Nothingness.

'the laws of the abyss, are they thus broken?/ or is there changed in heaven some council new,/ that being damned ye come unto my crags?'

‘gravity reverses as they pass through the center of the earth, and they find themselves climbing upward. just before dawn […] they emerge in a sky studded with strange stars.’

‘for really no reason at all,’ my mother texted me a photo of the divine comedy she had found in a thrift store and asked me if i wanted it. underneath the black and white striped blanket this morning-turning-afternoon i flipped through its entirety; looking like a child at all the illustrations, noting down words and pages with resonance.

i do not want to record much, Here, but this:

Numbness. void. non-feeling-ness. Nothingness.

the Something that is turning this old wheel Knows that i am not afraid of feeling.

i am afraid of feeling nothing.

our overculture gives us no frameworks to hold this, lamps to See by.

even dante, even dante, was Conducted through inferno, purgatorio, paradiso. He Did Not Go Alone.

a tiny inscription i want to fold into the crags around me. so i can find it next time. so i can Remember.

maybe i will make it larger than tiny; but i don’t want to disturb the landscape. in the Nothingness that is What You Somehow Do; you Notice, Everything.

i see myself inscribing into the rock, not unlike ways i have sharpie-written on lampposts and city walls. funnily it was the Huge messages that got us arrested and me, nearly arrested the first time. it was the Small messages. that were able to be scattered throughout. for those who Notice. stay wild, stay grateful. go slowly, see miracles.

i see myself inscribing into the rock. your body-intelligence understands this Emptiness.

the overculture will pathologize. you are depressed. your brain chemicals are misfiring. there is something Wrong. you need to Feel Again, and Feel Quick, because there’s something fucking wrong with you. and you need to Figure It Out. Figure It Out. Quick. you may be dying. your body may be giving up. you will never get out of this. blank, Vast, Empty, Nothingness. this is all it will be, Forever. you’ll never feel anything, ever Again.

small, i inscribe into the rock.

your body-intelligence understands this Emptiness.

when you have taken in too much, when you have gone too far, you need to Stop. stop taking in stimulus. stop feeling feelings. everything will feel meaningless. blank. vast. Empty. but Remember. Remember. i whisper into the rock. i put my hand against it. Remember.

this is helping you. your body-intelligence is helping you. because it Knows. It Knows.

i wrap my arms around the rock. this one shaft of compressed minerals, seen Ages, seen Travellers— thousands of them. ragged, blank-eyed, Lost.

i breathe my energy into it. my life-force.

Remember.

sometimes you need to just not feel anything, for awhile.

can it just be Okay? can it just be What It Is? Can This Be Part Of The Turning, The Cycles, The Is-Ness, The Naturality of Life— Too?

*

all of the voices are so loud.

there are much bigger and more deeply inscribed words on all the crags around me.

how will i Notice this one? this one i leave for myself in traversal— inferno, purgatorio, paradiso? how will i notice This Tiny One amongst all the others?

i press myself into the rock and there’s a meadow inside it. i’m clean-right-through the rock. i turn behind me— the rock is still there— i can stick my hand through it— i can return to the crags.

This.

is also Here.

the meadow splitting with light. all the tiny colored flowers. dew in-shimmering. Green. how much Vastness is Here? no idea, and i do not want to know.

i want to stop typing; i want to open blinds; i want to bring in space-heater; i want to wrap myself in sleeping bag or blanket.

i look behind me, i put my hand right through; the rock is still There. on this side it is covered in moss, plants growing outward from the cracks; more tiny little flowers. i put my hand through— on the other side it is cold; i can feel the grayness from Here. i pendulate. i put one hand on the cold surface of the rock, i put the other, There in the Interior, on the moss, twined with the little-outward-springing-plants. which is the Outward, which is the Interior? i stand in the in-between, i stand inside the rock; one hand on the outer, one on the inner. which is which? i can’t, don’t, Know.

i pass back through. to the grayness. to all the booming words inscripted on crags. i keep my hand through the rock, i feel the moss, i feel the tiny plants between my fingers. i lean my head against the surface; i put my cheek against my Own inscription.

your body-intelligence Knows What This Is.

remember this tiny signpost. that’s all it needs to be.

remember this tiny signpost.

*

you are not broken. you are not fucked-in-the-head. you are not too-far-gone. you need to recover. you need to recover. something else Knows. something that is In Collaboration with you, if you can humor it. if you can humor it.

what if the Nothingness, Too, is a turn-of-the-wheel towards healing?

you are Allowed to recover.

you are Allowed to feel nothing.

you are Allowed to be fully interior to the point of almost-not-existing and not-wanting-to-eat but also not-wanting-to-die.

a long time ago i drew diagrams for myself in my notebook. a little drawn heart slipping out of myself, out through the back, through the hatch, unnoticed. to go somewhere else. where does it go? the heart knows Where, and Why. maybe this is not for me to know. maybe this is not for me to know.

the heart slips out through the back-hatch. because it’s Too Much to stay in the Current place. there’s a place the heart goes that only it knows. the interior of a tree? a secret garden? the inside of a turtle shell? a hole in the ground? in the hollow of a pair of palms, Two Hands, All Light, one Dark, Holding.

just because it leaves doesn’t mean it’s not coming back.

just because you can’t feel Anything right now doesn’t mean you’ll never feel anything again.

