Because I can’t stand the way I am feeling about my writing at the moment I am doing something weird.
Frustrated with all the loose ends, unfinished drafts and cryptic notes that loose all meaning when left too long, I am going to tackle them all now. In sharing.
This can potentially bore you to tears or lead to you concluding I am utterly nuts. Frankly I don’t care either way. I am very self indulgently choosing my own sanity above your needs and interests as my audience. Ha.
The Death Of My Human Decency
First topic to tackle (I am going through notes in chronological order backwards) is today’s waking up to the news of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. I even saw the video of him getting shot. I did not know him or know of him. When I read what he stood for his death triggered nothing more than a rather blasé “tant pis”.
This has been on my mind a lot, more these past years compared to the rest of my life… even though I do not believe in the right to take a life (except in direct self defense as the last resort) my emotional response to it is very different depending on whose life it is.
So, the right to life and safety is absolute for everyone, but I have to be very honest…. I don’t mourn Charlie Kirk, I don’t cry for “fallen” IDF soldiers… I find it excruciating to see suffering… and I can’t stand how immune it makes me to the demise of those causing it…
I can value life as in everyone has a right to not have theirs taken.. but emotionally I have noticed I have become numb… and weirdly I feel more sorry for the one who pulled the trigger on Kirk and for the trauma it may have caused to the people watching him get shot…
I have to give this some time and some thought. What it means and what slippery slope I could be stepping on inadvertently. I am sad that we are in this bizarre pressure cooker where people become so harsh and extreme that it leads to someone else believing taking them out is the only answer. So I guess I can mourn the collective condition without having to shed a tear for Kirk. But I do want to stay mindful. I don’t like feeling so blank when it comes to death. Anyone’s death.
Ok next.
PS Due to overexposure and disproportionate coverage and engagement by 09;57 I was completely over Kirk’s death, and expect to have forgotten about it by my third cup of coffee today…
Past The Point Of No Return
I realise now there is no going back.
No going back to concrete blocks, to places where people pave over the tiny patches of earth they own. The endless rows of uniform pavement tiles - out of convenience. Because there is no time and there is no desire for sticking hands in the earth, touching leaves, pruning trees.
There is no going back to the insane pace of a modern “successful” life where I turned every thing in my life including myself and everything I have and do and think into “goals”, turning myself inside out chasing things I didn’t believe in.
There is no going back to pretending my belonging can be bought or borrowed, that my identity is linked to a false narrative of national pride of a country that sells out those who still raise their voices
There is no going back to believing my worth depends on a wardrobe I update season by season adding to the landfills of soulless “style” and discarded efforts, wasted resources
There is no going back to shrinking myself like Alice squeezed down a rabbit hole to fit into rooms that thrive on domination, where silence is mistaken for complicity, and quiet cruelty for competence.
There is no going back to fashion magazines and glossy pages that once promised a tired and torn teenager dreams of escape but turned into vain banality, to empty acadamic rhetoric and the theatre of politics where hollow words are traded like currency
to voting in governments that stand by as genocide is live-streamed.
There is no going back to believing home is a life long mortgage, reserved for those who can proove longevity to insurance companies who invest their profits in the deaths of others elsewhere…
when I have learned home is the scent of pine resin, the chestnut trees, the fig trees, the soil under my broken finger nails, the dogs running free across the meadow… splashing in the forest springs… my cat galloping and chasing crickets…
There is no going back to speed, noise, pollution, panic, the relentless and inane striving for things that never ever deliver on the promise of the happiness
That already houses in my body and my soul
Of only I took a minute to shut up and listen, to slow down and feel, to do nothing but watch clouds morph into shapes no artist ever truly committed to a canvas.. knowing in that split second only my eyes captured that exact image.. and no one ever will again…
There is no going back when I have tasted the slow and steady rhythms of carrying wood, picking mushrooms and collecting hazelnuts,
the tenderness of planting a black walnut seedling,
the radical presence of simply breathing.
There is no going back to
forgetting who I am.
Ok, next.
In “All the Way to the River,” the best-selling writer dilutes a powerful story of love, addiction and loss with saccharine self-indulgence. (NYT)
Cultural Consumption
I am bored. Not the good kind of bored which is a sign my body is finally relaxing (safe!) and the monkeys in my mind are snoozing instead of fighting over the last banana
I spent most of my life “in fashion”. It started in primary school. It ended when I moved to Transylvania. I am bored with fashion. Can’t remember I looked in vogue for anything other than my horoscope.
Now the same thing is happening with “culture”. I am bored with that too.
I understand that all the essays on Taylor Swift and Elizabeth Gilbert are about much more than just these two women. They’re cultural “containers” into which anxieties, resentments, and desires about womanhood, creativity, capitalism, and authenticity get poured.
