Everyone (in the USA) gives the French hell about rolling over for the Nazis, but they need to hear about the French Resistance and...
the Rosicrutioners.
It’s a fine line between a healthy obsession, and toxicity. Between frustration, drive, spite, desperation, and apathy. Between giving up, falling apart, figuring it out, breaking through, and continually spinning. Relapse, recovery, and sobriety, one or all of the above I’m told comes into play. But, maybe that’s just me...
Everything is made of small things. Electrons. Atoms. Nuts. Bolts. Screws. Prayer beads. Everything carries bits of something else. Nothing arrives fully formed. Everything starts as something other, becomes one thing and then another. Shifts. Changes, and then becomes something different yet again.
Somedays we push, and pull, and pry. Most days we blister and ache. We feel the weight of every failed attempt like sediment. Like coarse conglomerate. Immovable granite and bouldering clay. It's heavy. It's hard to carry. It's hard to move, but even a little bit goes a long way...
We "assemble a life from the usable fragments", Lewis Hyde says. Sacred relics of the wreckage, gathered and connected. We experience the world as wholeness when all our pieces have a space.
We collect the instances of what's expected of us. Air-quotes-normalcy. Air-quotes-conventionality. Air-quotes-respectability. In other unsaid words, side-eye-conformity. It’s the breakfast of champions, they say...