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Thursday, May 29, 2008
I ALWAYS SAY YES
Glass Candy
I Always Say Yes 12"
Troubleman : 2007
[Buy It]
WE LIVE IN AN EXPANDING UNIVERSE
Kelley Polar
I Need You to Hold on While the Sky is Falling
Environ : 2008
[Buy It]
SOME SIGNS ARE GOOD
DiskJokke
Staying In
Smalltown Supersound: 2008
[Buy It]
This morning, while walking through a small rural town called Hillsborough, I noticed a flyer on a telephone pole. There was nothing particularly eye-catching about it, and it was amid many others, so I'm not sure why I noticed it. It said at the bottom, in a neat but somehow childish hand, "Go To 114 North Wake St. Hillsborough." That's all it said. The rest was blank. At first, I thought maybe the recent rain had washed away the picture or words that seemed to be missing. But the legend itself - "Go To 114 North Wake St. Hillsborough" - was unblemished, and if the rain had washed something away, it had done an excellent job of it. Not an inky ghost remained on the pure white expanse. Without context, the legend was obviously mysterious; it also seemed more like a command - or perhaps an offer - than an instruction.
It just so happens that I was having a "bad day" this morning. I'm in the middle of some heavy deadlines while I try to move into a new apartment, and the world felt very close upon me, heavy on my shoulders. I was supposed to be taking the week off from Moistworks to work on this stuff, but felt compelled to write about this today. I was indulging in my anxiety over the demands of the week, and feeling insufficient to them. Our higher selves meet these anxieties like warriors, looking at them squarely and seeing them for the chimerical indulgences they are, but our lower selves wallow in them. My lower aspect was upon me today, and somewhere, my higher nature was laughing at me scornfully. As I pondered the flyer, I was thinking about all of this and about a couple quotes I've carried around in my head like sigils lately. One is from "Don Juan"/Carlos Castaneda: "We are men and our lot is to learn and to be hurled into inconceiveable new worlds." The other is from "F."/Leonard Cohen, from the novel Beautiful Losers: "Who am I to refuse the universe?"
As I contemplated the blankness of the flyer, paired with its mysterious imperative, the blankness began to seem like a portal. I felt as if I could enter that blankness, penetrate it, and come out on the other side, into a world richer and more intuitive than the one I found myself in this morning. A world where people grope and flounder only until the inevitable moment when they discover a message on a stone or an arrow in the clouds that will plunge them headlong into a higher purpose, a journey or quest. A world in which the human purpose is not to conquer or succeed, but simply to notice, to explore, to experiment with the possibilities of existence. This story I'm telling sounds like literary invention, a metaphysical detective story out of Auster or Borges, which, if you know me, you know are among my favorite kinds of stories. But this is not literature. I'm just talking about something that happened, a lesson I received, which, as we'll come to shortly, was actually more of a reminder than a lesson, a reminder I feel compelled to pass on, because it is so obvious and true and easy to forget, for me and for everyone.
When I talk about learning and lessons in this post, I'm going to be talking not about the acquisition of data, but of true learning - of getting to know and protect the bent of one's nature in a constructed world designed to straighten it and render it homogenous, subordinate to authority, harmless to tyranny. In this constructed world, which divides our existence into actions that "matter" and actions that don't, and where the standard for "matters" is almost wholly socio-economic, and where more and more vectors of potential get relegated to the "doesn't matter" column all the time, learning is less like gaining new knowledge than remembering old knowledge, unlearning.
Let me be clear - I didn't think the flyer was there specifically for me, and while I fantasized that if I found the address, there would be further instruction - another flyer, or some other cue - I didn't really believe this would be the case either. What mattered here was choice, and my awareness of it - here was a portal indeed, a chink in the armor of the constructed day I could step through, if I chose to, and perhaps tease out some thread in the world that would have otherwise remained concealed. If it was mine or for me, it was only because I noticed it and chose to honor that noticing.
I submit that these markers, guides, and portals are all around us, but we're so used to saying "No" to the universe that the always-latent "Yes" seldom occurs to us. I know that I miss the "Yes" frequently, even when I'm looking for it, because the "No" is automatic and easy and culturally approved and reinforces certain comfortable certainties about being in the world, and that accepting the "Yes" can be a huge demand, because it makes us direly aware of all our "No's" and calls us to account for our lives, the deadening routines to which we suborn ourselves, the inestimable waste. As I mentioned, I'm always looking for this "Yes" space, although sometimes, even when I find it, I'm not brave enough to accept it. And I was having a bad day, the kind of day you'd be glad to walk out of and into a world of clarity and purpose and chance. "All right," I said, as I stood in front of the flyer. "I'll go." Who am I to refuse the universe? My lower self muttered in my ear: "You've got too much work to do today to go traipsing off on some meaningless quest!" But I shut him up. What's work when you've been given a mission? I wanted to pursue a logic entirely different from the numbing rote of media-consumption and money-generation, and here was the world saying, Well, what's stopping you?
