what i cannot answer and what i cannot ask

stream of consciousness practice #37

amos is on the cusp of crawling, and i am on the cusp of falling asleep while standing. well, im not sure if he is about to crawl or not, but the signs are pointing there, the constant rocking back and forth on his hands and knees especially when we are trying to get him to nap/ sleep, the disruption in his naps, down to maybe 2 but sometimes one and then its an early bedtime for him, the wailing of trying to get him to sleep, though could also be from more teething? it will pass i tell myself. my back hurts and 2 cups of coffee a day are not nearly enough. luckily he sleeps like a rock through the night, which is really saving us.

how does one cut through the noise? I didnt want to write tonight. but i promised i would put something out every sunday night. maybe i didnt promise that out loud, but in my head i did. even though ive been writing sporadically throughout the week. so even though i dont want to write, i need to write, for the practice. and since i dont want to write i am feeling vulnerable, i want to write without the I tonight, without letting you all in on my feelings and thoughts and inner world. so back to my question, how does one cut through the noise? of daily life? of self talk, of the world. i guess its the same in editing, or mixing a song, you have to sculpt your work to make room for it to fit within the world, for it to cut through the noise, to get in front of someones hands, face, ears. theres 31 million people in the state of texas. just the state of texas. imagine the rest of the US. the rest of the world. its an overwhelming amount of people all wanting to do the same thing. you can start to feel that overwhelm when you scroll the explore page of any app. everyone is trying to cut through the noise. “if we’re adding to the noise, turn off your stereo, radio.” (10 points if you can name that song)

my dreams lately have been strange. probably too much of a mix of all the things i am consuming lately. i had dejavu today (or was it yesterday) when i was feeding amos, and it wasnt because i have fed him so many times before, but i remembered a dream i had once of hayden and i having a boy. the mind is fickle of what is real and what is not, it holds onto fragments and turns them into stories, or maybe the stories are the truth, and maybe dreams are just dreams or maybe they are parallel universes or astro jumping or who really knows. self image borders our realities. how we want to be perceived limits our understanding of ourselves. sometimes. i have come across so many people that live in their own fantasies. they tell themselves one thing about why they are doing something, have convinced themselves of it, when in fact its something entirely different. ideal vs reality. in some way we are all like this. its probably the only way to be to protect ourselves from our worlds crashing, though some are freely open. without ego. without a thread of shame or pride or need or want. although i am suspicious of it. i saw a video of nuns on a podcast. she was talking about how she became a nun. she was dating someone and could see herself marrying him but something didnt feel right as they continued to date. an uneasiness. she prayed and prayed and god told her to follow him instead and to become a nun, serve him, and the community. so much dedication to god. i do not have that much dedication to him. if he asked me to do that, i dont know that i would be able to give all of this up. maybe that makes me of the flesh and earth and sin, and truth be told, i am, we are. you cannot change where you are from. the soil is always there, in your roots, in your fingernails, in your hair. i do want the riches of the world sometimes. i do want to cut through the noise. and sometimes i want to disappear. sometimes i am okay with never amounting to all the ambitions i have.

so much gets left unsaid. a thought that haunted me today. a lump in my throat, i swallow my tears. in death mostly, is when we realize this. when someone we love dies and we realize all the things we will never be able to say to them again, all the things we never got to explore and get off our chest, all the stories that stayed trapped inside of them. its coming for all of us one day and i dont know what to do with it all. the weight of it. i keep talking about the weight of life of grief, but there is an airyness to all of this too. there is a lifting of the spirit, a lightness we cannot touch, cannot grasp. love suspends both sides. or maybe love connects both. or maybe love is the center, and everything else hugs it, points it back to love.

the dementia is eating away at my abuelitas brain. she does not remember she has two children who passed away. a small gift of the dementia. she thinks my son is my moms son because she doesnt remember my mom has children. they remind her sometimes, i dont know why. they say she nods, says thats nice. but its the same conversation the next day. i know everyone is tired. i am tired for them. i mourn for them all. i pray for them all. there is so much i dont yet have the answer for, like how to carry the pain of my loved ones. how to give it meaning, sculpt it to a recognizable shape. but maybe they are all past that. the dead are living somewhere else. abstract shapes become recognizable at last.

ambition drives us. there is still a mountain top. there is still a sunset to chase. one part of us dies but the rest keeps living, with new charge, with new growth, new blooms. the world we have shaped today will change tomorrow, and we keep on molding it. sometimes if we sit still enough, let the wind brush our face, we can hear the beginning of an answer. we are on this strange planet, living in this strange world, with a trillionaire now. the meaning of money eats itself, into oblivion into creation into oblivion, i dont know what any of it means for the rest of us. i know that my grandparents found happiness in their home, and their ranch in small town in mexico, hand washing their clothes to hang out to dry, feeding the stray cats, walking to the market and then to church. a trillion dollars could never be enough to replace my memories. amos is on the cusp of saying mama, i feel it, he has uttered it on accident a few times, it spills out of him, rolls off his tongue. i see his little face through the sun rays of the window, he smiles at me knowingly, the unanswered questions are there in my mind, i put them on the shelf for another day, amos reaches for me, thats the only answer i need right now.

nun in mexico on film /2020