Category: Drafting

Diary of a 4th of July

Posted on by Amy Palleson

7/4/2016:

Diary of a 4th of July

Worked (all felines: Izzy, Jack, Piper, Clark, Lucy, Darko, Todd, Burt, Mica—love them all); Graham and Lauren come over, Ellen and Julia join, Ellen’s friend ending his Ramadan; foster kittens, hard lemonade, shitty Malbec, salsa, chips, guacamole, ohdeargodwhydidIeatsomuch; Ellen/Julia to meet her friend, Livy/Lauren go to that little park, pepper gel and caps set off; neighbors’ fireworks go far above parched trees;

we walk to Sugar House Park, blanket says “Dream”, American “pride” bittersweet–injustice, racism, homelessness, hopelessness–the fantasy of clinging to a dying “dream”; cars, cars, cars, boys singing to “Get Low”, fleece blanket making me sweat, can’t reach Julia who’s already there; see James and Indy, find a spot, then another; see Kerry; fireworks start, music starts, same old music, same old American livefeed; so many people, so many many people, fireworks into the sky, blankets, glowsticks, children, drones; weed smoke;

a baby to our left is handed to his daddy, who hugs him and lifts him into the air;

Boom,

sky lights up, silhouettes of so many people, so many many people (why do we come here/why not watch out of the crowds from down the street?); Livy and Lauren lying down, friendship, the new generation, complicated, wise, (do they feel American pride?); people gazing up,

Boom,

lights, pictures in the glow; the daddy speaks to his group, another language/Middle Eastern?, the group laughs, mostly men, on blankets, two feet away, the baby handed back to mom

and she is dressed to match the baby in red, white and blue.  Boom,

And I’m staring at them,

and can’t look away,

for there is family and languages and implied forgiveness of xenophobes who hate them, braving traffic and crowds and heat so they can share “America” with their baby,

And it’s why we’re all here;

because the mom in tan shorts and the baby in American flag Navy and my girls and my friends are children to this new nation; we are her children,

and the sky sparkles as we sit together.

And when the last of the fireworks fade, we clap and collect our things. 

But within time spent in the space of each other’s ideals, walk home in the smoky air dream of a nation rising as one into the hungover dawn of itself.

[Footnote:   Because of crowds/parking at Sugar House Park for their huge annual community fireworks show, we’d walked the few miles to snag our spot that night so when fireworks ended, we all walked to our separate homes and—carrying our supplies—I was almost home when I felt something pinch me And realized that when the Dream blanket had been laying on the grass of Sugar House Park, a bee had gotten caught in it and in the course of my 25 minute walk home, had wiggled its way out of its crumpled prison so to sting me.  I was grieving that year for our nation; DNC/HillaryFestivus wouldn’t break my heart for a few weeks but still you could sense that America was headed for a bleak time because there was rabid verve for AMERICA!!!! mixed with extreme grief and hardship, and the long and the short of growing as one is that you can’t make people change the channel they’re watching until they’re ready].

Some tears for the Ocean

Posted on by Amy Palleson

I’ve never cried so hard as that day in 2007 when James drove his moving truck down the street.

He was moving from Utah to live with his office assistant/girlfriend and her son 2000 miles away just a few weeks after we’d told the girls we were divorcing.  A divorce which blindsided the girls and I; I didn’t even get a lawyer.  James and Sarah probably began their relationship during summer 2006 when we dug out our basement and I unknowingly insisted he stay with Sarah and her husband Ryan in Blacksburg, Virginia (location of the main office) rather than come home to the unpleasantness of our Utah bungalow.  “Just stay with Sarah and Ryan; its so gross here.”  Naturally, he didn’t reveal she and Ryan had separated.

But on that day he moved, James’ dad was here from Virginia, trying to right the error of James moving.  I said right there in front of Bob, “James, don’t move out there to her and come visit your girls; stay here and go visit her.”   I needed him here and so did the girls.   But he wasn’t listening, didn’t want to; Bob and I talking to him was like trying to reason with a sinking ship.

