Every bit of air

Last weekend, at Whittaker’s Bunkhouse in Ashford, Washington, I was packing my Deuter Aircontact Lite when I learned I’d been packing all wrong. Francisco, who was to be one of three on my rope team for Rainier, yanked out my neatly squared-away gear, unfurled it, and began shoving it back into the nylon abyss. The result: newfound space from the same assortment of objects, sorted differently.

I unlocked a potent metaphor in that moment. Sometimes all the folding, rolling, kneading, sealing, stacking, zipping, clicking, and cynching is for naught. The most efficient way to pack a backpack is to shove shit in, taking up every available nook. I was dumbfounded.

Tonight I rediscovered my own website and blew off some thick digital dust. Haven’t set foot in here for months. I was on a streak for a while of uploading old school essays that would have otherwise sat on a drive somewhere until the day I died. Thought it’d be neat to backdate them and see my authorial voice evolve over time. Turn a cringe-fest into a teaching moment with a side of humility.¹

Some of the old uploads I’d added footnotes to with Wikipedia linkouts for context. The essay I uploaded tonight,² however, seemed ripe for some direct hyperlinkage, so I started linking inline instead of burying sources at the bottom. I then realized I may have initially gone with footnotes to not interrupt reading flow—you might otherwise get easily sidetracked, tripping down a tab-based rabbit hole with a cat’s curiosity and a happy clicker-finger.

I then realized that what’s most important is getting up the mountain while conserving as much energy as possible so you can get back down,³ or being maximally efficient and minimally organized—or being organized in an unituitive way. Shoving it in. And so, against my better judgement, I must favor filling all possible air space of this internet enclave lest I end up with something beautifully organized and woefully void of substance.

Yet another post about posting to avoid actually having to post. The mind of a writer is the mind of us all. It’s 1:30am when I set the dehumidifier to go off (same as turn on in English), assuming I’d be asleep by now and it wouldn’t hinder my getting to sleep. Just scared the daylights out of me. And now that the daylights have vacated, it is time to vacate the land of the lucid for some progesterone-fueled dreamscape. Away.

Mirror

A mirror with fixtures fixed askew
invites accidental self-admiration
or abominable trips into the abyss.
One’s own passerby, a single self
certain to question the singularity of
their soul upon a small sip of reflection.
When consciousness whets the tongue
twas dry from the hydrating licks
of internal love, mealy feelings
gyrate and tumble quips of sparkly
personal acknowledgment like soft
sand into glass into sequins into
surprisingly sultry patterns of shimmers
one wears on the skin like a
lacquer of bravery in the ability
to conquer a customized you.

Something unseen

Negative space feels luxurious in a world of clutter. Invert the narrative with me. Let’s call it positive space.

Hone in on the air around you until you’re treading through it. Look not past the air at any point but through it to get to that point.

Invite the smallest sounds to tickle your inner ear. Welcome them as the molecular vibrations they are, physically chain-linking in the same air you tread.

Inhale deeply until you catch whatever small scent billows around your aura. You may be used to it—overcome autonomic rhythm, pick up the olfactory off-beat.

Place your pointer finger on the least interesting surface within reach. Apologize to that surface and tell it how interesting it truly is. Swirl in small, slow circles or find a pattern to produce gentle friction.

Find a wall and care more about it than anything on or against it. If outdoors, gaze skyward until your perimeter drops to an ocular meniscus.

Make a small sound only you can hear.

Nod imperceptibly to all that’s not yet has always been here.