Your Imagination

You take your imagination for granted. We all do. We expect that if we close our eyes–or, fine, keep them open and keep reading–and think of a red-eyed tree frog, it will be there. And if you think of the best cannoli you’ve ever had, you might remember what it tastes like. Even blind people can imagine in color, though they might not use the same words we do.

Our imaginations are always with us. They’re a part of us, a real part of us, a projection of the complex neural networks driving your very ability to think, reason, plan that barbecue, pick an outfit, and code data entries. But we are no longer taught how to access the deepest parts of our imaginations because the deeper you go, the longer you want to stay. And that’s not helpful for the industrialists.

If the goal of school is to make hard-working consumers, a natural byproduct is the cultural desensitization to our innate imaginative capacities. Sitting in rows and drilling algebra problems promotes linear thinking. Your imagination is linear at times but mostly directionally confused–curved, bent, windy, cyclic, repetitive, traumatic, exponential, scary. More than that, explaining what’s going on in your mind is, well, almost impossible. That’s what I think makes a good writer.

Good writers can explain their imaginations in ways ordinary people–which is most of us, stop thinking you’re so special–can understand. They use metaphors and emotional turns of phrase to help us know, feel, and experience their minds, what they see when they close their eyes. It’s scary, going into someones mind. That’s why a good writer makes you feel safe but courageous, confident you know where you are while encouraged you want to go further this time, into the darkness that few imaginations have gone before. Good writers can break the Overton windows that keep our minds at bay and burst into new realms of consciousness, realms that might be worth staying in.

That’s exactly why there’s no such thing as a good writer. We’re all bad writers because we can never accurately explain what we imagine. We can only get close with a metaphor that rhymes with our thoughts.

No, there are no good writers. And if there are, they don’t waste their time trying to write. They become artists.

Skyline

The best view
of
the Philadelphia
skyline
at night
is either the Spring
Garden Street
Bridge, coming
South on
I-95,
or my rooftop, two miles south and
three floors up of center city.
The worst place to view the
skyline is on top of the
Comcast
Technology Center,
a hundred forty-seven
feet taller and more impressive
and newer than the old Comcast
Center, a champion of its day
but too short to outlast today’s
builders. The view from
heights like this
must be
lonely,
brisk
even on
summer
nights.
I’ll
forfeit the fight for
tallest building and
spend my time
building
something
that lasts—
a gift for others.

Finding God in All things

What is a mystical experience?

They typically refer to encounters with something that cannot be described by our language, often involving an encounter with the divine, a deepened awareness of the interconnection between all things, and perhaps even a return to the “source” of existence. They have been around for a long time and typically are regarded as spiritual or religious in nature. They have not been studied much by science.

Participants in studies at John’s Hopkin’s University Center for Psychedelic Research report that high enough doses of certain psychedelic compounds (namely, psilocybin) produce mystical experiences in psychedelically naïve participants. In these events, participants describe an overwhelming sense of unity, oneness, and interconnection within the world, both seen and unseen. They often cannot describe what the experience is like (the literature refers to this quality as ineffability). Still, many people are transformed by the experience for an enduring time (this is called transience). These individuals, though they were merely participating in a research study, walk around with more reverence for the world–they see things in a way they haven’t seen them before, and their behavior changes as a result. (I heard about these studies from the man who conducted them in this Jordan Peterson Podcast).

When Saint Ignatius of Loyola was meditating on God’s love on the banks of the Cardoner River, he, too, endured a mystical experience. He, supposedly, met God. One of the key takeaways from his experience was the dictum “Find God in all things” where he encouraged believers to extend their understanding of sacredness outside of churches and into the created world, for everything can be inevitably and undeniably traced back to God. he also reasoned that this God he loved and encountered by the river in a wholly ineffable way must be the source of all goodness, an idea perpetuated by his predecessor in faith, Thomas Aquinas.

Aquinas was the most prolific Catholic theologian and natural philosopher in history, setting the groundwork for the bulk of the philosophically sound Catholic tradition. After being nicknamed a “Dumb Ox” in primary school and proving his dedication to become a priest, he wrote ferociously for most of his life, often dictating to multiple scribes at once for different books. Towards the end of his life, he, too, had what can only be described as a mystical experience in a chapel. After his encounter with God, he said the famous line about the massive literary cannon he contributed to the faithful: “It is all but straw.” He never wrote again, save a few letters.

How can there not be a connection? I can’t help but think that this “Finding God in all things” idea of Ignatius is the same interconnectedness the psilocybin participants experience. And I can’t help but wonder about the transience of Aquinas’s encounter–to never write again, even though that’s what his life’s work during his time as a Dominican. His entire contribution to the intellectual tradition of humanity, all but straw. To never write again is something I can’t comprehend yet.

There’s a connection here. I’m convinced. These things have the substance and power to change the fabric of our society. This is why we must tread lightly and continue fighting the good and faithful fight towards legalization and curious study. Maybe, in time, we will find out some answers that not only satisfy our minds but our spirits.

