Humans moving. Being complicated
and unknowable.
I had this thing last night.
My daughter and her best friend
the weather changing and maybe a tornado. Before sunset and everything was OK, the girls rode bikes under a pink moon until one of them crashed. I cleaned her wound… actually, in the name of consent, I let *her* clean her own wound.
“Will it sting?”
“Yes, it will. But I will give you the alcohol wipe so that you can clean your wound when you’re ready.”
3AM
my daughter and her injured friend finally fall asleep. I lay in bed, meditating and thinking of all manner of comforting things—my daughter living until old age, juicy zits popping, my novel becoming a best seller, the beginning of life on this planet.
I think about this essay called Key Changes by Sabrina Imbler, in which the author writes about a very important evolutionary moment—the moment wherein living things developed consciousness.
3AM
and I think about the transition in evolutionary history from things that existed sans movement to things that moved/
needed to find food.
Imbler’s argument is that consciousness arose because nonhuman animals needed to find food. There were so many organisms that merely…existed prior. But then there was an organism that needed to find food. Imbler argues that this is the dawn of consciousness, the dawn of understanding oneself as separate from the self it must conquer in order to live.
Random, likely. A weird ass movement.
Perhaps this is the origin of conflict, in the true Marxist sense. That is to say, perhaps, that the origin of conflict aligns with the origin of consciousness, and therefore no conscious being can be without conflict.
I write this as Palestinians are genocided. I write this as Iran and Israel bring us all into a potential WW3. I write this as I come home from a celebration; gorgeous singing. A bonfire with a drag queen and her partner. She used to be an addict. Her mother, who smokes cigarettes, the kind that you pop, lived in the trenches with her, refusing to give up on her son.
What if consciousness necessitates conflict?
**
A friend is in love with a man she shouldn’t love.
A former cop mourns the death of her best friend, who was shot by a man who screamed “FUCK PIGS,” a woman who now questions her sexuality in bars with friends.
A Czech drunk who lived through the revolution and laughs when I tell him that Trump is a fascist.
A Cesky Krumlov native who is likely racist against Asian folks, who nevertheless smiles wide when my daughter says “thank you” in Czech.
A brilliant human at a party house who gets mad at me because I tracked their location for the singular purpose of handing out Narcan. But there is sadness because I have long imagined their death and I cannot handle it. It is a weird thing, because they are just another human. But there is something special about them… not cosmically. That’s narcissistic. But rather personally. They are personally important to me and smart and enlightened. And that’s why my grief at imagining their departure from this world feels so heavy.
There was a moment in my life when I wanted to be famous. And now I know that regardless of fame and fortune, there are always people for whom you fear the worst, there … are … always … people … Fame and fortune are just mind games.
**
A father who loves his daughter despite my pain. A father who will hopefully never show his true self to his daughter.
And a mother—me—who will hopefully never show her [my] true self to her [my] daughter.
The middle-class white folks who are probably OK, who are probably far more nuanced and complicated than I give them credit for. and yet, I remain committed to the idea that wealth discrepancy is the origin of all suffering.
I had a friend once who said, “You are a lover of people.”
It’s true. But I also fear them.
So full of life and possibility. That feeling of infinite possibility. The feeling of potential.
And then the sadness. The destruction. The leveling of cities. How? Why?
Why?
Why the actual fuck.
**
Juvenile, perhaps, but the question remains—why do we do this to each other?
Last night, I became obsessed with the idea that conflict and consciousness are inextricably intertwined. Life cannot be aware of itself unless it is struggling to live; it is truly the most horrible reality I can imagine.
But also, isn’t it gorgeous as fuck?
Nuance and contradiction.
Humans moving.