The heat is about to break and I am awakening as I always do at this time of year. Like a reverse hibernation, the weather changes and the bear within me stretches out and roars, for he is about to roam the earth in search of food, in search of a way to cure this hunger that courses through his being. I was not made to be a docile man, a smiling soft man who trades time for a treasure that doesn’t exist.
I don’t want to lose myself to the modern age.
I don’t want to be enveloped by suburbs and 401ks and meetings about emails held through computer screens.
Even now I feel that ancient fire, the wildness that lives in me, growing dim. It’s still there, flickering in the midst of the noise.
The loudness of car problems and some kid’s birthday party and text messages lighting up my phone, the loudness of the meeting invite and the discussion over things that don’t matter. Not even a little bit. The discussion that goes on and on and on, the discussion that we have chosen to trade our time to have, the discussion that leaves us empty. The symphony is paused for an ad about everything you wish didn’t exist, but you ought to buy it, you, it’s all just for you to buy and you can click here to take the next step or you can click here for the symphony to continue, but the symphony was never meant to be broken in half, it was never intended for this, the 25 year-old with the answers on how to take just one thousand dollars and become a millionaire, the salesman who doesn’t know what he’s just done to the work because he didn’t choose it, an algorithm chose it for him, and algorithm chose me. The algorithm thinks we might make a good pairing. The loudness of political chatter, fools chattering endlessly about things that fools discuss, repeating phrases so they enter the lexicon and become the truth, can you believe it? No, can you believe it? No, but can you believe this? No, can you? No, I can’t believe it. Can you? This is for your safety, and all the people say ‘this is for your safety’, and now it’s true. It’s for your safety. Brake lights on the highway, rows and rows of them, the kindness and goodness that is never for its own sake, but sheened over a sale. 20% off, 30% off, don’t miss out on 40% off, the world at 40% off, and the light in me grows dim.
I don’t want any of this, but I choose it every day. I choose exactly what I don’t want and never did. I choose what the poets warned me about. I don’t want a stapler on my desk. I don’t want a computer to already know what I’m going to do because I do it every day. I don’t want to solve problems for people who don’t care about me, for people who don’t know my name.
I need the wild. I need to be lost at sea. I need the compass to break while I’m in the desert, so my only hope is for the angel Gabriel to come ram his heel into the earth and a spring to burst forth from which I might drink living water.
I need the weather to change, the heat to break and the cool to come upon me like a spirit, there are spirits and I need one now to fill me up and awaken me from this modern slumber.
I need the roar of a lion. Judah in my veins. I need the stars in the silence, to be afraid of how great the universe actually is.
The sound goes past but God is not in the sound, he is in the whisper, and the whisper is found in the places that scare us most.