Thursday, March 26 2020
It dawned on me yesterday that 15 rounds is it. That’s all you get.
Okay.
Two rounds left.
Going the distance.
It’s not how you start but how you finish so let’s finish this thing strong. I’m ready.
Click boom bust, a swing and a punch…
Last night, in preparation for today, I took my balls out again. (Is that still weird or are you getting used to it by now?)
I was near the ocean in Ballard, a place where I was doing a lot of work before all of this hit.
My chest still hurt. Something weird still lingering there. So I put the first ball there, felt it sucking all covid out, and I saw fire, and life, bits of myself, sucked out with covid, with the crap of all of this. Yes, that’s right, you won’t survive without losing some of yourself.
Then I put the second ball to my throat, where my throat was hurting. I saw my throat open up and breath seep out into the air. Yes that’s right. You won’t survive without losing some of your breath…but you won’t lose your voice.
I breathe out through one ball and see flowers in a field, and then I breathe again, and see that they aren’t flowers but wild strawberries and then I’m seeing the ingmar bergman film. It says to me hold to the good, the beautiful…it doesn’t change, it always remains the same.
These two thoughts, this sense of loss and change and alteration of all things, and the call to follow the path of the beautiful and good, reverberated inside my head looking for space.
And then things made sense and I said okay. Yes.
I don’t know if anyone is reading this, or who is reading it, but if you’re someone who hasn’t been hit by this virus, or a time like this, what I can tell you is that shit is gonna change. In many, many ways. There are big changes, obviously — sitting inside all day, the economy cratering, people dying…but there other changes too. The whole world, all of it, over and over again, every day, something changes that has never changed before and may change in ways you absolutely do not expect.
Here’s an example:
A few months ago my wife and I, if you let us, if we had a little bit of lead time, if it was late at night and we were tired and had nothing else to do…man we’d get going on the rewards system some people practice at my daughter’s school. My wife is a teacher, she’s passionate about this stuff, I…as I think is safe to say is demonstrated here, am interested in just fucking doing things, going for it from my guts, and seeing where it head (Brandon you mean you didn’t stop and think…hmm…is it a GOOD idea to shout covid suck my balls and then build a website and share it with everyone? Fuck off asshole. And no I didn’t plan out that response either!)Well, together we’d get going on this rewards system and just let it rip. In my daughter’s music class, the teacher had little things she handed out to try to keep some semblance of order with boys who spend their days going nuts. Well, late at night, all comfy cozy, having read books on how to improve our daughter’s mind and keep her in a good (I mean ideal I mean educationally appropriate I mean best practices and strategies for growth…) place, man this was some shit…what the fuck are they thinking. Those sons of bitches. Our daughter is going to come home with some sort of factory device implanted where her brain used to be and every time she does something “right” her factory device will bing and then she’ll know she is making music, won’t she? Oh…she’ll know the notes…but WILL SHE KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO SING!
Yeah…
So about that…
Two days ago the music teacher, just out of the goodness of her heart and with love for all her students, set up a webcam, got behind a casio piano and for an hour or so broadcast herself singing songs like lean on me, the sun’ll come out tomorrow, and let it be. That last one had me crying. Tears of stoke and tears of joy and release and gratitude.
BING!
Hey Brandon, this is your brain speaking, we have some new input for you. That music teacher, she’s the fucking shit, okay?
Roger that brain, thanks!
That’s just one example. The changes continue. Some of them less positive, but no less important.
BING.
Hey Brandon, you know all of those people you consider friends? Well, maybe not so much. When the shit hits the fan and nobody responds, there’s clearly not a connection there bud and it’s time to move on.
Roger that brain, thanks!
On and on it goes. In subtle ways, in small ways, and all of them significant.
BING.
Hey Brandon!
What is it brain? I’m trying to go to the bathroom.
Sorry, but just thought you should know…oh. are you going poo? I didn’t register a signal to your butthole.
Goddamit, brain, I’m trying to poo in peace, can I do some things myself?
Well it’s just that seeing as stuff is changing so much, I thought you’d like to know that I went boop bap boop and think these are things now absolutely worth spending time on, they are absolutely valuable, in fact more valuable than ever, and this is the stuff you were doing before that you can put aside for awhile.
Thanks brain. I just want to have a nice shit okay.
Oh here, let me help. I can send a nerve signal to your sphincter and let it know it should loosen up, I can also…
Will you just shut up!
Okay. sorry. gonna think about what’s for dinner for awhile.
Fine. Fine. good. Talk to you later.
On and on and on it goes.
I didn’t even know who Andrew Cuomo was a week ago. I mean, I knew him. I knew he existed, but I couldn’t tell you what he looked like and I certainly never listened to him.
He said this this morning.
This is a moment that forges character, forges people, changes people. Make them stronger, make them weaker. but this is a moment that will change character, and ten years from now you’ll be talking about today, to your children or your grandchildren, and you will shed a tear because you will remember the lives lost, and you’ll remember the faces and you’ll remember the names and you’ll remember how hard we worked, and that we still lost loved ones.”
“But you will also be proud,” he added. “You’ll be proud of what you did. You’ll be proud that you showed up. You showed up when other people played it safe, you had the courage to show up.”
Wow. Okay. BING.
Thanks Andrew Cuomo. You’re the bomb.
see, see…see!
Change!
BING.
LOOK!
