People love to hear me intellectualize; sometimes I think it’s the only thing they see in me. In some ways, it’s the only thing I have let them see.
I once wrote an essay about the perils of therapy culture, throwing out statistics left and right, and everyone in my Creative Nonfiction class drooled. “This doesn't sound like a student wrote it. You're brilliant at this blend of the academic and personal: that is your niche,” they said. I know they are right. I am good at being interesting and academic, but what they don't see is that I, like everyone, am tired.
I got everything I wanted from this smart, curated self I've built. I got admiration, validation, even some money. But what I want now is to feel my feet on the ground.
My favorite days are the days in which I wake up at 6 a.m. and sit outside and no one expects anything of me. I would love to give you a romantic image, a smart one, of me and my coffee sitting on a dock watching fog fall over a lake, but that is not the truth. Sometimes it is me and my laptop sitting at a picnic table watching the occasional dog walker cut through the center of my small brick-laden campus. Sometimes I only have my water bottle and my backpack with me because there isn't a separation between school, work, and the time I actually intend to enjoy, and I'm too anxious already to add coffee into the mix. But I am out existing in the world.
I could use this time to rip apart the education system or political polarization or the healthcare system or social media or dissect the loneliness crisis or the manosphere or bad poetry. Cynicism never has to admit when it's wrong. It's so easy to tell people you know how the world will end: they eat it up. But I think for a minute I must stop feeding the rationality monster and drop instead into being in the world– in this fucked up world. People love to complain about how fucked up it is in a million different ways, and I don't mean to tell them that war isn't bad, or suffering isn’t ghastly. I just mean to say also feel the air rush into your nostrils, listen to the rain outside or the birds. You do not have to judge them. You do not have to call the birds beautiful or be thankful for your breath, just experience it.
If you don’t know already, I am also a poet. Today, I would like to end with a poem I’ve written. Let me know if you want to see more poetry on the Substack.
Mortality/ Meditate/ Mediate “Walk on water or drown” —Hanif Abdurraquib eat shit or die or die from eating shit or die from drinking too much water it’s a slow burn we will all be killed by our bodies not yet though do you feel the way your shoulders hang off your spine curl your jaw relax your toes attend to that tightness in your chest only two decades old your body bulwarks against the world overwhelmed and undeserved of all modernity offers between Kant and the algorithm walking and drowning are cousins
Yes, please! More poetry! Your poetry is awesome! Very evocative! And thank you for sharing this amazing post!
FYI—I am here from a comment you made on someone else’s post! 😊💗
Favorite bit: “Cynicism never has to admit when it’s wrong.”