That very day, Livy lost her first tooth in a bowl of popcorn.   It landed in the large steel bowl then sunk to the bottom and Grandpa Bob and the girls and I searched for it but hanging out down there like a groupie with the whitish crumbs of popcorn, we could barely tell the difference between food and tooth.  But we finally did, celebrating then the victory of finding a lost treasure, in one of those moments that stands there like a trophy.  A stop-action moment More than the sum of its individual parts.

And when he and Grandpa drove off in James’ UHaul, I wasn’t ready.  I didn’t want to see what was going to happen.  Wanted to cover my eyes like in a scary movie, so that my brain didn’t invite in through my eyes what I didn’t want to become part of me.  Both girls chased the truck down the street.  Down Garfield Avenue, where they’d grown up.  Where we’d gotten our first puppy.  Where Livy’d come Home from the hospital, where they’d played with the neighbor kids, and started school.  Where they’d donned costumes in the cold of Utah Autumn to go get the big candy bars from Chuck and Dave’s house next door; where they’d bathed in the safety of familial surety.  And James noticed them running, and slowed his truck and pulled over at the end of our street—next to the orange house he’d eventually move into after the break up with Sarah—and got out of the drivers side to walk around the back of the truck to where Julia and Livy waited like angels on the sidewalk.

And as I was watching this play out from the slight distance of looking outside of myself and my children, there was this moment like at the end of a movie.   Where written into the story is a single epiphanic scene that makes everything pivot to where suddenly something in a character clicks.  To where inside James something about his tender dad looking for Livys tooth has shifted him to the core of his being and he “UNDERSTANDS” and gets out of the truck to hug his girls and decides he doesn’t want to ever stop.   

I’m watching this scene of my own family from my own porch, knowing that the arc of this story would then be to forgive him this fucking shitshow of lying/ dissociation if only he would hug his daughters and not get back in that truck and drive off.  He’d walk back to where I am and tell me he’s not moving, he can’t do that to them, he’ll live here, and fly back and forth to see Sarah.  I saw it all in a flash of “please, god.  Please.” Because that’s what “not being ready” does to you.  It makes you stand on your porch and, in Grief and desperation, make deals like a grifter.

But he didn’t.   James hugged them both quickly then walked back around the truck, got in and drove off.

And that night I cried with the force of a heartbreak I can’t describe, as if something in my body was already living the sense of rejection my girls would feel, and the way they’d blame themselves.  As if I could feel my 9 and 6 year old babies archetypal pain and simultaneously their potential idolization of Sarah—younger, thinner; flashy, uncomplicated, the unburdened “winner”.   

I Could feel that I’d have to let my young, vulnerable babies integrate into the lives of people who didn’t care about hurting them.   

I was living inside the normalization of cruelty.  And rolling myself into the fetal position on my bed that night, I convulsed from the grief and the unrecoverable knowledge that my most beloved connection to both this earth and my own soul might never be whole again.  And that maybe neither would I.

********

[Sometimes I don’t know why I write things.  Writing is therapeutic but I don’t reside with this specific grief anymore and I’ve got other fires to put out.   

But the other day, the six year old girl who lost her tooth the day her dad left sent me the writings attached to this post.   A heart-centered, emotional child from the beginning there have been many moments where I did not think it would be possible for her to remain on this planet.  Yet she now writes with a voice that is both herself and her heartache.  She writes with a voice that is both the ethereal and also the days she wanted to die.

So when I say I don’t know why I write, I think maybe it’s because I’m standing on my porch looking down the street, and not yet understanding that the grief I felt inside and consumed by was actually love patiently waiting for this very day]

*********

I’ve said goodbye to many things in my lifetime; many versions of myself and what I thought I needed to be and have in order to feel happy.