And so I went. Hillsborough is a small town, where many of the residents are lifers, and I was surprised and admittedly intrigued when no one I asked had heard of North Wake Street. I was prepared to go home and get on Google Maps - how compelling would it have been if this address simply didn't exist? - but as I was preparing to do so, a man on the street said he had a vague intution that it was to the north. So I drove north, and half a block away, there it was - Wake Street. 114 North Wake St. turned out to be the address of the Forrest-Cheek House (built 1901), or so a white plaque out front said. (Hillsborough is very proud of its historic houses and many of them have these plaques.) It was a T-shaped Victorian cottage, with two porches and bay windows. There was nothing at all exceptional about it. I sat in my car in front of it, feeling conspicuous, parked on the roadside in this idyllic residential area, the kind of space you either live in or pass through, but where someone who simply wants to sit on the roadside and look is met with suspicion or hostility. The kind of place that surely has arcane street-parking rules known only to the citizens who live there and exert influence over the space. I thought about knocking on the door, but that didn't feel right. What would I have said? "Hi, I'm here!" Maybe I just didn't want to discover the mundane explanation for the flyer, which surely existed. I looked around for signs or cues, but nothing stood out. Ultimately, I decided there was nothing for me there. I wrote down "Forrest-Cheek House" in my notebook to see if the Internet knew anything interesting about it (nada, it would turn out), and drove away with a mild sense of disappointment.
But that disappointment quickly faded as I contemplated what I'd found, which was the emphatic awareness of everything I'm telling you about now. The point of it was never finding, but searching. I'd said Yes to the universe and had been rewarded with a renewed sense of my agency in the world, and of my ability to construct and pursue a logic that, shorn of everyday context, was no more artifical than the logic of capital that I pursue every day, and which, moreover, was mine. I embarked on a self-defined quest through the catacombs of chance that felt good and right and worthwhile not in spite of, but because of its pointlessness. I was pointedly reminded that being is not as circumscribed as we're taught, that in fact it's a grand experiment for which we're free to devise our own rules, locate our own values. In fact, my superficially abortive quest came to full fruition in just one move, which was the act of acceptance - this lesson or reminder was its ultimate end. I didn't find another flyer there, but I found myself, simply being; my higher self, who is endlessly interested in the world, and who never reduces it to thin certainties, waiting for me there. I felt blessed to have been given this reminder of the always-latent yes at a time when I sorely needed it. The final step seemed to be passing this reminder on, which I'm doing now. I invite you to follow signs. Chase intuitions. Decipher clouds. Spend an afternoon gathering small stones and then painting them different colors, for no reason other than that it's possible to do so. Remember what you already know. Wherever you end up, you'll find yourself waiting there.
Maybe you're at home today, engaged in some kind of routine, and maybe it'll occur to you, "I should go take a walk, but I'm too busy." And then maybe you'll hear, in that moment or near to it, a voice on the radio or television saying, "I should go take a walk" or "I need to get outside" or something that echoes your own intuition, and you'll say, "What a funny coincidence!" and think nothing more of it. I invite you to say Yes to that coincidence. And maybe then, on your favorite walk, you'll pass by a certain lane off the main road, which falls away into shadow and disappears around a bend, into trees and foliage. Maybe that lane has always been seductive to you, maybe every time you pass by it you feel compelled to turn off the main path and walk down it, to find out what lies at its end, beyond the known. Maybe you haven't ever done this, because the lane has a "private property" sort of feeling. Maybe it even has a sign. But maybe this time, you'll remember that ownership of the land itself is a lie, and maybe you'll feel a bit of anger at this awareness, how so much of your world is drastically diminished and partitioned off and disallowed by these rules that someone made a long time ago, without your consent. And maybe this time, you'll ignore that cop-voice that's been implanted in your brain, and listen to your intuition, or the siren song of the path and the rustling leaves and the deepening shade itself, and you'll turn down that lane. You won't be afraid because you know your intentions are pure. Maybe at the end of it, you'll find an angry land owner, wanting to know why you're on their land, and maybe you'll explain to him what you're doing - just looking - or maybe you'll simply choose to turn and walk away, satisfied in what you've seen and understanding that you aren't beholden to this person and his anger, because anger is an indulgence, and you are strong. In fact, I'm thinking of a very specific lane in the neighborhood where I live now. As soon as I finish this post, I'm going to go and walk down it, before I leave this neighborhood for good in a couple days. I won't be afraid to do this because my intention is clear, and I'll know that somewhere, some of you are exploring your own forbidden lanes, and we'll be strengthened together in our resolve to honorably incise the arbitrarily forbidden.
And maybe, exploring our individual lanes in one spirit, we won't find an angry or perplexed land owner waiting at the end. Maybe there'll be an abandoned house or shack or barn, canted and warped with years of neglect, beautifully overgrown with weeds and untended gardens, deeply encrusted with a forgotten history waiting to be discovered. Maybe the light will slant down just right, so that the abandoned house seems strange and familiar, like something we're on the verge of remembering, or a dream, and maybe the old screen door will be hanging ajar, and the sun will be gleaming on the doorknob. And maybe there'll be a stern NO TRESPASSING sign in the broken window, but we'll recognize it as a false sign put up to obscure our view of the real ones. What you do now is up to you, because you're playing by your own rules at this point. But maybe, just maybe, we'll reach out as one, and open the door.Labels: brian, signs
posted by Brian
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