back from kairos... my annual trek out towards the innards... and this morning my head is spinning... i was fine last night... when i said to a friend... "i'm feeling pretty good... not wiped out as usual..." but then i slept in... trudged down to breakfast and laundry... and stuff... kind of sluggish... the morning after... but i've got no regrets about going... despite the mountain of paper i've got to move this weekend... despite... other stuff...

there's a spot in the narrative of frederick douglass where as a young slave boy he is being prepared for his first trip to work in the city... he spends three days in the creek washing off "the plantation scurf"

I spent the time in washing, not so much because I wished to, but because Mrs. Lucretia had told me I must get all the dead skin off my feet and knees before I could go to Baltimore; for the people in Baltimore were very cleanly, and would laugh at me if I looked dirty.

i was thinking about how i get like this myself... in a way... my soul... how the day-in day-out business of school and life produces tough layers of dead... something... whatever it is, it's a natural barrier, protection... reduces sensitivity... of course, we all say, it's not good to be too sensitive... "don't be so sensitive" we all say... one time or another... that way it won't hurt so much when the world chafes... runs us over... reaches in and pulls out our guts... funny... and useful... that we get so numb... or i do... at any rate

one of my brothers greets me this morning, "welcome back to the real world." and i wonder... the real world... i was just thinking that that's where i'd been for the past three days... guess i was misled... in the real world people don't talk truly... in the real world we get to pretend that everything is hunky-dory fine... just fine... really great... good... pretty good... when it ain't... in the real world we can go our own ways... as if the sky weren't burning... as if that kid weren't already living in a hell... of his own or someone else's making... in the real world we get to ignore the holes we've dug or been cast into... we get to fill them... forget them... with busyness, booze, weed, empty sex, self-destructive energies, electronic devices, empty words... all our addictions... "only god can fill the hole"... "only love can fill the hole... and keep it full..." sounds so trite... trips off the tongue so merrily... better to to say nothing at all...

kairos is a real thing... opens a window on... complexity... for most of us... the bright dark miserable miraculous messy life... we live... a reminder about how easily we can become lost... forgetful of the most important stuff... blind (sometimes willfully) to someone's pain... and yet... we're masters of disguise...

some of us are just plain invisible... and like it that way... personally... i prefer a touch of translucency to the opaque... but don't want to disappear... mostly i'm just (willfully) blind and afraid... to see... so unskilled at response...

back home now... what becomes of the ideals... french smartypants jean baudrillard says...

The local is a shabby thing. There's nothing worse than bringing us back down to our own little corner, our own territory, the radiant promiscuity of the face to face.

i think this is what my brother means by "the real world"... the shabby place where everything is difficult... where the problems resist solutions... where inspiration gets lost... where good intentions stumble... but there's still much hope in all this mess... we're here... i'm here... and still susceptible to love's mad craft... after three days in the creek...

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

Franz Kafka

 

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