And of course I never wanted that day he moved to happen.   For many years, I felt stuck with memories and reverberations of it to where I even begged God to make the pain go away.  For the foes were real:  How can I bring up my girls to be caring and whole in a world where I’m normalizing cruelty?   In a world in which the immediate pain of rejection is their family?  Because events scar us, and we never feel healed.   That isn’t exaggeration; just look around.

But waiting on the porch with me that day was the wisdom of a universe.  A universe telling me that love won’t always look like a dad doing the right thing; sometimes love will look like a grandpa looking for a lost tooth or two sisters running after a truck together.  It’ll look like a mom in the fetal position and—as years pass—like an older sister letting her sleepless, anxious younger one sleep in her bed and like that same younger sister writing words that make their mom weep.

Because on that day I didn’t know that the stronger and most-loving version of our selves is a stranger until that’s who’s comforting us into sleep.  For the truth of all of this—of humanity; of the deep reckonings that emanate—is that we actually have no idea how fucking beautiful we even are until we’ve had to fight for one another.

 

And yes, there was still pain after that day, and will be again.  The world will pose as both farce and cruelty and people will not be what we want them to be.  But on that day, the universe told me that “ready” isn’t a point in time, it’s a state of being.  For things are not linear when placed inside the heart, and from agony comes caring to where we can’t truly see one without the other.  Because in the end, our tears baptize us into the love we are and have, and inside the heart, what looks like a sinking ship is merely one arc in a story about the ocean. 

Rewire

Posted on by Amy Palleson

Woke up singing Morning Dew by the Grateful Dead. First minute of it can be beautiful with an aura of tangible bittersweetness reflecting the subject matter of the lyrics, post-nuclear winter. For those not privy to this history, America’s nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union meant nuclear annihilation was on the table (google “mutually-assured destruction” for more heartwarming Americana; we were told to crouch under our classroom desk which —for sure—was an effort to trick us into not panicking during our last moments). I once watched a documentary that told of Jerry Garcia crying softly at a concert while performing Morning Dew; the subject of the song for him being the cliff that humanity always pushes itself to. War, power, greed, distraction, denial, ego: how does humanity not make different choices at some point? Like THAT is the true grief. The circular nature of the human condition, where we mindlessly end up back to some version of square one. I heard this research/quote one time on NPR: “The desire to avoid losses is wired more strongly into our brain than the desire to achieve gains” Which offers one potential explanation of why we keep repeating the same patterns.

And here I’m 52 and alive during the crashing of national-and-planetary ship onto jagged rocks. Where we’re all about to embrace (once again) the permanence of impermanence for our hardwiring and I guess my space right now is that whatever happens I want to be different now because of it. We pulled ourselves out of things before and we shall again but maybe if enough of us cry softly onstage we can forever change the former-inevitability of the cliff needing to come so close.

I’m currently trying to pull together a book I don’t intend to ever publish at another IG account The creative endeavor no one else will see is solely dedicated to stopping the machine and jump starting the rewire. I might get sick of it after a month in which case I’ve changed and that’s equally as good.

If you get in a shit way the next few months, message “SOS”‬ and I’ll send you the 10th pic/video I’ve got in my “favorites” folder along with a short caption/story about the selection. No questions asked. No response needed.

By way of example, the pic of Ginger and I here is my current 10th. The caption on that could read: “I look kind of old in this, and it makes me squeamish when dogs lick my face, plus no one would ever even know if this was my actual 10th photo so I could just send another one BUT to hardwire my brain for a different experience for all means I’ve got to walk the walk and be real, and anyways formerly-abused Ginger was brought from extreme trauma response to being an absolute diva two days into our first sit and if she can rewire her brain like that then so can the rest of us and that is a picture worth sharing.”

[cries softly onstage]

Bug book #1

Posted on by Amy Palleson
This is the book I made for Julia’s birthday in May (2020) about her dog, Lady, who we often call Bug; Julia adopted Bug from Rescue Rovers in March of 2019.
 
