North American anxiety: 08 de enero de 2015
Yesterday I wrote Sawyer a long email about my life right now, and how I don’t want to go back to the states because anxiety and unsureness and uncomfortability (I know it’s not a word but it is now) are so apparent there. It’s so all-encompassing for me, and I was kind of transported back to that world for a while when Kate was here, because her mind is very North American, her culture is very North American. My culture is very North American!
I just realized that I don’t want to be a part of that world. Hay tanta ansiedad allá, y pienso que ese mundo es muy pesado. Ahora estoy aprendiendo cómo no tener ansiedad acá, porque es como si nadie tuviera ansiedad. For me, anxiety is a kind of inability to move comfortably through the world as someone without insecurities, or as someone that has insecurities (we all do, obvio po) but just disregards them, ignores them in a way. Recognizes them but doesn’t dwell on them.
I told Sawyer, as I told Raúl the other day, and as I emailed Kan today (my other half, Kana), that for me there are levels of uncomfortability in the states. The most extreme manifests itself in mental disorders, and the least extreme would be occasional anxiety or the feeling of being awkward.
And it’s all bullshit! It’s totally, completely, incomprehensibly bullshit. We create the concept of awkwardness in our minds when it is neither helpful nor useful. It’s actually quite hindering with regard to building genuine relationships, unless you bond with other people over your mutual awkwardness, which can be made into a joke and can be funny, but in all seriousness, it’s never something pleasant to experience.
Here there is no awkward, only “incómodo,” which is just a small component of a much more complex and sinister idea, something that is entirely fabricated by the unstable minds of men (and women), and seems to be so heavily laced into the culture of the USA.
I can see it clearly stemming from insecurity, unsureness, instability, fear, anger, jealousy. It’s so negative to me, I don’t want anything to do with it until I feel so strong that I can take it on without the fear of it entering insidiously into my mind and breaking me down secretly from the inside. It is very subtle and very hard to defend yourself from, because there are so many factors influencing it, so many manifestations, so much validity and realness that you and the people around you may invent when it doesn’t exist in the outside world.
So many people telling you that you should feel uncomfortable for behaving a certain way, reinforcing “awkward.” Those people are so fucked up, we are all so fucked up, and thank god I’m not in that dimension right now. I have slithered my way out through an invisible hole in the atmosphere, and the air feels much cleaner here.
The calm of just being, of letting the turbid waters of your mind settle into a placid, shining lake. You can even see the bottom through green-blue stillness and your own shimmery reflection, toes squishing into tan sand, a flicker of gray fish-flesh and rounded pebbles, subdued colors and indistinct murmurs in the shadows, your own mind the rustling of duck feathers, getting comfortable.
“Awkward” is a disturbance, a bird shot from the sky and plunging heavily into a once-serene scene, breaking the surface noisily, abruptly, stemming from the desire for death and power. Someone wanted that bird to die, someone created negative vibes for his own foreseen, potential benefit, and as it’s sinking slowly into the depths of mud and murk and tiny bottom-feeding bacteria, I wonder how we as humans can stop that negative death. Can we prevent it, or should we feel it fully, absorb it into the bloodstream and forget it and move on, change it into something else more productive?
Energy cannot be destroyed, only changed from one form to another. Maybe we should stop trying to prevent negativity and learn to transform it into something beneficial, something valuable, something worth experiencing. That death inevitably brings life to the creatures that will devour it, wet feathers and muscles torn away to reveal bloody flesh that in the end will nourish whatever is attempting equilibrio under the surface.
Your alma, twisting and turning over itself, spinning into spirals up and down, widening the gyre, friskily bouncing towards enlightenment and being distracted by the infinite exciting side quests on the way. You create your own mindset, you create your own peace, you create your own energy.