Going into the holiday I found myself sad. Sad at the realization that there weren’t any invitations to attend gatherings (save for one) coming my way. The contrast and contradiction of this melancholy is comical given that I wasn’t inclined to attend anything and had my sights set on a quiet day in an empty house. I stirred and went on a mellow bike ride staying primarily on paths. During the ride I visited areas close to people who may be available, a gesture of impersonal interaction and a good sign that I was craving connection.
I then went to Fort Lewis and biked around the empty campus stopping to spread a vial of my mother’s ashes in the four directions with acknowledgements to the eternal and the physical. I approached this half-baked ritual almost as a totemic means to give myself permission to attend the college, seemingly the act was a sad self-negation, one of deference to a historical narrative I have allowed myself to be controlled by for most of my life. Despite my mother’s acquiescence to death,I continue to chain myself to the conditioning she bestowed upon me. It’s like donning an illusory garment which, when worn for a long enough period of time, becomes a heavy drapery of affect and perception veiling reality, which inherently is burden free. During the “ritual” I found myself weakly hoping that someone was observing me. My mind fell into a narrative around the casual implications being witnessed could have on potential future interactions; I was desperate to effect a hypothetical public perception of myself in some non-existent future. The exercise was 75% vanity and 25% bumbling intention. The chains I’ve chosen to drag are a great example of how codependency lingers even after the other party is dead.
From the college I rode to the cemetery where I meditated at the grave of a deceased spiritual teacher. I asked for support in seeing the underlying magical condition of reality again, said that you, and again hoped someone might notice the “noble” act I was engaged in. A sense of self-sacrificial pride and indolent piety surged through me as I rode out of the cemetery. While these acts are in line with who I believe myself to be, the quality of resoluteness and intentionality were extremely wanting. Perhaps the purpose and value of these ceremonious activities lies in this chance for reflection…
From there I headed home. I made dinner, connected with some people I care about, and then got the notion to make tea from the three year old bag of dried mushrooms I had been toting around and repetitively forgetting. The dosage was probably 3.5 – 4 grams and I was unsure of the potency given the age of the mushrooms. I made two cups and drank them with a 3rd cup on reserve, to be consumed 1 – 1.5 hours later (which I later chose to pour out). I can confidently say that I underestimated the power of the old mushrooms. I was swallowed into the experience… most of which is fragmented and foggy at best. I laughed, cried, and physically expressed myself in unique ways that provided a sense of voice and freedom of agency. I circled around the notion of how to fix my intrapsychic disdain and kept pulling myself out of sophomoric circular reasoning to land (again and again) at the need to think less and act more. To focus on the inflection point directly before action to assess the skillfulness and then to decisively step through the threshold. The irony of this inquiry is that I had to come back to the statement “ACT” by way of wrestling my attention away from dithering pontification no fewer than five times. Oi vey…
I spent time considering how “Nick Rebar” does not matter. How the energy spent ruminating over who I am and how the implications of past, present, and future actions will impact a reputation (or public perception of me) is wholly foolish. It occurs to me that once again I approach life from a place of subservient deference, giving my power and sovereignty away at the drop of a hat. The wasted mental and emotional energy I expend worrying about how the world perceives the moniker and symbol that is “Nick Rebar” seems to be a subtle manifestation of the baggage I’ve carried as a result of my childhood and ultimately represents an exhibition of my lack of skill in validating myself by internal means, a concept I would assume I would be better versed in given my time spent in solitude, personal amusement, and exploration as a child. Coping mechanisms employed in opposition to the environment of neglect I was raised in. It occured to me that ultimately, what I do and the impact my actions have on others is all that matters, there is no fruit in the mental activity of curating and speculating about the ethereal manipulation of the world’s perception of me. Of course there is credence in honing the ways I relate to myself, in honing my mechanism of being, but often what is right in a given situation is glaring. The issue is that choosing what is right is usually the harder choice, despite the suffering choosing the alternative path so often causes. Find the truth in the inflection point, act on that, repeat.
Lastly, I took time to look at the photo of my mother and I when she was lucid (sober) and recovering from her hip injury. While there is a sense of love in the photo two things struck me as I gazed upon the image. One was the sense that there was a vampiric element in the scene. The capturing of my mother’s joy and my physical affection seemed to signify a vacuous need. My love in her state of desperation and frailty seemed to give her permission to be joyful, a never ending cycle that had been present many times throughout our history, though with less presence and lucidity from both of us. I was also struck by the photo’s appearance. It looked fake. Like the scene itself was a holographic manifestation of a reality that never really was. It seemed to represent a tableau of my own regret, a solitary moment encapsulating a reality that never came to be, a perverse reminder of my inability to fix her and our dynamic. I have prided myself on what the photo represented and yet – to some degree – it has existed as a totem of my shame, a totem which would give me momentary feelings of pride while subtly reminding me of my own failings.
Despite the conventional advice to avoid looking in the mirror during the peak of a psychedelic experience, I also did that…. But, that’s a story for another time.
