I wrote some of this a while ago when I was still thinking things over. Before I learned to think less. Before I learned to Tl:Dr self. Though, I will probably distill it again at some point into a novel or a poem or a single dolphin call.

The point is, we haven’t known what we haven’t known. Maya Angelou penned, “When we know better, we do better.” Yet, how often do we tell ourselves “Nah, don’t do that. Don’t be like that. Don’t go down in the basement!” and then do the exact opposite of instinct? We tend to fall back into someone else’s programming of how we should react, rather than understand ourselves well enough to know what motivates us, to know what it is that we truly are, individually and as part and parcel of Universe.

That may be a bit too philosophical. Let’s back up a bit:

Have you ever convinced yourself that something “Eh” was great, and then come to find out your first instinct was right and you’re stuck for another month with an ex in a relationship that just wasn’t working, but damn you were lonely. Yeah, I’m talking about me. Boredom is a B!tch, like the interloper in an orgy you didn’t really want at that particular moment, without protection of experience or autonomous consent. Trying to “find ourselves,” by looking outside our own sleeves is curious to me, though deeply human. I spent many years as an addict, a shadow, unwhole. Then “love” shows up and it gets all sticky, not in the good way. In a way that hurts, because what we’ve defined as “love” never quite seems to be enough, for anybody. This is why I use the word “agapē,” because, deep within, it ohms. But I made it through my own B.S, over and over and over again, and then at some point, I realized I’d had enough.

That month hurt, being with someone who wasn’t for me was physically painful, even if it was just temporary. So why was I doing it? What was the calculation of Return on Investment (ROI?) Not talking about money, or even time, as both those things tend to hurt my brain. We paradigmed systems of who we thought we should all be collectively. Then, we got very bored and annoyed and very loud about it and started telling other people who, where, what, how and when they were allowed to “Be.” No one seemed to know the “Why,” without an exorbitant, typically brimstone-and-coin fee that only covered the cost of the key that worked for one. No path is the same to become.

At 16, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. led me to find solace in Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, with a story of his fish stew eye. Just by mentioning his name somewhere, as I deeply love Vonnegut, I was willing to dive in. In “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Solzhenitsyn wrote as Denisovich once being served dinner and counted himself so joyful that he was one of the extremely rare few who got extra protein, a fish eyeball in his meal. He was in a Gulag in the Soviet Union for three years, which read quite a bit harder than what we know of as “prison” in a lot of the world. His crime? Criticizing Joseph Stalin, war criminal responsible for several atrocities, including multiple genocides. Over and over again, my brain read and saw and felt and heard the relentless marches, cried over visions of broken, blistery skin, the horrors of war… reading is like that for me, putting myself fully in to digest the gestalt of the whole: to understand “the point.” Thinking is like that too. I’ve learned since to think less, let go more. Become a better master of imagination. Breathe.

More than anything to me, the fish stew eyeball was everything. To be able to see something so random in such a bleak, violent place, and not see it as “luck,” but as what it is: sustenance needed, with a massive appreciation for the small things to enjoy. So, maybe I needed that month to save myself decades of being with another soul who “didn’t fit.” Maybe just by trying, I learned that sometimes when it deeply hurts, I don’t have to wallow in it, or allow someone else’s expectations to shape anything about it. I can accept that once upon a time, an ex almost lost an eye, I guilted self into staying where I didn’t need to be, and I learned more about what does and doesn’t work for me. And I vowed to not be driven by guilt, or anyone else’s voice leading my way.

Now, when things are hard and I’m bone-tired or frustrated, I think of that fish stew. I dive deep. I think of the fisherman, the deep blue of the ocean, the shape of his nose, like a hook, the rough-hewn boat he was in. I think about the cook, the noise of the kitchen as voices were silenced by oppression, though the pots and pans bleared in, livid in their noisome grief, rage and fear. I think of the person who slopped fish stew in Solzhenitsyn’s bowl. Mostly, I think of Solzhenitsyn himself, a soul who willingly spoke up, saying “What we are doing to each other is wrong.” A soul who knew who he was well enough, he could remain himself and still write out loud what we all know is wrong, even under threat of imprisonment or death. Broken people break people. It’s a process to “heal thyself,” though now I feel much Michier than I ever have before. This is my balance, my peace.

Then, I consider the singular eyeball. I imagine everything that it took to have that singular meaty eyeball beneath scale, broth and bone of stew. And I wonder, if Solzhenitsyn could find honey and marrow in that eyeball, find a way to survive years of being excommunicated from his own country, revered by so much of the world and reviled in the land of his birth home, then I, too, can lean into what nourishes soul. I’m not locked in a Gulag. Stalin has been gone a long while. So I think: I can survive, or better yet: I can thrive. I can push out what hurts, simply because that loneliness, boredom and relentless questioning breaks my whole, the essential being of me. I can see appreciation and empathy as strengths that led to bullying in my youth, though without it, I would have a very different voice. All because Vonnegut dropped a name and in picking it up, I got a lot more than a memory of Solzhenitsyn’s fish eyeball.

I found a pattern to my peace and a new way of looking at things. I discovered appreciation itself is a form of manifestation.

So, may we bless our own days, may we live outside our own walls.

May we sit together, nourished in this moment of Now, savoring every single bite of Wow that we create.