I don’t think I could ever thank @rescuerovers enough for bringing this little girl in from the harsh unsafety of the streets (of New Mexico) last year. I wouldn’t even know how to say it, because the words would fail to complete the idea. She’s just a new and beautiful world.
 
Julia’s beau gave us all the gift of getting Lady’s DNA done so we’d know more about her breed. We knew this: she seemed to definitely have herder blood in there but was also very chatty—we thought maybe husky or hound?—and was VERY expressive, using her face, paws and interactions very intentionally to this purpose. Plus she was smart, attentive/adaptive, and fantastic with cats.
 
Fast forward to where we get the results and realize that Lady is, in percentages:
 
American bulldog 20
Australian cattle dog 18.4
Rottweiler 13
German Shepherd 11
Husky 9.3
Chow chow 8.5
America Staffordshire Terrier 6.7
Supermutt 12.8
 
Yes. Every “aggressive” breed you can think of packed into a salami-stealing, cat-loving, family-focused snuggler that tips the balance every single day (for many people) into a better life.
 
FYI, I Used Walgreen‘s platform to make this and I would highly recommend it; It’s so easy to use. I’ve written another Bug book but I’ve got 45,000 pics on my phone so am perpetually lost when I go to find anything, to include appropriate Bug opps.
 
 

Non-optimal viscosity

Posted on by Amy Palleson

Twelve years ago, I caught a cold that wouldn’t go away. The runny nose left me dehydrated and exhausted and was accompanied by sneezes so powerful my eyes would explode in volcanos of mascara’ed saltiness sending twin rivers of black gook oozing down my face.

“Are you okay, Miss Amy?” the concerned kindergarten students I worked with would ask, confusing (perhaps) my red, runny eyes and smeared makeup for the tears of emotions. And I would pat their arm, and tell them, “Yes; I’m alright,” even as we both knew I must be lying because all they had to do was look at me.

Things obv weren’t alright.

Then it got worse.

The congestion—in what I initially thought was it’s big finish—clogged up my sinuses to the point that I became unable to hear their 5 and 6 year old voices. They would ask me for help with their math or sounding out a word, and I’d have to turn their head to face me so I could read their lips as they repeated their question. The snot had made me hearing-impaired. My cold was a disability.

One week later, I saw a doctor who was so professional she managed to leave the “omfg you dipshit” off of “You don’t have a cold; you have allergies,” and—within two weeks—I’d beaten back the mucous invasion courtesy of Big Pharma.

For some weird reason, these allergies had gestated for 40 years–never once making an appearance—but now every year hence arrive with a ground swell requiring tsunami sirens.

***********

My mom lived with year-round allergy symptoms courtesy of an exceptionally sensitive nose.

She always had a tissue with her—always; usually near her wrist tucked up inside her sleeve —and in typical humor, classified these tissues according to their level of degradation.

Stage 1: new

Stage 2: used once; no rips, barely crumpled

Stage 3: used more than once; ripped, starting to shred

Stage 4: intact only because of the glue-like properties of snot

Her tissues would often engage my gag reflex, and watching her blow her nose into a Stage 4 was like looking into the shit-abyss of a Port-O-John.

Inevitably, Mom’s intimate experience with allergies led to a desensitization about the etiquette of mucous management, to the point where her public persona often involved honking into her tissue using an uncompromising dual-alternating-nostrils-at-full-force technique akin to trumpeting the arrival of the snot queen. The volume involved in this expulsion indicated base tones of an underlying “fuck this fucking fucking shit” and when she’d reach into her sleeve to pull out a Kleenex, I would restrain the impulse to walk off—loyal as I was—while viscous nasal belongings were gathered up into a decaying tissue right across the table from me at Taco Bell.

