TAMED

Birth and other beginnings

When I was a child, I learned a lesson in evolution – through self-sufficiency and stealth in the night I'll run away from predators and hunt my prey in low competition,

I'll survive undetected, I'll adapt to changing environments through nocturnal migration –

survival of the most comfortable ones, those who manage to tame wild forces lurking in the shadows dissatisfied and fearsome – so that they can bury sadness and easily move on in their endeavors – but how can we move on if we don't know what we want to move away from?

I tamed my demons, too – better tranquilize those that hurt or scare,

better whip them for obedience and reward with pride of the social acts well poised and a public image elegantly held –

evolution favors those that adapt to the environment in the finest manners,

but we're not trying to adapt anymore, we invented a trick against evolution itself –

now, the environment must adapt to us and our most brutal ventures that ever existed on this land –

– don't be shy, use all that your heart desires at your pleasure – you're a beast of comfortable power, remember?

I'm entitled to all things I want because I came to this world as a privileged one. See – some humans kind of... win the lottery of privileges. It has nothing to do with your heart, your mind, your talents... with you, basically.

Yes I know, the confusion: who sets those privileges? Who distributes their supply? Funny – those who came here with the same privileges before –

and so the circus goes on and on, dividing the gap evermore. You get the point – easy life for us at the inexpensive expense of those below, smaller than us –

what's not to be happy about?

Strange pulsations – memories or powerful hallucinations – rush in my blood haunting each effort at following the manual of my species-typical behavior.

In the darkness of the night, the walls around my bed would come alive: discovering new worlds I'm dancing in Magellan's ships and on bright castle hills, in ancient libraries I'm drawing maps of star and planet trails, becoming Nelly Bly of the twenty-first century I'm conquering new lands with a quill – back then, I wanted to be a poet, I wanted to be an explorer – a clumsy impulse of a child's heart that bore potential, yet still required practice to defend itself against the narratives of valid roles – real life is no fantasy novel.

– now –

– learn –

– correct –

– operations –

Inborn patterns of behavior forgotten,

impulses dismissed in the name of thinking –

triggers of the limbic system suppressed,

discomfort shut down for the sake of sanity –

– ticking dreams shushed by reason –

they beat with instincts we can't hear, buzzing poets of blooming grasslands, chanting pilgrims of lavish woodlands, all shapes of hearts enclosed with wisdom of when and how – adapt, hide, run – away from threats, towards the prize – protect, speak, unite –

through pure intelligence ingrained in their cells, voices loud and clear erasing anxious urge to analyze each beat – a polar opposite of our lost awareness of how to listen to the flesh, by burning books of intuition transcribing us oblivious of anyone whose words and sentence patterns we haven't learned.

The power to deeply see each other – and ourselves – imprisoned.

Discomfort → demons → ugly feelings → entitlement → self-pity –

there are a lot of difficult things in being a human, but the hardest of all is the being of human itself.

Born with an obligation to destroy what I love and what I feel my heart beating for –

not out of necessity to run away from threats or to fight for survival –

simply, for the purpose of being myself. That's our evolution, how on the whole we manage to sustain – enslaving dreams, repressing life.

It's not the dread of facts that I'm feeling – of how many trees we destroy every hour –

though it sums up to approximately 15 billion a year

throughout the world –

or how many liters of water we poison, I don't care about numbers –

it's an unsettling awareness of contributing to the massacre of the only source of my peace, my sanity, the places that calm my inner storms and make me feel welcomed, like I belong somewhere.

About a forced-upon hypocrisy.

A spell was cast on our collective purpose –

together, we'll establish a new empire for our singular breed on top of the debris of our primordial home –

even if that stabs us right in the chest, and slowly slays our hearts open.

How could we not be angry with gods?

Petrified, I witness my sheltering grounds being universally demolished – as if mutually agreed upon –

cut, burnt, drained, polluted, shot, killed, suffocated – you name it.

And I know I am part of it all. The guilt of it – that's what's unbearable, the guilt.

Many soothe me softly – relax, peril doesn't surprise our mother, she's borne great extinctions with grace like her own children before – a seasonal rite of passage always leading to a metamorphosed life greater in its form, don't worry too much about our destruction – she's been there before. And we're proud to be stronger than any of her transformative forces foreshadowing us.

Now close your eyes.

Imagine counter scenarios for bringing life back to its flourishing posture after superb devastation –

the one performed in the past against another one to be written by us:

she granted permission to remain in a symmetrical game of hunting and survival to different creatures

we would be the dominating party supervising the cards, never playing it fair;

she provided space for rivaling forms of life to regenerate safely in their separate habitats

we would confine to little boxes every soul that remains, just to have enough space for our magnificent egos.

