maybe stop viewing yourself as a complicit westerner who has to apologise and consider yourself a traitor who will do what is necessary to destroy the west
When you get the reputation of being the guy with the encouraging words on New Year’s Eve, it can start to come through as a little pressure – what if the situation on the ground is worse than usual? what if people are more scared than they usually are, and with cause? what use are good vibes then?
well as you might imagine, because of the way I am hard wired, I think it’s good and useful to figure out a way of imagining the light at the end of the tunnel
there’s no tunnel, to be clear! nor light! these are metaphors! we could as easily say: the surface above the water; the doorknob in the darkness; the key at the bottom of the junk drawer; and so on, and so on
the use of these metaphors seems limited! strongly limited! when you get through tunnel to the light: what’s out there? when you find the key in the drawer: do you actually want to open that door?
but for me this is fact where these ways of describing the world become more, not less, useful and instructive. questions, rightly posed, are about possibilities, not hard stops
“possibilities, not hard stops” – this is one reason why a recent trend in interviewing on album cycles has been kind of mystifying to me: people will ask me to sort of summarize the song. but that’s not how songs work! their job begins where the tidy explanation ends!
hence the occasional usefulness, I’m told, of the phrase “if it kills me” in a song I know people play on new year’s eve, for which tradition I am so immensely grateful. Thank you.
it is a contradiction! make it through or get killed: these aren’t compatible, are they? but yes in fact they are and we know they are. it’s easy to forget but we know.
snakes leave behind whole skins. all manner of flying creatures, not just butterflies, do them one better, whole new selves from wriggling worms. rocks into gems. mystics die to the flesh to be reborn in the spirit. rebirth is the rule, not the stray exception, if we can grasp it
we in this country (and, I’d argue, the world, but I’m not here to argue tonight) are challenged to make of our present situation something better. it’s a tall order
but look at yourself, consider your life
you have done it before, squared the smooth circle, navigated the hard corner, slipped through and lived to see another day
together? in solidarity? is there anything we can’t do: for those suffering in an increasingly inhuman justice system; for our trans kin targeted by this wretched government; for immigrants scapegoated by the callous and the cruel? for, in and through all this, ourselves?
no tunnel but the tunnel whose contours we identify for the purposes of finding its exit, no light but the one we follow to better times
you are here at the end of a year in which I’ll bet you wondered what the point was, at some point
the point is that together we can find a way. the point is that. together.
I wish you, and me, and all of us, strength & solidarity & joy in the new year as we find our way together: which we have done this year already, and will arise tomorrow to do again. /thread
This was genuinely what it was like growing up in New Agey circles btw, my mum’s friends would come round like “So I went out to the woods this weekend and fasted and meditated and I had a vision of the Sacred Stag and all my guardian angels and I asked them how to find love and they said that I need to focus on my own healing first and stop repeating cycles of the past” and then the very next week it’d be like “So I’m back with James again” girl….. the Sacred Stag could not have been more clear….
btw guys managing your symptoms also means apologizing for things you didn’t mean to do. sometimes you do things because of your disorders that you genuinely didn’t mean to do, but if it hurt someone you still have to take accountability and make up for the hurt you caused
extremely funny to me that Kermit the Frog is the only main overlap character between Sesame Street and The Muppets. imagine your day job is hanging out in a community of lovely people that genuinely just want to help kids learn and care about everyone so so much and then your night job is the reason that you have to stay up to date on your rabies AND tetanus vaccine
at noon the giant you’re hanging out with is Big Bird! a wonderful fellow who likes reading stories and singing and telling fun facts! at midnight there’s a giant named Sweetums who makes you feel like you’re being hunted for sport
Ernie, trying to maybe come out to Kermit: well you know Kermit, me and Bert-
Bert: Bert and I
Ernie: Bert and I, we’ve been best friends forever, but we’re also something else too!
Kermit, who every goddamn night has to tell Beaker and Bunsen to keep it professional, deal with Statler and Waldorf’s bullshit, AND update his organizational chart on Dr. Teeth and the Electric Polycule: that’s really great to hear fellas, happy for you two! :)
doctor voice hello yes im here returning your call about scheduling! ^_^ so the next appointment we have is tomorrow at 4am. after that the earliest we can get you in is december 2025… either of those sound good to you?
ALT
