is the life we each have
Use it or lose it
We don’t have forever
Amen (or whatever)
(June 2023)
“The thing is, none of that shit is real. Nothing is real, and I can prove it. Pick any molecule in existence. If that molecule was a solar system, that is, if some atom in a molecule in a mitochondrion in a cell in your body was the size of the sun, its electrons are somewhere out past Pluto. Most of you is empty space.
Wait, it gets worse. I can prove you don’t exist. Science is fantastic. I mean, I get why people think they’re just making stuff up, because quantum physics is bonkers.
Because if you get down that small, if you’re looking at electrons, first of all you’re using the most advanced science we’ve ever scienced, machines the size of cities, billions of dollars of infrastructure. And it still barely works. You’re trying to catch ghosts. Really you are because the only way you see quantum particles is smashing them into each other and taking a photo.
I’m not kidding. This is science. That’s what they do at the CERN super-collider, which is why they call it a collider.
But think about that. They’re seeking the building blocks of all we know, and you’d think it would be obvious. I mean, we’re made of atoms, everything is made of atoms, but atoms don’t really seem to be made of anything at all.
You can know where a quantum particle was, or you can know where it’s going. You cannot, cannot by the fundamental structure of the universe, know both. They’re like cockroaches: if you turn on the light they disappear under the cabinets. I mean it, if you locate a quantum particle, the act of looking at it makes it change direction.
Imagine you’re at a baseball game and you’re looking at something else. Like there’s someone on the jumbotron who doesn’t know her nip has slipped or whatever is distracting you. And you hear the crack as the batter hits the ball and so you look and you looking makes that sweet long drive to the unguarded right field suddenly in midair veer to the left and land in the midfielder’s glove.
That’s what doing quantum physics is like. At a million bucks a throw.
Here’s the even worse bit: in the end the odds of finding any one particle in any one given state or location are just that, odds. There is no certainty at the bottom of reality. Just chance. Your particles come and go, fluctuate in and out of being, are at best potentialities that walk and talk and wear pants and think they’re in charge of some shit when you don’t even really exist. You are seafoam on an ever-cresting wave sweeping through time and space, sentient glitter that winks in and out of existence faster than you or I can imagine.
So why the fuck does it matter which bathroom I use?”
come! thou stalwart edge of dawn
and break this calcified intrigue
which day denies
a sightless sigh into the sweating sheets
break, o break the sky
creator
all things you made
unmake
encase me so that I may break as well
dissolve
dissolve
dissolve
dissolve
(2023)
I’m not one of those meek, retiring kinds of ADHD. I’m of the “you wanna start some shit?” variety, with high scores for Defiance Disorder and Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, meaning I’m always on the hunt for a bridge to burn. I’ve quit jobs to make sure I had the weekend off.
I also think magic is in a way very real. Not that handwavium, turn you into a frog/newt/beddable-monster movie type of magic, but the kind where you deliberately reprogram your own brain to perceive reality in a different way. Practitioners might believe they’re reprograming everyone’s reality as well, but as the only reality you have access to is the one that your brain creates inside itself, I find this a bridge too far for even me to burn (see above.) Let’s just say that the world contains more information than any brain can compute, and if you point yourself at different parts of it, your experience is often that of having created something from nothing. The opportunities were always there, you just maybe weren’t looking directly at them.
So when I see the rise in popularity of “manifesting” to reach one’s goals, I suppress my inner cynic who says it’s a bunch of neo-hippy woo. As a pantheistic pragmatist with a taste for Spinoza, why should I care how people do their magic, as long as they’re getting results? The crystals, the candles, the Burning Man vibes, the binaural beats: my only objection is aesthetic, as in I don’t like cottagecore and my high flicker rate ADHD has *issues* with delta drone.
I’d be a sorry sort of Discordian if I gave anyone lip over how they conducted their spiritual business. Heck, I routinely beg my deity NOT to intervene: “lemme have this one, ‘kay? You can do what you want with me after.”
This never works, by the way. What we want and what The Universe wants often has nothing to do with each other. I find myself infested with its merciless directives, seething with manifestation, which in my case takes the form of my favourite characters from my books taking up permanent residence in my head. I can’t complain, because (ahem) I get results. Their energy, their imaginary love for me sustains me as if they were real people standing beside me, even when I’m at my worst. They both are and are not real. What matters is that it works.
So I will gleefully cling to my belief that no sane person holding a quartz while they meditate seriously thinks the rock is doing anything other than being something to pay attention to. That’s all magick is. Paying attention like never before. Paying so much attention to some stupid shiny rock in your hand, glowing in the flicker of beeswax candles, that you don’t notice everything you’ve ever wanted sneaking up behind you, waiting for you to properly open your eyes.
more
difficult
than
anything
was
sitting
still
day
after
day
after
day
as
one
by
one
those
things
standing
between
us
and
ourselves
were
given
away
(2022)
O
God lady
Don’t you
Every get
Dizzy
Going round
and around us
Why not
just stop
(2020)
I lost a dear friend this year. He was widely agreed to be one of the most frustrating individuals to ever walk the earth. There was no hiding from him. Your foibles, your feints, your fake news: absolutely fair game, and he brought everyone who cared for him to the point of hair-tearing hysteria at least once.
I learned the lyrics of the Gatchaman theme song for that son of a bitch. In phonetic Japanese.
He was also one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and voraciously devoted to his goals. I think about him a lot, as I did while he still orbited in an embodied form. He was deeply aware of mortality, of the fleetingness of life, and the need to use your time passionately.
What I feel, in grieving him, is that there truly is no meaning in existence beyond what we ourselves provide. Some may want his death to be a ‘message’ from ‘God’ to value your life, but he was passionately secular, and would have fought you with every ounce of his prodigious logic to prove that his morals derived from anything beyond the human need for belonging and connection.
We cannot satisfy this need through cruelty and restriction. We all belong to the human family. We all belong to the earth. Our walls are false. Created by human minds. If there is a divine, it does not pick and choose which of Creation is most glorious. How bold of us to assume. How unhelpful, when the dented little spaceship we call home is closer than ever to being pushed out of the narrow span of livability.
Adam would have known what I mean. He hated that essentialist bullshit. Worked up until the end of his life to make our world more fair.
What else is there to be done?
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