Is it post-apocalypse already? – drowned in curiosity and silence I'm taking in the views, cold observant of the ruins. What's next? What's an upcoming project of our brilliant lab?

Was I to fail to speak of the genius of man, was my voice disturbing through its ignorance of genuine attempts at virtuous living that so many humans aim for, I'd be reminded by Alan's wisdom:

next to all the cosmic miracles, our brain shines a wondrous light of its own, and adoring nature with the universe's absolute complexity is inclusive of adoring people, too –

I'd be reminded of our innate playfulness, creative acts, earnest empathy caressing psyches separate from ourselves, ceaseless hunger for harmony and peace – all the noble things that you and I and all the rest of our kin possess –

and while I look at all the human magic that I still, no matter what, believe in, there also hides another side I loathe and wish to make amends with – unspeakable desire to convert those brains to automatic operations and perfect them to the point of completion, and the tendency of their own to operate in detrimental ways, their expertise in building barricades from the outside world and in falling silent in the presence of unfairness.

So often –

so softly –

unwillingly, imperceptibly –

we think –

I don't see it, therefore it doesn't exist.

So there – we seized a sword for running the show of the Earth –

what techniques as a pawn must I learn to protect my Queen and her troops,

what recipe should I follow for brewing a potion for resurrecting her cells? –

I'm not a child anymore, and my lessons have changed,

it's not so much about hiding from dangers these days –

yet that hunch, that intuition – she pulls me, and pulls me, the Earth –

perhaps today, as we stand exposed to the faults we've done to both ourselves and the world, encircled by shattered mirror distortions, the only path forward for us is one of conscious evolution – recognizing in fragments of glass the face of profoundness of impact that our choices display, through self-forgiveness and courageous liability solving the riddle of reconciling power and humility – weaving ourselves into a cloth of non-human matter, tutored by the smallest creatures how to listen to unspoken waves of animated energy, bravely fusing our boiling intuition into coldly counted rationality.

No scientist nor wizard, I can't speak of clear means for evolving societies or cultures – merely, I can tell the story of my aspirations to consciously transform myself – from deep refusal to acknowledge my anthropomorphic vices, all that I was taught to see as wrong for a valuable lucky human – shame, stagnation, loneliness, inadequacy, chaotic living

– discomfort at its finest –

to affirming them as vibrant oddities, playful obstacles that promise me survival by demanding to grow braver and improve.

I defy the rules in my despise of definitions –

so many judges, so few opinions.

As if we're all generated by autocorrect.

I accept you, each discomfort of my mind, every word and act that I regret, as defending me against conformity and dullness, making sure that I avoid nocturnal death, strange cardiac arrest, the loss of function of my heart while in my sleep. I see – you all make sure I don't fall into sleep at all.

Wearing amulets with charms of human weakness and disquiet, I'm on the rise of co-creation through connection and humility, not competing for my highness anymore.

Where my ship has landed –

– On a shaky terrain of the newly found depths in the flesh –

The voyage begins –

A dangerous mission of Obscure Tomorrows that I embark on –

Discovery and testimony of internal errors, investigation of what's beneath, what's underneath those elegant postures, successes, dream manifestations – a façade that's not always truthful to reality, so masterfully constructed from lies I pray upon myself – something that's heavy to carry, yet even heavier to look at.

Jealousy's born where we think it's all so easy for the other, yet aren't we all successors of matching amulets?

There's a god in each of us, but forget the ruling – it's claimed by the kings – alas, we twisted an image of sacred protection to suit our fantasies. Coming back to the earth from the skies, I'm on my way to crossing biomes home to wildly divine forces embodied by the human animism in our genes –

All that comes from the earth will root in my bones, in sync we'll bloom in the air –

(Is that why there's so much pain with different faces of sadness in all voices of Obscure Tomorrows?)

Through cracks of injured land, from dark and freezing depths will rise the music for my dance – and it will teach me that the greatness in our thinking, the miracle of our brains with consciousness and imagination bears the duty to constantly evolve, seek greater highs with more caring acts – all because the greatness and miracles of our species are born inseparable from darkness, the quest of human life to come to terms with fundamental nature of hypocrisy: I try to be one thing, and yet end up being those things I so faithfully fight against.

This is not a toolkit nor a guidebook – it's a poet's hunt for unity. I dare you to not dismiss the ingrained features just because they're less glamorous than you desire – curious, where does our troubling embarrassment take root?

Falling helpless on my knees before the sight of inborn beasts, I welcome them in my duality, and through sweet caressing talk them into walking side by side as allies through all the fights for strength and light. I set my wild creatures free.

You know. You just know. Let it speak to you.