the good folks at punch wrote about my new spirit. get it if you care. please care.
and what is iru? something you should have in your pantry. that’s what.
i had a plan to send this out yesterday but blame it on travel. 🌷✈️
the difference between between me now and my better self is the certain knowledge that death is coming. death, the thing that thrives in the forgetting of it. blooming as we wither, blooming away from our attention. modernity pulls great tricks, but death pushes back.
in dreams and nostalgia.
in dreams, death pins us down and follows us. death is like our body, our body is like our shadow. where we go death goes, there’s no escape but there’s never a dull moment in this modern day. everything is litty. either the sun is out or our camera phones light the way, or the television bathes us in photo synthetics. our death is around but not seen. seen but not heard except when sleep comes or nostalgia crashes.
there’s a term for this: that feeling when you are afraid to sleep because you know for sure it’s the last time you will close your eyes. the moment before you fall asleep is the second most panic you will ever feel in your life. a mystic glue gums your eyelids closed and a freeze folds into your body, and stiffens bone, blood and marrow. whatever the term for it, the moment passes and you slip into unconsciousness, fine for now.
the first most panic you will ever feel is when your eyes won’t open. you passed the night, now you are awake but your lips won’t part. your ears hear everything in this world but your life is locked behind heaven’s door. what a terrible feeling: when you cannot wake up but you’re awake! when the middle ear holding your endolymph fluid-- that viscous juice that keeps us in check, our carpenter’s level-- is askew.
death is pushing back, taking up space like privileged children do.
nostalgia makes us pause for silly things, crashing the world into us. into our nostalgic bodies, the past rear ends the present. when a silly catch phrase, like “do it baby!” thrown nonchalantly from a blind corner of the world reminds us of an ex. how did their voice find its way to our out of balance ears. vertigo is death holding us by both hands, lifting us off our feet and turning us around and around in a permanent press, wash cycle, cleaning us of life. spinning its words in our ears, “do it baby!”
nostalgia is your adam’s apple dislodged by your heart. there are no words left in that muscular cylinder, just a little drum and bass from your college days. a little music throbbing in our throats, the song is from when our parents were chuckling so hard laughter pealed from their eyes. oh we miss that day, everything was pitch perfect. when nostalgia comes, as a song or smell or tingling, it’s really death coming to collect.
it’s why watching mandy moore age on this is us is a joy. how else do we remind ourselves that we’re dying but to rely on pop culture cues. we could meditate, and we do. as we sit awkwardly because the blessing of hip mobility is gone. and count our breaths down, each one the last of its kind we will ever draw.
but life is so persistent it adapts to our stratagems for coping.
but mandy moore’s performance, her slow aging over six seasons, times eighteen episodes cannot be overcome by any tactic life adapts. as sure as she will die we are to follow. bravo for death performed so good!
daddy used to say, one day you’ll wake up and be forty. it took thirty five years for his prophecy to come true. he’s seventy one now and his blood is boiling but his star is waning. mine is waning but watching mandy moore die slowly on this is us, makes me spark.
when our blood stops boiling, when our sparks spark no more, when our eyes gasp wide one last time, i hope we see shadows clearly. otherwise mandy’s dying is in vain and i will not allow it.
have some ice cream as a requiem for the dying.