Limits and endings
“Imagination and even sincere belief are never ultimately wrong.”
– Lewis Thompson, Fathomless Heart, The Spiritual and Philosophical Reflections of an English Poet-Sage
I can feel it.
I can feel the sense of disbelief creeping back into my life.
I can feel the need again to break apart the dominant narrative that has pervaded and corrupted my life.
Does this sound solipsistic?
Probably, but my praxis of late, for money or otherwise, has been shallow and ill-conceived. Truth is, I’ve done very little to expand my world-weary horizons, and have fallen into a morose, shallow pit of mindless extraction both of my soul and my way of being in the world.
If that sounds oblique what I’m trying to articulate is that I’ve been lost in a wilderness of my own cultural making or if I haven’t made it in the general sense of the modus operandi, I’ve not pushed hard enough to upend and upset the dominant narrative that abhors limits and endings of all kind.
And I know that my praxis has to develop beyond a few pith posts online and I need to leave my old life behind and go on the road – even if that isn’t literal in purview.
Changing tack for a moment, it’s no accident that I’ve quoted Lewis Thompson. His book is remarkable and I need to and will reread it. (As I type those words it’s sat right next to my Pixelbook.) If you don’t know anything about his life, you can read more about him here.
Anyhow, as to the rubric: I maintain, and not just because I can by the authority of absolutely no one, that we’re living in and through a time that abhors limits of all kind. If it were otherwise, I don’t see how we’d have backed ourselves into such a tricky corner by dint of the Anthropocene. As for endings, well, I’m quite sure that Mr Musk and a few others are desperately trying to lay to the ground the idea of ageing. Most likely they’ll invent some sort of eternity pill or at least something that gives us more time to live out our best lives possible. You know the thrum of the narrative, namely, ‘be all you can be’ and such similar tropes.
But, as I’ve said too many times, “everything costs friends”. More to the point, there might be a plurality of old people right now but certainly in my bailiwick, there’s a vacuum of wisdom. OK, perhaps I’m not looking hard enough or at all but it doesn’t appear that our young people are about to give up on TikTok in favour of spending time with old people to listen to, in their eyes, a set of old-timer stories which appear to have zero relevance to their lives.
I realise that I’m generalising like hell, but I’m determined not to lose track of my ancestors. How I do so remains to be seen but I can’t accept that historically we weren’t imbued with ceremonies, stories and remembrances of all kind and not just, as is the fashion now, to know (I think this debatable) our family tree. Another way of saying that is I want to know what it means to be at home in the world.
I accept that my brand of Substack shenanigans might not float your boat but if I can give you a clue to where my writing is headed, it’s to be found in the ability to wonder out loud, invite a more beautiful question and opine on what it might mean to be an ancestor worth coming from. Weave into the mythos death, dying, elderhood, the meaning of work, money, love and my love of words and you might get a taste of the outpouring that’s headed your way.
Take care dear friends of the midnight hour.
Blessings,
Julian