**************

11/3/2020. They’re back. I haven’t had allergies for several years—don’t know why they’re even back in November of all months—but the volcanoes, mascara rivers, itchy nose, clear snot (eyes that suddenly burst open with tears, along with the continuous urge to sneeze—while not actually sneezing, requiring me to blow my noise just to have some sense of a climax) are all back. How tf can I board the Trump Train looking like this? I can’t. I just can’t. I’m very devastated.

And today is Election Day. And I don’t know who needs to hear this but you’re stronger than you believe and are much much more than the sum of “all this”. Our brains are masterful creators—seamlessly making stories both real and not—but our body/breath can medicate it when it gets too frantic. Thoughts and worries aren’t themselves real; thoughts/worries are “over there” rather than “here,” we just convince ourselves otherwise. I once read that if the sun were to explode none of us would even know for 8 whole minutes because that’s how long it takes for the sun’s light to reach us on the surface of our planet. We’d go on living our lives not knowing anything had happened since everything we see in front of us right this second is actually via the light from the past sun. Over there vs here.

I had a dream about my mom last night. I never dream about my mom but this was something I was supposed to remember and write down. In the dream, I’d been doing some errand and Just finished and came into a large kind of crowded room, making a beeline for my mom, believing she’d be happy to see me. But she wasn’t. She was angry at me, cold—wouldn’t look at or speak to me—and in the dream I knew that there wasn’t any reason for it except for her own pain and trauma yet I knew it was bullshit for me not to say “this is bullshit.” So I spoke up really loudly to this crowd of people I didn’t know and made a speech thanking them for being the America I needed to rise above such redirected aggression and when I finished everyone clapped, some people clapping loudly for a long time.

Anyways, take care, whatever the day/week brings make sure to breathe yourself back to life and thank you for being the America I needed.

(Artistic representation of misery and allergies courtesy of my recent accidental purchase of Prisma).

9/20/20

Posted on by Amy Palleson

Trying to find my last clean pair of no-show socks on my bed this morning and my cat Yuki—trying to sleep on the bed—lifts her head as I upend the covers around her.

I currently only have five pairs of socks—two pair I moved into the apartment, three I’ve purchased since—which is an intentional life choice she obviously doesn’t understand the beauty and simplicity of because she stares straight in my face while I’m searching as if wanting to be as clear as possible when she asks, “Do you fucking mind?” Neither of us were that surprised when I eventually find the socks inside a pair of shoes over on the loveseat. I like to live deeply into “Whoops”; feel its the least I can do to promote humanity’s reputation.

One of the two pair of socks I moved is 30+ years old. Once adorned the feet of “that” ex-boyfriend—who wore them with this pair of bowling shoes he stole—and since Steve, they’ve moved to Clayton(CA) and Santa Rosa(CA), Kensington(MD), Citrus Heights(CA), Back to Davis(CA), Burke(VA) and in 2000, Sandy(UT) then Salt Lake City (Garfield Avenue, Kensington Avenue, Logan Avenue, Paradise Lane), and now finally Bountiful(UT). I never wear them, just move them around the country like they’re doing research for their novel.

Meanwhile, Kiki ran inside from his outdoor enclosure—pushing the door open with his paws to get in (which yesterday yielded the apartment 15 flies and one mosquito)—to “check in.” Runs in, meows, finds someone, meows again; wants to be picked up. Kiki is a Siberian cat—we didn’t know this when he was our foster kitten— which means he’s a puppy who’s litter-box trained, and as soon as I pick him up, and chat “with” him in the bathroom, he runs back to the now-closed back door to start pawing at it. When I tell him he has to be inside now because I’m leaving for work, he paws harder.

“Kiki, I need to go to work now so that we can keep existing.”

He doesn’t care. Never asked to exist in the first place. Says ‘Jesus. Just open the door, SoMuchDrama’ with a little meow.