For now, let’s try to Find God in all things. That’s ALL things, not just things that are convenient.

The Garden

What is mulch but a reminder
of who we’ll become—
decaying life embalmed
in brown dye, the rest
of the world looking on.
Something once beautiful
is now dead, petrified
for appearance and vanity.

They can’t even let trees die
without an assembly line.

Still, in the midst of sadistic
beautification is something
to hope in, for dyed and dead
trees transform the landscape
so perennials can sing louder,
maybe even attract more bees.
What is now dead makes
the living world more vivid.

We did not plant the garden
but we can help it grow.

All-day uniform

If you didn’t go to Catholic School growing up or wear a uniform to school, this won’t make sense to you. If you did, I’m about to unlock a memory you didn’t know you had.

There were days in grade-school and high school, usually in the winter, when I would come home from school and not change out of my uniform. I would keep it on, to watch TV, do homework, eat dinner with the family, and even play video games. There was something uplifting about those days. They almost made me feel accomplished.

I had a couple of those days last week. I wore my teacher’s uniform (button down and khakis) for about 14 hours, from 7:00am to 9:00pm because there just wasn’t enough time to shower and change. Just like when I was a kid, I felt productive, accomplished, and even encouraged.

I went to bed tired but relieved that the next day was Friday.

I never understood why teachers complained. How hard could it be, getting summers off?

Add up all the hours teachers work in a year and it’s equal, if not more, than a typical 9 to 5. Teachers just work 10 hour days every day, and on the weekends. You could average it to 12 hours each work day, easily. And this doesn’t even include planning and preparing in the summer.

50 weeks of work each year x 40 hours per week = 2,000 hours of work each year

180 days of work each year x 12 hour per day = 2,160 hours of work each year

The next time somebody says, “Yeah but teachers have it easy because they have off in the summer,” you have my permission to remove yourself from that conversation before your only option is to resort to violence.

Turn

I’m excited for everything in my life. Except death.

I’m excited for everything in my life. Accept death.

Boycott Krispy Kreme

Krispy Kreme is giving one free donut for the rest of the year to anybody who shows proof of vaccination. People are celebrating this. But what if Marlboro gave a free pack of cigarettes to anybody who shows proof of vaccination? Would we be concerned then?

The reality is Krispy Kreme is running a marketing campaign to make money. They want you in the door with a free donut not because they’re benevolent but because they want you to spend more money. Some companies are leveraging the pandemic to better people’s lives. Krispy Kreme is using the vaccine as a way to make more money for themselves–at the sake of your health.

But they don’t care about your health. It’s clear COVID disproportionately affects people who are overweight and obese, as well as individuals with diabetes, but we’ve yet to have a public conversation about metabolic health. Hand sanitizing, masks, social distancing, and vaccinations are the only topics allowed.

By getting a free donut, you are enabling industrialists to take advantage of your health and the health of our population for their own personal gain. It’s a bad precedent, a dangerous precedent. I don’t think you can be serious about wanting to change this broken system of capitalism-gone-wrong and get a free donut at Krispy Kreme. It’s one or the other. It’s principle or submission.

Krispy Kreme would do more good by giving a free donut-a-day to people who are homeless, hungry, dispossessed, or in financially challenged positions. Or perhaps they could take the money for all these free donuts and start a fund for people who need help. But they didn’t do this. Because they want to take advantage of your personal medical history for their own short-term financial gain.

Do not go to Krispy Kreme. We cannot continue to enable this system.

P.s. Donuts are not bad. I love donuts. Making free donuts an incentive to get vaccinated (or vice versa) is a fundamentally flawed, unethical principle.

A Fermata

There is a moment
before your world ends
and after you thought
it would that everyone
takes a breath, deep
and quiet. You hear
birds chirp and kids play.
It breaks your regular
existential delusion
and nudges you back
to here, the place you
never left, your home
now and always,
shared with beasts not
of burden and mirages
as real as you, or more.

You are more than
what worries you
but less than the world
in which you reside—
you live in it and it in you,
a perpetual, gentle reminder
that you are here and here
is good and you are, too.

You are a note
waiting to be played
in a song no ear
has ever heard.

Walden

Henry David Thoreau was not revered or well-respected in his lifetime.

Waiting in line

Thanks to Amazon and Doordash, we don’t wait in line as much as we used to. It’s no surprise, then, that when I approached the vaccination clinic at the Convention Center and saw a line that wrapped around an entire city block (ironically, not socially distanced) I was upset. My line-waiting tolerance had dwindled to nothing, as was true for the rest of the Philly faithful.

Sorry, my writing is pretty bad right now. The vaccine has me a little under the weather. Basically, I was commiserating with a man in line who ended up being a graphic artist who designs art books. I’ve been planning an art book project for Fr. McNally’s art. Some other guy chimed in and suggested I make an instagram page to get the word out. Oh, and he knows somebody in the administration at SJU.

What’s the point? It’s a small world, and I wouldn’t have met some important people if I didn’t buck up and wait in the line (against my better judgement).

Call it serendipity or call it divine providence. Life is pretty cool.