--

~Michy

I wrote some of this a while ago when I was still thinking things over. Before I learned to think less. Before I learned to Tl:Dr self. Though, I will probably distill it again at some point into a novel or a poem or a single dolphin call.

The point is, we haven’t known what we haven’t known. Maya Angelou penned, “When we know better, we do better.” Yet, how often do we tell ourselves “Nah, don’t do that. Don’t be like that. Don’t go down in the basement!” and then do the exact opposite of instinct? We tend to fall back into someone else’s programming of how we should react, rather than understand ourselves well enough to know what motivates us, to know what it is that we truly are, individually and as part and parcel of Universe.

That may be a bit too philosophical. Let’s back up a bit:

Have you ever convinced yourself that something “Eh” was great, and then come to find out your first instinct was right and you’re stuck for another month with an ex in a relationship that just wasn’t working, but damn you were lonely. Yeah, I’m talking about me. Boredom is a B!tch, like the interloper in an orgy you didn’t really want at that particular moment, without protection of experience or autonomous consent. Trying to “find ourselves,” by looking outside our own sleeves is curious to me, though deeply human. I spent many years as an addict, a shadow, unwhole. Then “love” shows up and it gets all sticky, not in the good way. In a way that hurts, because what we’ve defined as “love” never quite seems to be enough, for anybody. This is why I use the word “agapē,” because, deep within, it ohms. But I made it through my own B.S, over and over and over again, and then at some point, I realized I’d had enough.

That month hurt, being with someone who wasn’t for me was physically painful, even if it was just temporary. So why was I doing it? What was the calculation of Return on Investment (ROI?) Not talking about money, or even time, as both those things tend to hurt my brain. We paradigmed systems of who we thought we should all be collectively. Then, we got very bored and annoyed and very loud about it and started telling other people who, where, what, how and when they were allowed to “Be.” No one seemed to know the “Why,” without an exorbitant, typically brimstone-and-coin fee that only covered the cost of the key that worked for one. No path is the same to become.

At 16, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. led me to find solace in Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, with a story of his fish stew eye. Just by mentioning his name somewhere, as I deeply love Vonnegut, I was willing to dive in. In “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Solzhenitsyn wrote as Denisovich once being served dinner and counted himself so joyful that he was one of the extremely rare few who got extra protein, a fish eyeball in his meal. He was in a Gulag in the Soviet Union for three years, which read quite a bit harder than what we know of as “prison” in a lot of the world. His crime? Criticizing Joseph Stalin, war criminal responsible for several atrocities, including multiple genocides. Over and over again, my brain read and saw and felt and heard the relentless marches, cried over visions of broken, blistery skin, the horrors of war… reading is like that for me, putting myself fully in to digest the gestalt of the whole: to understand “the point.” Thinking is like that too. I’ve learned since to think less, let go more. Become a better master of imagination. Breathe.

More than anything to me, the fish stew eyeball was everything. To be able to see something so random in such a bleak, violent place, and not see it as “luck,” but as what it is: sustenance needed, with a massive appreciation for the small things to enjoy. So, maybe I needed that month to save myself decades of being with another soul who “didn’t fit.” Maybe just by trying, I learned that sometimes when it deeply hurts, I don’t have to wallow in it, or allow someone else’s expectations to shape anything about it. I can accept that once upon a time, an ex almost lost an eye, I guilted self into staying where I didn’t need to be, and I learned more about what does and doesn’t work for me. And I vowed to not be driven by guilt, or anyone else’s voice leading my way.

Now, when things are hard and I’m bone-tired or frustrated, I think of that fish stew. I dive deep. I think of the fisherman, the deep blue of the ocean, the shape of his nose, like a hook, the rough-hewn boat he was in. I think about the cook, the noise of the kitchen as voices were silenced by oppression, though the pots and pans bleared in, livid in their noisome grief, rage and fear. I think of the person who slopped fish stew in Solzhenitsyn’s bowl. Mostly, I think of Solzhenitsyn himself, a soul who willingly spoke up, saying “What we are doing to each other is wrong.” A soul who knew who he was well enough, he could remain himself and still write out loud what we all know is wrong, even under threat of imprisonment or death. Broken people break people. It’s a process to “heal thyself,” though now I feel much Michier than I ever have before. This is my balance, my peace.

Then, I consider the singular eyeball. I imagine everything that it took to have that singular meaty eyeball beneath scale, broth and bone of stew. And I wonder, if Solzhenitsyn could find honey and marrow in that eyeball, find a way to survive years of being excommunicated from his own country, revered by so much of the world and reviled in the land of his birth home, then I, too, can lean into what nourishes soul. I’m not locked in a Gulag. Stalin has been gone a long while. So I think: I can survive, or better yet: I can thrive. I can push out what hurts, simply because that loneliness, boredom and relentless questioning breaks my whole, the essential being of me. I can see appreciation and empathy as strengths that led to bullying in my youth, though without it, I would have a very different voice. All because Vonnegut dropped a name and in picking it up, I got a lot more than a memory of Solzhenitsyn’s fish eyeball.

I found a pattern to my peace and a new way of looking at things. I discovered appreciation itself is a form of manifestation.

So, may we bless our own days, may we live outside our own walls.

May we sit together, nourished in this moment of Now, savoring every single bite of Wow that we create.

--

~Michy