Sweetness from the Muck
She wondered what it was like to die. More specifically, she wanted to know what it felt like to want to die.
Was the urge similar to a dog chewing it’s bone? That deep, gnawing desire to pull apart the tube of rawhide into small shards that taste, smell and feel so good. Was it a pleasurable feeling?
Like the curious, playful husky obsessed with his bone, you too just can’t stop feeling the urge, the curiosity, the obsession with creating your own Fate?
Is this destructive force born out a brain loop so deep, so forged in dysregulated neurotransmitters or previous traumas that to get out would be as hard as getting out of the deep ruts created on a dirt road during sugar season in Vermont?
Ruts that grow so deep, that the trucks have no chance of getting out once in. Frequently stuck, the truck only getting forward movement by placing little rugs under the tires to get traction. Trucks can only go forward along the established path, until the graders get out, after muck season when the mud dries out and new growth emerges with white blossoming apple trees, bright tulips, and happy forsythia.
Ruts that form from 4x4s sliding on muddy brown dirt roads encircled by brown forests and never-ending grey skies, that lead toward the maple groves planted to harvest the Sweetness from the Muck?.
That grade A liquid Gold, the sap rising in leafless maple trees, the sweetness from the muck.
Is this the prize for thinking this way? Is wanting to die sweet — like oozy maple syrup? Are you stuck perseverating in a rut? Are these the tracks you want to leave on this Earth when you kill yourself?
She wondered if it could be culture and corporate greed driving the feeling of wanting to die. Perhaps it is from assaults by social media and a broken consumer culture capitalised on by Facebook as it tries to create perseveration with its notifications and conspiracy theories.
Or is this destructive loop of perseveration less nefarious and driven by hits to the head, brain changing infections, and random biology similar to the Alzheimer’s patient who walks — walking, walking, walking.
Granny must go, somewhere, nowhere, circles, experiencing brief lucid moments where she spats and screams at her nurses. Her purse clutched and raincoat buttoned up for the walk home, trying to escape the alarm connected to her ankle band. She only is trying to find home. Why won’t they let me out of the door? Where am I? How am I supposed to walk with this goddamn metal walker, why do they keep putting this metallic fuzzy green tennis ball footed piece of shit in front of me every time I get up to go home?
On the established path, stuck in a rut that goes nowhere and you can’t get out — is hanging yourself from the 2nd story stairwell bannister with an electric extension cord less painful or more?
Or was it the opposite? An absence, a gaping black hole of desire or purpose? No senses. Instead of being stuck on the established path, perhaps wanting to die was caused by a total lack of a path or Way.
Could this ungodly act be an effect of lack of desire? Like the absence of smell induced by Covid-19? One experiences no smell and therefore lack of taste and hunger. One can be so blind to passion, that it takes a week to even notice hunger has dissipated.
Thirst even goes away due to lack of eating salt. No hunger for food, therefore no thirst for life? No taste even for salt-packed Ligurian anchovies.
Life experienced outside the sensual realm, is it worth it? Walking around meeting quotas, never taking a sick day, going through the motions and looking pretty good from the outside, but inside tumbling along unheeding?
Is being aimless and unchallenged the catalyst? A lack of curiosity. No Way forward?
Questing to understand, she wondered if the felt experience of the last moments of life during the act itself would be so passionate, so great, that it would be worth it. Finally, a true experience in the senses as your body struggles desperately for oxygen kicking in your workout clothes for the final time. Taebo just couldn’t get you to that place.
With only a pedestrian understanding of the problem and it’s solutions, it was impossible for her to understand the feeling. Too much of this, too little of that. Who really knows?
But one thing became clear, what’s good for the goose isn’t necessarily good for the gander.
The established path vs no path require different approaches, but space to discover and the curiosity to explore seems a good first step on the Way.
Perhaps it is the Middlefork?
Or maybe the mind is like a house with many rooms. Each room has it’s own story, one may be finely decorated and well-heated and another may be a spider webbed attic with hidden dangers. Should we avoid the attic completely? Probably not, but it’s likely unwise to linger in a room that inspires self loathing, self destructive behavior, and tries to get at the answer to questions that cannot be answered.
Connect to Your Way — ->
💖Crave the Planet
By Morgan Fielder from CornholeEuropa.com.
Author profile: Morgan Fielder is an evangelist for play living in Germany raising two gorgeous girls, wife of a rebel, serial expat, and is actively involved in the German community through several organizations. Visit her community project at cornholeuropa.com to learn more.
💖Crave the Planet