When I’d let the cats out at 5:30 this morning, there was an all-black cat eating from the bowl we put out for “Peaches”—the orange neighborhood cat we’ve been feeding—and it didn’t run off. Looked at me, curious and listening as I talked to it—which is totally a black cat thing*—then slowly slipped out of the yard. We haven’t fostered in a while—and miss Henry and Mac from our old place (neither of whom were homeless, just grifters who did death battles in our yard)—so the outdoor cat bowls fill the need in ourselves to care for the things who might not feel cared for by anyone else. It’s our way of being the protagonist.

And I started writing this this morning at 7 but whatever needed to be written wasn’t done happening until the homeless guy knocked on my car window at the light on 13th So/State Street. I debated the safety of rolling down my window—knowing I wouldn’t give him any money even though I had some; I was eating a nectarine and it’s juice was all over my hand—but rolled my passenger window down anyways and lied to him (“I can’t”) and he said “please” and I lied again (“don’t have any”), and he walked to the car in back of mine then to the side of the road when the light turned green.

And I drove away conflicted (should I have given him money? Am I turning into one of those people fixated with hoarding it?) but it’s a victory to be stamped by such experiences. To be a brand new world every day because you’ve stashed away the salience of life in the sock drawer for permanent pondering.

And tonight I returned home to fill the outdoor cats’ bowls and pick up Kiki, and say hi to Bitty. Yuki again jumping up on my bed, offering me one more chance. And as I tried to relax, Kiki wants out, parades about the house mewing—my custom reply guy —running around, pushing things off my dresser and jumping on Yuki. So I briefly began to join him in questioning “existing” but instead, got up, went to open the door to his enclosure and let him outside. Then, before heading to my room to relax, locked the door behind him.

Epilogue: I accidentally fell asleep after locking the door and when I woke up to the alarm I’d set to wake me for a late pet sit was greeted to Kiki relaxing on my bed and Livy saying, “did you know you locked him outside? I couldn’t find him but the door to the enclosure was locked so I knew he wasn’t out there.” It didn’t seem fair to instruct Livy on the complexities of life via telling her you locked her baby outside to keep him from making you lose your shit. So I nod but don’t verbally commit then quickly head out to my sit

Our people

Posted on by Amy Palleson


I’ve lost a lot of very good people to this truth. But first, I lost myself.

Because we’re not born into the education about how to flow with the growth of our own life. We’re born into the construct of the five senses, and instructed to bow to the mores of a society which we’re taught is honorable enough to honor when it really isn’t. Everybody’s just walking around in a fear parade or self-medicating (booze, shopping, porn, mindless ambition for money) so as to feel some measure of freedom or happiness, stepping one foot in front of the other without questioning the validity of any of it until we’ve ruined the planet, children are in cages (while people justify), and fighting so many wars the news doesn’t even cover them anymore. We assume all we’ve ever done is all we should ever do when clearly we don’t got all that shit covered.


And a few years ago, I was totally devastated when my girls were both sick, James blamed me for it, I was jobless, my car got totaled, I started fantasizing about driving myself off a cliff and asked my mom to please come help me and she removed herself emotionally. And I suffered greatly. But that was just how I saw it at that time. That’s how I saw it when I didn’t realize that every painful thing is an opportunity and that those antagonists creating trauma are often the same path towards inner reclamation of self-love you could literally never get anywhere else.

For when you get to see who will suffer your suffering, you receive clarity that the end game of all of this is that you can either stay in the same place or you can move and accept that what anyone ever does to us is Growth challenging us to fight for ourselves.

So if you are in pain right now—if you feel betrayed, if you cannot see anyone standing around you—remove the society inside you validating that you are stuck, know that it hurts because it works, and breathe that the loneliness is You inside one of the steps of your act of becoming. Then go and love on something purring or furry because that shit just feels good.

