Sunday, May 06, 2012

Early 2012, in retrospective: A personal apocalypse



*aherm*.


Given the entry immediately preceding mine, I'm not entirely quite sure how to help begin anew. Do we begin anew? Do we shift through the wreckage of our pasts, futilely scraping the pieces back together in order to reassemble the form we have voluntarily disintegrated or do we, as a good friend of mine once said, "turn a blind eye upon our past when we embrace the future?"

From my end, I find myself working through whatever channels I can to keep "us" afloat- not only due to my vested interest in preserving such clearly... professional journalistic endeavors of my own, but also out of love for the whole of the Work undergone at this point and to all of Modern Mythology's contributers. 

It is May 2012, the year of the personal apocalypse, and we may ask ourselves at this point: What have we collectively learned so far from where we have come?

From where did we start?

I for one, started in a dead end small town in the rust belt of the midwest. A town with zero opportunities, and zero chance to do anything of note. I remember as a kid, all I ever wanted was to leave a sort of existential graffiti on the walls of reality. I wanted to make my mark upon the world, for better or for worse, in order to declare that was in fact really here, that I LIVED, fully and taking as many chances as I could. 

I did just that. This year, I left like a naive and gullible young fool and find myself now on the opposite end of the country, somewhat scarred, somewhat embittered or hardened, but a whole lot wiser. This year has brought me much joy and sorrow. I learned things about myself that I never knew, I discovered places of inner strength and fortitude that I didn't know existed and I learned first hand who my true friends are. 

It is to you, my friends and my readers, that I direct my message now. 

2012 was the year in which I took flight. I left my caution to the wind, left my home on a shoestring budget and wandered. I have met many wonderful people and seen many beautiful and fascinating things. I have also seen many brutal, savage and ugly things. I have experienced in a very short time the most tender and the most carnal, the most vicious and the most sublimated of human experiences and I am only the wiser for it.

This year, I learned that within all of us is a strength beyond all strength, a complete neutrality, and objective and impartial observing and silent self. When we find this internal strength, center and fortitude, the amount of change and progress in the name of love that we can collectively generate is limitless. We just have to find it. Or it has to find us.

This year, I finished a record and a novella (the 404 Documents, a metafictional  collaborative writing experiment that got a little too real for comfort) with my friend and co-writer. I am now sending the very best of my love and support to him. Many of you know our curator only from his art, or various hardened personas and masks that I confess James like many of us wears at times. I got to spend time with him personally and he is a wonderful human being who has brought much love, joy and beauty into the world and all of us here at Modern Mythology are sending him our love and best wishes.

This year, through the help of James and others,  I worked to brainstorm and collaborate with a few brilliant people that I will not name. We collectively helped to design support systems and social outreach programs to point out bullying behavior in social settings for a non-profit organization. The irony here is that James himself has been bullied, attacked and provoked by hateful bigots and greedy humans to the point of breaking. Like our curator, I myself remember being verbally shit on, beaten up, and emotionally tormented by a host of kids when I was younger. We all have many hardships to endure in life, but it is our pain and they are our scars and we must own them. They are, for better or for worse, part of what makes us who we are.

This year, I sat in a darkened bar in the big Shitty of Philadelphia, having a hushed conversation into a voice recorder with a man who claimed to be a vampire and worked as a delegate for the Ron Paul presidential campaign. I met the filmmakers of "Clark: A Gonzomentary", yet another horrific existential lesson disguised as a mockumentary film. I flew across the country to be with a woman that I still very much love as a friend and a person. I lived with the curator of this blog for a brief stint and explored New York where I interviewed Howard Bloom for the first Modern Mythology podcast, came back through Jersey to eat methadone and xanax with Eian Orange of the Zenseiderz, which regretfully was the only visit throughout these travels of which I've next to no memory. We parted that weekend over a home made Mojo bag that we left at a crossroads, as per traditional witchcraft. Him, with an old ticket stub and me with an unused token for the L train. We tied our shit together in a satchel and split up. Haven't seen him since.

This year, I met and fell in love with one of the most beautiful human beings I have ever had the pleasure to have known. I send her my love, from wherever I am. I saved money for better musical equipment. I smoked good marijuana every day. I wrote more than I have in years. I Kerouac'd myself into utter oblivion. I'm fucking homeless and very comfortable with transience!

There were bad days, there were good days, but looking back and in retrospect only now do I realize how lucky I have been. To party like a motherfucker nonstop, hang with artists, DJ's, filmmakers, writers, acid casualties, philanthropists, pornographers, pimps, thieves, liars, truthers, angels, demons, tricksters, gods and motherfuckin' mutants of every variety. I love each and every one of you, for better or for worse. 

Take this time to thank yourself for being strong enough to make it to where you are right now. Love each day for what it is, fully accept your life and say "yes" to the infinite possibilities of existence. This may be all we have- right here and now. Do something incredible. Die daily. Live each day as if it is your last, because it fucking is.

Transmute all that suffering into light. After all, isn't that the formula of the alchemists? Shit into gold. May your apocalypse come swiftly and may you rise from the ashes anew. Resurrected, complete, and rejuvenated.

In love and KAOS,

RUSTY


3 comments:

  1. We must go on. How? I don't precisely know. What I do know is that we're faced with a choice between reinvention in light of what has been and what still is, or allow our little "post-apocalyptic civilization" collapse and let all we've done decay into ruin and fade away.

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  2. Anonymous8:36 AM

    Catharsis, resurrection, death, rebirth, the head of chaos biting the tail of order.

    The appreciation for the small things like a perfect rose or a sweetly smiling child or the smell of trees in bloom. Profundity in the small and the quiet.

    Even the dark of space is filled with matter, gravity, particles.

    Whatever doesn't kill you, doesn't kill you. You pick what happens next.

    Rebirth, reinvention can be healing... as long as it doesn't go hand-in-hand with negative kinds of avoidance.

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  3. Perhaps I'm emotionally stunted, because I wasn't viscerally shocked by Mr. Curcio's abandonment of his identity. In a sense, it's more of a burden than suicide: with suicide, you give up yourself but you don't have to continue living with the absence of an identity or work toward building up a new one. Even without a good rationale (and he had one), it's sure to be an interesting experience, and I hope someone who comes out of the other side of such an experience will fill us in later on how it went.

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