The trouble with belief is that it’s a lie. Your senses lie. There is a whole spectrum in all five senses, and yours is in the middle. You can’t see what a housefly can see. You can’t smell what a dog smells. You can’t hold your breath like a dolphin. Then why be human? That fraction of our brain that makes us sentient. The small part that gives us speech. Or makes the abstract scribbling of lines make sense as words.
I want noise. I want percussion.
I’ve had almost as many conversations about why words are important as there are words to explain why.
But words are more important than most things. They are what make us human.
An illusion of permanence
It’s weird, all these things I curated to a greatness in my mid-teens have come ‘round to be the defining characteristics in haute couture. You might know the story of how I went to undergraduate Tacoma with nothing but a box of ill-fitting sweaters, two pairs of size-44 Levis 501’s (that I squeezed into so I wouldn’t have to buy a bigger pair) and 500 LPs ranging from Kiss to Depeche Mode to Iron Maiden to Nina Simone to Queen to Rocky Horror to Miles Davis to the Escape From New York Soundtrack. I didn’t even pack a turntable and wouldn’t have one for my first three months in school. I carried all of those albums into a future I had no idea what would bring; they were how I defined a pretty big part of myself. And in just 12 months I would trade all of those albums, at the Jelly’s on Piʻikoi for the promise of about 20 “permanent” compact discs.
The lament I have for that moment is not financial. There are far greater “what-ifs” that would have resulted in far higher values lost or found. At best, those albums might fetch five figures if the collection remained intact, and mostly undamaged (highly unlikely). I lost more selling Apple stock too early (I still made a lot, not life-changing a lot). But that makes for a good story. This one always feels like a blow; a long lost could-have-been. Those albums were me. And I traded them all in for the illusion of a new permanence. I rebuilt that CD collection even larger, and the mp3 collection larger still. But I’ve never had something again like that vinyl.
Light years
We all go through this life. Some moments happy. Some sad. Most boring. But when you can see the inevitable. When you look at the dumb star that makes wind possible. Think. Turn on a light. It seems instantaneous. That light in the sky took eight minutes to get here. About 93 million miles. And that star is close. The next closest one would shine on you in about four and a half years. That is how small you are.
You
You is a three-headed ghost from at least six different past lives. You is an empty canvas, therefore you is always full. You is the one. You is until something better comes along. You is an idea. You is an emotion. You is forever fleeting, therefore you is eternal. You is everyone. Therefore, you is no one. One of the cold comforts of a photographic memory, is that you can’t take away anything I have ever seen. And that is why you is always with me. I’ve seen you. Many sides of you. And I will have you until I see you again and forever after that. Even if I never see you again.
Coyote ugly
“You un-friended me? That’s like a modern-day public pillorying.”
“Oh god, Kalani, you’re so dramatic. I had to cut you off. You kept posting weird shit on my wall. My family reads that you know?”
“I was just telling you that it’s probably not a good idea to friend your kids. Your 16-year-old doesn’t need to know what you look like dancing on the bar at Coyote Ugly.”
“Well, if it makes you feel better, I deactivated my account completely.”
“It actually does. Singling out one person out of 3 billion users is quite a statement, don’t you think? At least now I blend in with the rest of the planet.”
“I wanted my privacy back. And I felt like I had to respond to everyone who contacted me. I don’t need that. I actually feel free.”
“Hippie.”
Look both ways before you cross
Nothing living—actually living—wants to die. Not fish. Not trees. I’m pretty sure bacteria don’t want that petri dish to burn. People are an unusual problem. Who invented self-flagellation? There must have been a reason at the time. Sentience is pain. Not knowing doesn’t hurt. Look at the feral cat smashed on the street. I guarantee he didn’t know it was Wednesday. But if he did and knew there were no more Wednesdays? He might have looked both ways.
Construction
How much of our lives and belief systems are just some construct or other? What we experience in real-time is as often predetermined as it is any sort of real stream of consciousness. In hindsight, it is a rare occurrence where we might surprise ourselves.
The upshot of this realization is that there really are no excuses. Everything is a choice. I own this. I’ve chosen this. This is my choice.
Dervish
I heard the words and did not recognize myself. What had I become? I would never hurt you on purpose. But when I was a whirling dervish, you were just standing too close. Don’t worry, it ends. It all ends. Everything ends. You just have to wait for the moment.
Punk muppets
It’s a success. The Muppets cover Nirvana now. Pearl Jam covers the Makaha Sons of Ni’ihau. We made what we wanted for everyone. You might argue it’s been co-opted. But punk is inside now. People who never would have known it have it in their awareness.
Seventy
I don’t understand why people who believe in an afterlife mourn or fear death. What does a 70-year, 70-day, 70-second lifespan mean when compared to forever?
I went to a cemetery two days ago and the marble from just 200 years ago had, by weather, been sandblasted, rendering anonymity to those lying beneath. And the flowers on the graves of the recent dead mocked the empty graves, but stronger still, mocked our hopeless, desperate grasps at permanence.