White Noise

Posted on by Amy Palleson

This morning I felt it. As I sometimes do. I woke up early before the world to see the quiet, and the cool stillness.  Nature–the Great Mother–was baring herself to the unconditional acceptance of the sky and falling back into the wonder of itself. And I paused on my front porch while my soul connected to the place of it’s true home, devoid of the white noise of people and air conditioners and cars and flurry and chaos.  And as the sun rested in self-assured imminence behind mountains which stand guard like new parents, felt called into remembrance, that at every turn, nature—The Earth—will impassively stand in non-judgment of our human drama and flaws until we either save ourselves or perish.

And the indifference of it didn’t make me feel small; it made me feel reverent.

Continue reading “White Noise” →

The Interiors of People

Posted on by Amy Palleson
Quote/poem by Catherine “Kitty” O’ Meara.

I just saw that Jared Leto had been off on a 12 day meditation retreat and came back to civilization today to realize it’s now basically gone, and my first thought was how cool and lucky he was to be off doing that so that now he can be that person walking calmly amongst the chaos.


Because Meditation helps you take back your own mind which you didn’t even know it was hijacked, and the feeling of connecting with your self like that is akin to a profound quiet. Where the “striving ceases, and there is life waiting as a gift,” having pierced through the limitations of our own mind as if finally discovering the fullness of ourselves. It’s like that time I looked up at the night sky and instead of the stars/full moon, became terrified as if suddenly I questioned my own safety as the earth—a huge magnified rock supported “underneath” by nothing tangible—spins at 1000 mph and hurtles through the void of space. Which was the start of a journey of coming to peace with how truly safe we are; that we are only alive because of physical improbabilities we don’t even have to acknowledge we benefit from.


And Civilizations have fallen before—we’re not special. Physical structures fall, humanity fails one another; concepts replace the reality of a spinning planet and chaos is embedded in our inability to fully see until we’re forced to. But what we do with the chaos that’s inside and outside—who we become during it, how we can use a mind unhijacked to create a beautiful life fully lived in the wholeness of ourselves—is what makes us special.


For its not just chaos, trauma, sudden change, disruption, brand new ways of grieving as we lose the things that once comforted us; it’s also terror under a darkened sky that pushes us towards a deeper awareness—we never before could fully gasp— that inside all that truth are actually gracious invitations to long-unseen interior places of safety.

“Cat”

Posted on by Amy Palleson

 

“I’m not what you think I am. You are what you think I am.”—Unknown.

I’ve been blessed and cursed with an overactive, curious mind, swaying from science towards philosophy then beyond to where Rumi lays in that grass and the world is too full to talk about, and always I come back to “I don’t really know.”

Because it’s the only place I’m truly comfortable.

The kitty above—one I sit for, and love—is part of the social experiment known as “humanity,” an experiment in which everything has been labeled—“cat”, “dog”, “love” etc.—by the subjects of the experiment themselves in a process of proving what exactly the experiment is even while we’re in the middle of living it. Meanwhile, 90% of the known universe is matter (“dark matter”; they posit now it’s a “fluid” of negative mass to where if we pushed on it, it would move towards us) that we can’t even experience with senses or instruments, and in the last 100 years, philosophy became science and just last month, an actual visible mini-moon was discovered that had been in earth’s orbit for three years completely undetected.

And for someone not prone to taking herself seriously anyways, to walk around like the big human expert on what anything is feels ridiculous and counterproductive.

For when even the most basic physical properties are 90% unknown, tossing labels and theories like darts are akin to hitting a “target” we can’t aim for or see and only designate as such after it exposes itself.

If humanity was the one that labeled this experiment, and there’s no objective template or guide outside of ourselves then “I don’t know” shouldn’t be shameful or fearful; it should be natural and lovely. Like accepting the complexity of the universe isn’t ours to maintain, rather it’s ours to experience as the joy of a connection. Where “I don’t know” comes to mean we breathe in a continuously-evolving state of unknowingness, and moments of leaning down to a “cat” becomes “Olivia” looking into our eyes with what looks like magic, and maybe even could be.