Cutting your hair...
This was huge for me. A symbol of disconnecting myself with my own past, certain elements of my own mythology. My hair told stories. It never lied. It never disobeyed. Curls and knots served as emblems of my inner emotions, if I was feeling confused, complacent, or adventurous enough to let it go. My hair grew to be an emblem in and of itself, a curly mess of poetry and complication, and I wanted relief. In some way, my hair came to represent parts of my mythology that no longer made sense to me, or were entirely figured out by now and needed to be molted back into nature, invalid but energy.
I think this is why I love literature, from a mythological, bard-worthy, epic poem perspective. Every person's life, no matter how mundane, is a chronology of epic proportions. We have all wafted through fire, flown too close to the sun, or somehow found ourselves pushing the proverbial boulder incessantly up hill... I love literature and the act of writing itself for the same sort of cathartic experience as Martin mentions in his compulsion to write, but also needing to still his mind long enough to tap into his subconscious' own pain; long enough to overcome his natural instinct to 'not [be] sensitive enough except to its own pain.' Perhaps this is what suicide, ballet, and yoga have in common. Release through pain, transcendence through reconciliation.
Why I love poetry. Why I love music. Why I love dance. Why I love art. Why I crave the ocean. Some kind of reflex, way deep down in my subconscious, reacts to color, and sound, and scent in ways that tap into the mythology I have already built, thus building upon a foundation that is already a good, albeit crazy, story. Writing, near the ocean especially, affords one the opportunity to practice realization of ions of life wafting in from the west and working girls named Gisele strutting along Lexington Avenue. Everything and everyone is already enlightened.
This morning, at 4 am, I watched a documentary film on PBS via Independent Lens focused on the hypermasculinity that thrives in America today, and how in spite of various laws and regulations steadily in place to reinforce such social taboos as ..., our love affair with violence persists. It balanced this cultural consumption with the phenomenal rise of hip hop and rap music in America, and how such lyrics, though reflective of countless unsavory social realities in the States, in and of itself reinforces the very stereotypes on the other side of the boxing ring, the pigeon-holing ideas it is trying to overcome. As poetry, as a cultural phenomenon, as storytelling to rhythmic, percussive, infectious, sometimes hypnotic beats, it has become the mythologized story of the streets, a musical movement that has revolutionized the art form of storytelling and music-making itself-- Ambrosia to some and anathema to others. It dissects lives and injects children.
Dancing, as a byproduct of music, is a physical expression of story at its most visceral form, requiring not even the power of the word to accomplish, but the sheer will to incite one's arm, or leg, or eyelid, to movement. Having spent eight years learning how to hold still, how to not breathe, but to listen, and observe and concentrate, to contort and work through pain jutting up the spine from a left foot gone iron placid... I have come closer to Zen as an art model, and as a tiger pacing the cage of the desert, for stillness is, as much as movement and love, a romantic cornerstone to the human condition and the relevance of our stories.
Today is a gorgeous day... Late afternoon, the setting sun casts light orange bursts across the back door, through parted windows and gaping souls. Even the sun has his own mythology. He shines, and radiates, and warms, while I am learning to play the guitar, and wrapping my mind around language and pain, as it were-- like Barthes, I am attracted to the text because it wounds and seduces me.
We lost some important people today. Howard Zinn, and JD Salinger. Writers whose profound lyrics of the streets told stories of the weather underground, and changed the way we were thinking. Evolving into an inner light, they have accomplished what so many storytellers, writers artists and entrepreneurs resolve to do every time we sit down to a blank page, inwardly terrified at the permanence and resonance of manifesting one's mythology, real or fictionalized, by grafting ink to paper. I have tackled the block myself, aware of our intimate rush like two lovers who see each other naked for the first time, discerning, sniffing, figuring it out. Making sure it's healthy and good, but also psyching ourselves out to the push, a ledge of desire... The invocation of the Word.
What the Toltec know as 'mitote', we have ascribed to Facebook updates and having some kind of goal. Collateral damage from getting caught up in creating our mythologies, rather than let things unfold, or as Coelho would say, allowing the whole Universe to conspire for you.
This is why I believe in Astrology. This is why I practice Magick. One cannot say that they do not believe in everything happening for a reason, and not also lend credence to certain facets of the Universe that lay untold, that may be caught in the web of a planetary conjunction or pios play on Pluto; that do not have to be explained to have happened. One cannot dedicate one's survival, the simple latent act of breathing or swallowing, or blinking an eye, day in and day out, without also acknowledging, at least accepting, the possibility of a Beyond, of stardust and undiscovered planets, of reasons for Circadian rhythms and zeitgeists...
Constellations that lay the groundwork to peace on earth, if we can only decipher and listen. Greek and Roman myth, the Bible, the Kama Sutra, the story of Buddha, and Gilgamesh, and Helen and Freya and Shakti, or Magdalen... the nominative attribution to the planets, to days of the month and times of year, may very well be the conception of the imagination, as trite as fairytale, as simple as the human condition seeking to construct order from chaos... but nevertheless their conception adds to its realness and imaginative fullness, affords the ability to inspire and control and reiterate. To trick and maintain. To coerce and sanctify. To exhort and eroticize, to sit back and just listen. A chance to break with relatives and ghosts who speak to us all the time. If only we'd listen.
My hair feels great. Nearly boyish, it is a curly, abundant symbol of my roots-- a moccasin here, an English land holder there... An uncle, an aunt, a halo, a gift... I look forward to growing it out again, long and full, thick and unruly, lyric and bass, stiletto and Sequoia tree. There are new beginnings at root, a pocketful of emptiness and entities, a few short stories, some novels, a breeze from the beach, salt from a mud bath, sweat from a lost love, milk from a mother, candle wax from a lover... Vitamins from CVS, blue balm from a competitor.
I want to rewrite my mythology on the wall this time, a graffiti portrait of gustatory proportions.
I think, maybe, if things get really bad in grad school, I'll go practice Zen too. And build a pyramid in honor of new psychology, outgrown clothes, and perfect buttons. And the future, of course.
Life is a series of beginnings, and not so-serious ends.
Amen.
Love...
~T.F.
1.28/10
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