Everywhere. And when change is happening everywhere, you leave life as you know it and you enter a state of complete unknown. Like walking in a world as it forms. And right now, there’s no clear way out. Nobody knows what is going to happen. Nobody has a clue. If you get online and read five articles, they will all contradict themselves, in the article, and they will all contradict each other, and the smartest acknowledge this about the situation and themselves.
Things you thought you knew, that you had established, well they change again, all up backwards and sideways when hey wasn’t this locked down? Wait a minute! I thought we knew!
My head spun around and I got pissed off this morning when I heard Governor Cuomo say that perhaps isolation had been wrong, that quarantining may have led to more of a spread, that maybe next time they would do things differently. What? I said that ten days ago, and I bitched about it and then I said, no, I’m wrong, and now you’re saying I am right? What the fuck?
Get used to it. This is where we all are. In all of this. A state of unknown. Stanford scientists just came out and said that maybe we’ve overestimated the fatality rate by a factor of ten, which would make everything we’re doing stupid right now. Huh? Wait. but…
Nobody knows.
In this state of unknown, things change, and eventually, things show themselves.
So I put my balls away and I think about this for a bit. The trick it seems is to move forward and to recognize and hold to the unknown. To keep walking forward, to keep striding down my path, my road, the great journey and adventure that is LIVING and LIFE and love and stoke and joy and fuck all yes, while recognizing and holding to the unknown.
Holding to the unknown allows you to let change come and acknowledge it when it does.
Here’s another one…
We have two cats. Actually my daughter has two cats. Daisy and Daffodil. Daffodil doesn’t have a brain and there are no bings in his skull. Ever. He is a sweet innocent babe in the woods who spazzes out and breaks shit and loves my wife. Daisy walks around like she’s queen of the castle, her nose in the air, often a slightly disapproving look on her dumb face…but she loves my kid so I put up with her. A few times…when I’m at home alone with her…I’ve offered a few kicks at her, in her general direction. She hisses sometimes.
Well…yesterday…
BING…oh are you telling about the cat tower?
Yeah brain, I got it.
Okay! Sorry! I’ll BING myself not to interrupt.
Cool. brain.
BING. Okay I did it.
BRAIN. You interrupted again…
Oh jeez this is going to be…uh…well…
Anyway, I saw my daughter doing homework and saw Daisy on top of the cat tower we bought for our first cat, Juba. Juba was my boy, He used to sit on that cat tower and stare out at the world as if it was all his, and for all he knew it was…
So I see Daisy there and I go, I don’t know, there was just a BING, a change…well, you’re here now, we’re all here together. Okay daisy.
I try to play with her, and she, from experience thinking I might not be as cuddly as everyone else in the house, swats and hisses at me and draws a little blood.
Then I go, no, I’m playing, and the dumb cat figures it out and we have a little moment.
Change. Unknown. Heading out. Walking. Holding to the unknown.
In this state, the world is able to manifest itself, show itself, make itself clear. I am allowing my mind to remain open. Assumptions, ideas, old beliefs, they dissipate, it’s like meditation, but everywhere, all the time, all around you, in every waking moment and facet of your life. Always holding to that breath, bringing your mind back to that open place, as assumptions about things you considered locked down fade away and life in this moment presents itself. That is all of life now, that is the world. I now have the chance to see clearly, as things appear, to be in this moment, and in this place, and holding to the unknown and this state of mind I can take my balls, and take my soul, and take the best of myself, and all the beauty that I might have the chance or the opportunity to create — and move forward.
With each step, whatever no longer fits or works that showed itself once as significant or important fades away. Whatever appears that serves the beautiful, the good, the path, the journey, no matter what it has been before — well thank you so much and welcome.
Out in the world today I am seeing things I’ve never seen before. All of Ballard is closed up. The Market Arms has boards all over its windows. It’s even weirder online. Apparently a naked chick wearing a cowboy hat climbed on the bull in the financial district in New York. No doubt these changes are going to ripple out and spread and continue to alter life as we know it.
For now, I am holding to the unknown. Letting the assumptions drop. While I hold to the good, keep the standards where they belong, and move on.
And that’s that.
As for Covid…
Well…
I’m pummeling that asshole.
Tomorrow, one more round.
I pick my balls again.
I’m feeling better today, but the pain is still there, the ache of this time, the ache of this fight, the ache of this world.
So many horrifying and sad scenes. Already too many to list.
I put both the balls over my eyes, they’re hurting, hurting from everything that is coming over the lines…people dying in New York, doctors coming out of Mount Sinai calling it hell, biblical, worse than 9/11, kids are dying now, pictures of damaged lungs, a father a few months older than me dying and leaving six kids behind, Italy and Spain locked down and still people losing their lives in hallways — It’s blood, that’s all I see, just blood, my eyes fill with blood…so I put the balls to my eyes and there is blood, blood blood, running everywhere, blurring my vision, so much blood, I say suck it covid, and suck all the blood out, removing it all from my brain, my head — all of it runs like a river into the underground, the sewers everywhere– and what is left…there is nothing to replace this blood with — but more life.
Then I put on a nose and breathe out and the breath fogs and obscures the way, like a huge cloud, I’m trying to hold to the path, but it fogs up, with with each breath moving forward into mist.
I put the other nose on and another breath, and this one is a different color, a different light, bright orange and yellow, and it combines with the fog to make something beautiful — it is beautiful obscurity.
I see that as I hold to the path, it will be a pretty walk.