Lightening on the way to a work conference

The sun shines on his borrowed, highlighted copy of Angela Davis’s, Freedom is a Constant Struggle. They’ve been flying in a cloud since leaving Burlington, but the rays finally peek through above DC. He oscillates between reading and flipping through his phone during this first hour leg; a regular occurrence illustrating his difficulty in focusing and his mosquito attention.

Feelings of inadequacy splash in and out like the ocean waves, complicated by caffeine, turbulence stress, and the sight of those in authority, innate or state-given. The authority thing he’s still working out.

Jim Carry’s public display of his consciousness changes struck a chord with Wes. He recalls the quote about how Jim no longer experiences the world through Jim himself first-person, but as the universe experiencing Jim. He’s ego-aware and is able to separate it from his thoughts. Jim was much more eloquent, but the message got in, even if it has trouble getting back out. Wes has often thought that his own struggles rest on how he is too aware of his own mind. He knows his ego gets in his own way. When a kid, his thoughts mucked up the roadway from his mind to his speech and resulted in a stutter. The thoughts got out in front of everything and the mouth tried to keep up but couldn’t. However, knowing this didn’t solve it. He thought it would. He spent many nights reading about stuttering at the college library. This helped him understand what was happening scientifically and also gave him catharsis to name it. He never went to speech therapy and never really talked about this struggle so it was never named or othered or otherwise separated from himself. So Jim Carry’s ego death was a living example of someone who’s done it; fully separated their internal struggles from the self. He knows he’s read buddhism text relating to this exact thing, but the details aren’t there at the moment. He wonders if writing in the third-person will contribute to reducing his dependence on his ego?

Isn’t it interesting that clouds have substance? The plane descends and bumps and jerks through a blanket.

The Ben Folds Five line bubbles up, “She knows what she wants to believe.” He understands these concepts and connects with them, but has not achieved his ideal. He strives and grasps for this enlightenment.

Plane rides have gotten easier. Repetition has dulled the sweaty palms and increased heartbeat that liftoff and landing used to induce. The vague worries about being so high up without control have muted. He considers this corollary to enlightenment or a general overcoming - regular confrontation with the block shrinks the block. Then immediately thinks it a bit clumsy. A wave of inadequacy and doubt of making a meaningful connection like that crashes on the beach.

Killing time at a starbucks with a fresh kick of CBD and cold brew. The early blues music playing is particularly good. Peculiarly so. He notes it’s a strange setting to emit such eyebrow wincing grooves from an oppressed people. He cannot resist the occasional head-bob-face-pinch. He wonders how many within earshot connect with the loneliness of the blues via sound waves. Are they holding back bobbing along? Music has always been an avenue that short-circuited the over-the-top self-consciousness of being in public. He vibes and subtly undulates unabashed on a steel chair until something else tugs him away. Occasionally, he accesses a feeling or sense inside of a kinship with all people. This tends to happen in crowds that he’s not interacting with. It for some reason requires distance and closeness. To him, that kinship sense is his true self; a stripping away of conditioned individualism. It’s as real as rain.

Up in the air again and the David Foster Wallace essay audiobook will not work. The wifi reluctantly provided by United has a limited scope and does not include reupping spotify downloads. However, that ends up being a blessing, because there are a few stray podcasts on the device he may not have ever ended up getting to. With WFH (working from home) and there being few tasks at work that can withstand dialog in the background these days, he rarely podcasts anymore. This one though features an animist and an anarchist, and it is a banger. It’s a struck-by-a-bolt-of lightning moment of inspiration and venn diagrams. Being the sensitive-type, these flashpoints occur every so often. This one hit the following check boxes:

Then, three other terms Adam the animist prefers to use rather than gift economy:

When reminded of others like Sam the anarchist who do work nearby that he longs to do, it opens a possibility of that longing being realized. The collective food not cops, which Sam is a part of, has fed people in lunch Burlington behind the parking garage every day for the past four years, since the pandemic. That real, pragmatic effort is the source of the lightening. The generosity of others to go against the norm of not just ignoring the homeless but talking and sharing meals with them is too bright to look at. Similarly, across the lake, Adam continues to follow, or write rather, his gift story. He lives like a modern monk bringing an old farm to life while shunning money. He does the hard work of facing the awkwardness that is giving away goods from his farm to his neighbors and asks for nothing immediately in return. His work feeds on relationship and forges new ones under the premise of deep, subversive ideas rather than low-level conversations about the weather. The two are heroes; the magic of what they do is achievable. Wes jots down quotes, makes a to do list, and drafts three emails with the intention of connecting with a few others in the neighborhood doing similar work. He buzzes. This does not usually happen with pods. He considers that his flavor of fleeting attention and sensitivities require flashes of inspiration like this to carry-on. Maybe he has high ups that fizzle out compared to the slow burn of others. As the smoke clears he finds it hard to move on to another activity. Getting back into Angela Davis doesn’t work. Doom-scrolling offline doesn’t either. His self needs time to process. Or something. His unconsciousness demands it. The jolt has animated him. The flow of who he is was clogged with agendas, calendars, and family; his mind was muddy and stagnant and has been for god knows how long. The jolt flushes and clears the crap away. His body radiates life and he fully inhabits it.

I used to be a guy who was experiencing the Universe, but now I feel like the Universe experiencing a guy.”J.C.