And with seven years of cultural studies tucked into my various degrees, I still can’t be asked to read any of it.
This is not just down with me being a bit depressed or too preoccupied with things like cancer and genocide.
In general I have somehow stopped finding relevance in any of it.
There is an obvious struggle over feminine authority, who gets to speak, to inspire, to lead. We all hunger for genuine models of integrity, creativity, and depth but we keep getting served commodified icons instead (sorry Gilbert)…
But what is the point of getting stuck in a cultural loop where critique is mistaken for change, but in reality it often entrenches the very figures being criticised?
Are we being too self indulgent? This constant analysis when we should just back off from this hyper consumerism and calm
The fuck down….
Because I feel both Gilbert’s writing and Swifts music are things it consume… they don’t contribute anything to my life… Thing is, whatever words they choose, however “accurately” they describe their lived experiences, I don’t believe either of them, so I literally don’t buy it.
Same goes for picking them apart… each critical thinking piece however brilliant is still focusing and feeding the same shit… I won’t pay or spent time to be caught in a perpetual loop of mindless consumption….
Because even analysis itself can become consumption. Every hot take, every Substack essay, every cultural teardown is still another click, another unit in the attention economy.
It feels productive, but often it’s the same as buying the next shiny thing (hence my comparison to fashion and my boredom): it doesn’t resolve the underlying discomfort, it just momentarily soothes it.
There’s nothing wrong with analysing culture. That’s how meaning is made. But when analysis becomes compulsive it tips into indulgence.
We confuse talking about awareness with actually living differently.
I did cultural and media studies and write some
Stuff too when I first started Substack but I am
Bored with it. The exact same way I got bored with fashion….
Ok, next
Ik hou van jou
(Showing Margit how to write I love you in Dutch on our way back from hazelnut foraging)
I asked this question here almost a year ago.
The note itself was about something entirely different: I wrote it after reading one of Becks notes
Like Becks I found out after a decade that I was no longer cancer free.
I also was offered no treatment as I have a type of sarcoma that is non responsive to chemo or radiation. Surgery is no option due to its location and size.
The only decision I have left to make is the intervals between scans to see what’s happening. And even that I don’t know. My last scan was in may and if you ask me now when I will want the next one, my answer is: never.
I will link you to the post by Becks. The way she writes is so close to my experience. It brings up the same questions, stirs the same emotions. She really in her genuine way a voice so needed. So needed so we don’t shy away from asking the hard question. Show how brutal and yet beautiful life is.
Last night I couldn’t sleep and picked a movie I thought would be a Hallmark type easy to digest film. Instead it was a disaster: it tries to tackle terminal illness and living deliberately but packaged in the most confusing way… I am shocked it raked up a rating of 5,9 on IMDb
It really is so awful I can’t even begin to describe the dozens of things wrong with it. It’s like someone thought the cancer genre was a lucrative bandwagon to jump on, without having the emotional and intellectual bandwidth to do anything meaningful with it.
Girl falls in love with boy, boy is terminally ill, not speaking to dad, girl builds bridges, learns big life lessons, big dies (while never actually looking sick). It’s a master piece.
I did find it universally ironic that after having asked this question for almost a year; when do people stop or refuse treatment and why and how does this impact quality of life, - I am served a lukewarm response when trying to relax and not be preoccupied with this question…
I will leave this with the only line from the movie that stuck: “this treatment doesn’t help you love longer, it just makes you die slower…”
Ok, next…
PS Cancer is everywhere in media from tearjerker romances (A Walk to Remember, The Fault in Our Stars) to prestige dramas (Breaking Bad, The Big C), but it’s rarely interrogated how these portrayals shape public understanding of illness, treatment, and mortality. Would anyone be interested in me exploring that further? Or do we then enter in Lena Dunham style self indulgence?
Constellation of Gratitude
Being grateful for life will create a life worth being grateful for… or something along the lines… gratitude creates, gratitude heals… is what they say. Let’s start a brainstorm on gratitude. The way it’s presented in all healing and self development modules. Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer and Louise all have it on repeat.
Count your blessings says the Bible?
And what about Buddha? Be grateful for everything good bad ugly… because it is all the same it is all one…
In access consciousness the “rule” is: You can’t judge and reject and separate from what you are grateful for so gratitude facilitates oneness..
Joe Dispenza swaps cause and effect… be grateful first and then it will come… and then gratitude attracts abundance?
HOW GRATITUDE CAN BE BOTH GRACE AND GRATING
This is the first note I am keeping and will turn into a post for SULMUM
to be continued
Ok, next
I also wrote notes on comparing crime dynasties in film&tv (Sopranos, Godfather, Gangs of London) but I am not even sure why.