I rode my bike until I didn't feel angry

I wasn’t even gonna write this week. I swear to you that after one year and one month of writing an essay every week I was going to lay down my quill and just vibe. On Monday, I sat down with my therapist, aired my 1,000 grievances to the wind, and noted I was BEAT DOWN. We talked through the entire process of taking time off to just recovering that creative spark. Long and short of it, I really am doing a lot of behind the scenes spiritual work to follow through on this promise to myself to go paid. This whole process is having me navigate a lot of difficult bureaucracies, yeah, but also imposter syndrome (“Are my stories worth people paying me money for?”), values questions (Do I want to build a paid following on a platform [Substack] that is known for its problematic platforming of “Antisemitism, false information, and extremism?”1), and anxiety (will I get fired from my day job for telling my own truth?). It’s all a lot and its stripping that will to write out of this project.

I was excited about taking that time off. In the days after that chat, I went through the motions of resting. I went to bed early, enjoyed the video games, rode my bike, watched Bachelor in Paradise with Lily in my typical Mystery Science Theatre 3000 style. I even persisted with the rest after my family informed me that that my 96-year-old Grandma died. I even persisted with my rest as I did the, now obligatory, song and dance with my dad via text with my Dad about whether I would return to Toledo. He had summoned me when his father died. I even persisted after completing my Tending Descent initiation ritual with Hannah Haddadi of Mourning Light Divination. These are all things that would have sent me flying to the page to process my experience. Yet, I resisted taking the bait.

I continued to just rest in the accumulating piles of death that surrounded me. I simmered myself in my imposter syndrome, my grappling with my own values, and my anxiety about taking this tremendous leap for myself. This death-drenched place I am resting in is the place of acquiescence Jessica Dore spoke of in relation to the Death card of the Tarot and Joseph Campbell this week (I will quote the whole thing, because it is that useful and its a paid post):

“October 4 | Death | You learn to acquiesce

It has been said that death is not a thing to understand. You don’t get under it somehow, or gain a foothold. Death gets under you, and your job is to learn how to rest there. I’m referencing one of my favorite things ever said about death by mythologist Joseph Campbell, who said: “You don’t understand death, you learn to acquiesce in death.”¹

Acquiesce. From the latin quiescere, to rest. Dying feels unsafe, by definition. And to expect rest without safety? Unjust. Still. Contrary to popular belief life and death aren’t all or nothing. So don’t assume tiny pockets of respite—sprinkled as they are through the descent—have no use. Maybe a single second of resting (so easy to miss when you’re flailing) is an opening. Go there and see where it takes you.

I stayed there, waiting for my opening. No relief came as the week progressed. Things just got harder with tight time turnarounds on “time-sensitive" work matters. I felt myself reach a crescendo, where the pressure from all my responsibilities as a carbon based life form turned me into a stick of ancient, volatile dynamite—ready to blow at any moment.

So, I rode my bike until I didn’t feel angry, overwhelmed, or defeated. I used the movement to be with the deaths until they felt their grievances were also properly aired out. It took about 11 miles before I no longer saw red. Then, as if exiting a dream, the world became visible again. The gentle orange hue of the retreating sunlight cut through my morass and illuminated the gentle beauty that held me and brought me back to myself. The sun slipped behind the mountains as I rode that dusty, dry gravel trail back to my home. Somewhere on that ride home I found that opening back to my creative spark, which propelled me back to this page.

Is it too “on brand” for a druid to find his spark alchemizing the autumn glow as a balm for his grief? Sure, but I suppose that’s what makes labeling yourself as anything useful. My spirituality and the tools I use are indelibly linked to the world I am embedded in. The soil, the water, the air, and the sun are these undeniable collaborators that continue to remind me that the world only emerges once a death has found its full expression. You can be as basic as you want in this world, and boy, am I basic in this way, an utter simpleton!

I was reminded of this basic maxim of my own spiritual practice: “Living follows a Death” this week during my time with my Tending Descent spiritual death worker training cohort. Hannah dropped that little gem right into her discussion. To describe how it lit me up inside is impossible. It was the second shot in the arm this week that I needed to be here on this page with you today. It clarified that grappling, wrangling, and tangling with all these difficulties related to launching the next iteration of this project is as much tending to a death as doing the work related to maintaining my boundaries with my family surrounding the death of my grandmother. The revolution (in this practice) will not be televised. No, it will happen in the spaces between these

words, in the span of days between these essays coming into being. It will happen in the feelingscape, griefscape fully experienced far away from the glare of the internet. It will happen in the space between my two ears where I come into my own power as someone trying to build something from nothing.

With all this said, I felt myself slip through another death and rebirth to come back to this space of devotional discipline this week. How many times have I referenced devotional discipline? It’s a lot. Just go search the 55+ essays from the last year and some change. It occurred to me that this entire writing practice is one of my main tethers to my spirituality. My date with the page is one of the primary sacred spaces where I clearly recommit myself to my own practices each week. It’s no different than cleaning my altars and refreshing my offerings. If I am doing the daily/weekly work on my foundation then its much harder for me to stray from the real work that Gary Snyder alludes to in his poem “I Went to the Maverick Bar.”

“…a country-and-western band began to play   

“We don’t smoke Marijuana in Muskokie”   

And with the next song,

                         a couple began to dance.

They held each other like in High School dances   

                         in the fifties;

I recalled when I worked in the woods

                         and the bars of Madras, Oregon.   

That short-haired joy and roughness—

                         America—your stupidity.   

I could almost love you again.

We left—onto the freeway shoulders—

                         under the tough old stars—

In the shadow of bluffs

                         I came back to myself,

To the real work, to

                         “What is to be done.”

Excerpt from Gary Snyder’s “I Went Into a Maverick Bar”

Yes, I want to leave down that gravel trail on my bike, come back to myself, and to the real work of what is to be done with this conduit of my devotional discipline practice.

Anyways, I am sure I will have more to say about the other death that came up this week. I just have to decide how much of that bridge I want to burn or how much I will just let go. It will likely be a GTD, game time decision.

All my best, dear reader,

James

YOU ARE KING KOOPA! Thanks for reading, HOSS. I appreciate you. Enjoy more free essays while I figure out how to monetize my oversharing.