*

inferno, purgatorio, paradiso.

there was a Conductor. a One Who Knows.

maybe the whole journey leads back to the heart.

i don’t know; i’m still on it.

i don’t want to have to figure it out.

i want to be in the Authenticity of Those moments.

dante translated by longfellow.

“thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.”

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

i’m adding this in after publishing this post, in addition to the foto above that my phone was too-filled-up to take. i wrote this 10/16/24 at my friend lyssa’s always-generative writing jacuzzi writing workshop, in which each person is given a poem hand-selected for them and they write about it. below is my poem, below that is my piece. </3 <3

*

“the thing is”

the thing is, i’m still here. it’s my pointer finger writing NYC → TX and happy trails and you got this on the dusty-ass windows of your packed-to-the-gills blue jeep. it’s crying when the woman from the long island wildlife rescue brings out the tiny kestrel and you remember the pigeon in the rain spending its last hours with you before it died. it is all these memories— floods of them, and that’s all it really is— and i’m fascinated by the way one quality transforms into the next. how i could slip seamless into the existential pits, lose sight of how to exist without anxiety, lose my appetite in a way that actually made me wonder if dying from a broken heart, or my body making a choice to just end it all without consulting the rest of me— could be a thing. it’s you saying that your experience of leaving the city you called home for nearly 20 years— was made beautiful, and incredible, and epic— because i was there. that i knew How To Do Something— to move with you from room to room, to get us bacon-egg-and-cheeses, to sleep. to hold your hand as we slept on individual mats on your crooked-ass bed-stuy apartment building floor. to know that it was time to put us both to bed after so many hours of packing, sorting, trips up and down the stairs. we did it, today. and i cried on my bike slung over shoulder with two bags of some of your random shit— a LA clippers mug, a metal bowl, a leopard robe, a boxcutter, a half-eaten block of cheese. and something kept me riding. and something called me to sit here instead of curl in a ball though after this i will do that, too. is it okay— it is okay— for me to not know what That Thing, Is. the thing this poem is about. that thing that makes you eat something again. and let yourself keep living when you are not working or researching or telling stories or being of service. i just got to be Me, today. not have to try to be strong, or lighthearted, or particularly motivating. i asked you to call your grandparents in as you embarked on your next two days-ish drive, back home— because it doesn’t, can’t, need to be only me holding you. or holding it at all. what about when there is enough spaciousness for us to just exist together— the preciousness at having spent enough time with this person over the last decade that i actually lived into what that means.

i can’t really see out of my contacts right now, and i waited longer than i ever have in jacuzzi to start writing, something.

i don’t think i want to be brilliant anymore.

the brilliant thing is This Thing, shimmering-connective web holding me, when i have no idea what or who Me is or can be, anymore.

that’s the marvel, isn’t it?

to just be able to do something So Huge, like Begin Again. or say See You Later, Alligator. After Awhile, Crocodile.

“the legacy that love leaves in us,” the pink sharpie post-it on my stack of books reads, the books holding up my stolen laptop— codependents anonymous. a wizard of earthsea. ecotherapy.

i want my “trys” to feel a little less hard.

write the title “the thing is” and leave the rest of the page blank.

you’ll know what i mean.

</3 <3

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

not really ready to talk about any of that yet; so there’s a little window in.

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i’ll also share that i’ll be doing a talk on encountering the urban mythic over at dr. sharon blackie’s substack, for her paid subscribers, this weekend. <3 oh the strange magic of how-precariously-the-timing-lines-up when you plan for something months and months ago…

The mythic world has no bounds, and yet it’s often easy to ascribe soul to a forest but not to a city. Are you open to seeing the urban landscape in a new way — one alive with the guidance, stories and resourcing we find naturally in wild places? New York City dweller and storyteller Audrey di Mola was born and raised in a post-industrial neighborhood along the East River, in which tapestries of birdsong and native plants bursting out of sidewalks were as common as active warehouses, grinding steel and illegal trash dumping. Audrey became increasingly and intimately attuned to what she calls ‘the urban mythic’ as a matter of energetic and emotional survival, not only grounding and regulating with the wild she could find in the city, but receiving unique mythologies and creating lasting relationships with the beings she encountered there. The co-presenters/facilitators of this gathering are the beings themselves, and during the course of this session while sharing their images and stories, we'll discuss the practicalities and perceived obstacles to communion with the urban mythic and sound inspirations for meeting these places (and the reflections and teachings they offer us) where they are.