You wouldn’t know it from the way you’re reading this now, after it’s been typed and lazily proofread, but I’m changing up the PJ this morning by writing it first by hand. My hope is the change in rhythm will return me to a voice more approximate to something genuine, closer to something more approximate to me. I’ve always found something charming about writing at a pace with more evident physical limitations, anyway. A pen in hand can only move so fast.
So now, our throats cleared, let’s begin.
On my morning commute, I drove by a murder of crows feasting on trash in the parking lot of a notorious local strip club two miles from my house. I won’t list it by name, but I will tell you that its name rhymes with “Sister Crappy’s.” It felt significant to see them there, in a parking lot deserted in the early morning hours, garnering energy from the waste left behind by whomever found themselves in the parking lot of “Sister Crappy’s” the Monday night that came before. One hopes the birds don’t eat anything that will hurt them, or come across truly destructive trash, but when I think about the havoc that will most likely be wrought by climate change, it comforts me to imagine how the ingenuity of animals and birds and microbes and fungi will alchemize the shit we leave behind into something useful, into fuel sustaining life even after this rock shrugs us off. One man’s trash…
You gotta find the optimism where you can, I guess.
Reading this blog, you could be forgiven for thinking maybe I’m not all that thankful for much, given how dreary my chosen subject matter can be. But I’ve been drinking less poison, and sleeping more, and in light of the looming Turkey Day, regardless of whatever political issues certainly exist surrounding its existence and inception, I think it’s worth mentioning the things I’m thankful for: firstly, how lucky I feel to have so much love in my life. It comes primarily in the form of dear friends and a lovely partner who continues to invigorate me each day, and despite hiccups and hangups from the past, also in the form of family for which I remain grateful. If this blog is to serve as a snapshot of this moment, then it’s necessary to mention these things, even if I’m uncomfortable with the naked sentiment it requires of me.
I’m thankful for the work that has wrought whatever level of talent I might have, musical or otherwise. I’m thankful to be able to work and walk around and write nonsensical, self-indulgent two-thousand word diatribes about the degradation of culture seen through the lens of a Mike Tyson fight (interested parties: see last week).
My outlook on the way things are out there in the larger world is likely clear by now: cynical, often without much hope, and reminiscent of alarm bells presented in the form of a lowly blog. I think I’m often right to feel this way, too. But to be able to even bear witness and discuss these things is itself a privilege, one that often isn’t afforded to the people who suffer the most at the hands of the things I write bullshit about much of the time, because they simply don’t have the time– they’re busy actually dealing directly with the climate crisis, or with the regression of our governmental policies into archaic resurgences of what we maybe once thought were prejudices safely stowed in the past, and are certainly outdated modes of thought. Or, people are working paycheck to paycheck and don’t have the time to think about it much at all. I have the time to carve out of my day to sit here wringing my hands about it. And in a weird way, I have to be thankful for that.
I’m trying not to be so bleak all the time. A wise friend of mine once said, “every day can’t be a rainy day.”
I’m thankful for the sunsets I see, when I take the time to watch them, and for the bone-level cold of New England winter which will surely be upon us soon. I’m even grateful for the wince of pain in my chest I feel with every deep breath, a vestige of the PE I took on the chin, so to speak, a few years ago. Pain, even in its discomfort, is proof of life, proof we can still feel, which beats the alternative so long as one isn’t suffering. Which, I’m thankful to say, these days, I am not.
I’m thankful that there are levels of suffering present on this earth that I will never know. One can be thankful for that while also trying to rectify that suffering in others. Acknowledging that such suffering exists outside the scope of your experience only serves to grow your empathy.
It’s easy to cry for the world. Many people suffer. But it isn’t moral or correct to let the existence of that suffering suffocate or paralyze us. Joy is that which gives us the energy to endure in trying, in our own petty little ways, to reduce suffering in the world. Letting the existence of suffering blind us to joy only provides suffering with another victory, and why give it another one for free? At least, that’s what feels true to me on this drowsy Tuesday morning.
I’m thankful for the rain, too.
I’m thankful for you, too, reader. You endure me often high on my own supply, hopefully in good humor, and always with charitable eyes based on the responses that I’ve seen. The audience on this thing isn’t exactly huge, but it amazes me that there’s an audience for it even at all.
For the rest of it, all the things I’m not thankful for and, on my weaker days, I even resent: I will try to take a lesson from the crows, who derive sustenance even from simple trash we leave behind.
matt nilsen 