The labyrinth

My nervous system. Sometimes I need to immediately switch tasks in order to maintain my self care. Can I maintain the boundary that my self care entails and necessitates not being beholden to anyone I do not know and trust, whether for four hours or eight hours a day, full or part time, unless there is a negotiation that feels really good and there is a good reason for doing it? Yet in a world that misunderstands my nervous system as it does, that would not only not be good for me but maybe not even possible for me and for whatever reason it feels like the whole world wants to consider me permanently disabled because the ways I need to be in the world are simply different.

No one else knows my body but me. I have a right to declare what my limits are, and if you discount and laugh at me because there must be something wrong with me for not being able to survive in a job working for a random company doing something I am not at all connected to for a little bit of money, or because I am ‘different’ socially, or whatever, it is really hard to have self esteem in this scenario, of people discounting your ability to do things in ways that work for you while telling you how you ought to do it from their perspective and from their perspective maybe there is no other way but theirs, but you know that is self-harm and you need to orioritize self care but many would probably say that people who have been in situations you have recently been through don’t have the luxury if self-care. How do you feel again like real independence and freedom is a possibility in this world?

Sometimes you have to absolutely prioritise
your self care no matter ehat anybody thinks but the more oppressed you are the harder that can be to figure out how do do. Andoops on that premise I should have been studying languages by now and here I am writing another entry. It is hard enough to find a balance between different enjoyable things in my life, nevermind all of the things that would push me past the breaking point. I am not giving up on the idea that you can prioritise your self care no matter what, and I should hold that boundary even if it kills me.

Before I even got to studying languages, after writing the preceding paragraphs las night, by the way, I started shaking and feeling huge amounts of fear I thought I would never get to the other end of, and when that calmed down I discovered a really fun happy making mysterious sort of post-punk band that I can’t find anything about on the internet except that they are called Bajo Mundo and made this album, En Honra a lo Perdido, in this decade, and they hail from San Juan, Puerto Rico. I got really into it from the first song and it was like they were introducing me to a new way of being kind of like the way it changed me when I first discovered Reel Big Fish. Of course I cannot find lyrics to any if their songs and my ability to hear exact lyrics from songs in Spanish is not great.

I was feeling like I just really hope I didn’t just practically attain groupie status upon falling in love with this song (and album) if this is a song about sideburns. I guess only time will tell. I am embarrassed but when I listen to the first song I hear, “tu patilla es cada día… a despertar!” I guess listening without immediately having access to the lyrics is an interesting way to practice Spanish but it makes me nervous. I love their song, No Tengas Miedo, which feels so happy and hopeful, especially when I hear, aquí estaré. I almost misheard it as aquí esperaré! It evokes exactly how I want to feel, how I would like to feel with someone else, to really feel their don’t be afraid, I’ll be here! The sort of hug I feel when I hear that line is how I want to feel in my life. Now I am coming up with rhymes: “Tu vainilla es todo mía para disfrutar!”

And then I got onto Japanese. Somehow slowly I am learning how to learn, how to follow my iwn inclunations and passions, but there is always something in the way of trusting myself, like I could poof away to some other universe tomorrow and probably no one in this world would actually miss me. Japanese spirituality I guess might have something to teach me about dealing with these things. Latinx and Latin American art and culture certainly teach me an awful lot. After I listened to this album by Bajo Mundo I listened to Fairy Tale in the Grocery Stire by the Raincoats and Echo and the Bunnymen. Bunnymen would sound way too spookily like boogiemen to me if it weren’t for the word echo which I think is one of my favourite words in Spanish, I mean English, my brain just shifted to the Spanish verb echar. When I heard the line “stop looking for reasons and answers, they’re all in your mind,” it felt like almost a message, like somehow that is the impossible thing I have to do, get *out* of my mind and into my body or some Zen space where I don’t need reasons and answers and it’s all right here. Oh, and then I listened to the Mexican pop punk band, 301 Izquierda.

We all have talents, I wonder if anyone could help me see mine. I was flipping through a cool book on Quaker process which said one form of ministry is pointing out another’s talents to another. Someone did point out my faith which I feel like I don’t have but it was actually a ministry to me for which I an grateful. That just brings up the wuestion, faith in what, and that is the biggest question. I am totally in beginner’s mind about what my life is about or well no total terror but it sure does make Zen seem appealing. Zen is about being totally spontaneous, in a way, letting this moment happen, really being here in this moment. I don’t know if my so called faith is talent and faith or flop and folly. But after listening to all this music I went back to reading Labyrinth Lost (which reminds me of a book by Gabriel García Marquéz.

Now once again I want to read in Spanish and study Japanese and take a walk and listen to music at the same time. Maybe I will download Marquéz’ The General and his Labyrinth, a book about the last few months of the life of Simon Bolivar who liberated much of South America from Spanish colonial rule. One of Bolivar’s favourite authors was David Hume. I haven’t felt philosophical at all since I realised I wrote my philosophy lectures on The Republic as letters to the wrong person…

I have so much anxiety managing my interests and maybe it is my environment and in South America everything will settle down and I will feel like I have enough time. But right now all I want to do is play with words and languages and music allll the time. Bolivar enjoyed reading David Hume. If I had tome I would also read David Hume but it is going to take forever to read all the books I already plan on reading in Spanish alone.