Listen to a reading of “Some Find”:
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Some find it easier to die than to go on living.
Some find it easier to avoid looking at death than to ever truly live.
Some find it easier to turn their bodies into hardened weapons and go fight in a cage than to ever once be tender and kind to themselves.
Some find it easier to build multibillion-dollar corporate empires than to stop and take a single honest look within themselves.
Some find it easier to wage war than to wage peace, even though just below the surface every molecule of their being is calling out for peace like baby birds calling out for their mother.
Some find that what some find easy is actually a whole lot harder than simply being at ease.
Some find that the easiest way to live is to relinquish everything within themselves that thinks it knows how to live.
Some find that if you ask a psychedelic substance to show you what you need to see right before you take it, you’ll always get what you asked for but never what you expected.
Some find that enlightenment will cost you everything, but once you’ve paid you realize both “you” and “everything” were always made of pipe smoke and bedtime stories.
Some find the answers they were looking for, only to look at them later and discover they’re just off-brand actors pretending to be the answers they were looking for.
I never found what I was seeking, only that the instruments I was searching with were the things that tricked me into thinking there was something to search for. A compass made entirely out of magnets. A telescope made of desert mirages. Sonar made of siren’s songs.
I don’t have any answers, just this blank treasure map with a red ‘X’ crayoned on it and this baby stroller full of tears. My Jeopardy scoreboard reads minus infinity. My LinkedIn just says “I know two jokes.”
Some may find that trying to solve this mystery is like trying to catch fish with a net made of water. Like chasing your tail when you don’t even have one. Like cloning an army of yourself just because there’s nobody else to make war on, and giving the clones all your weapons before attacking them.
And some may find that the peace they are seeking hides right behind all their efforts to find it, like someone running around as fast as they can trying to catch up with something called rest. Like someone frantically pounding on the inside of their own front door begging to be let into their home. Like someone scanning the distant horizon day in and day out looking for their own eyeballs.
And some may find that the only reason the drums of war are beating so loudly is to drown out the noise of those baby birds peep-peep-peeping out to our hearts, like someone who keeps talking just to keep silence from crashing in. That we are in a punctured submarine trying to seal out all the water, and the submarine is violence, and the ocean is peace, and we lost this battle long before it started, long before anything started, because we cannot run from ourselves forever, because those baby birds keep calling us home, because our efforts to stave off the abyss of love we are surrounded by were doomed before we even built this vessel, because beauty is just a word for having truly seen something, because the problem with spiritual insights is that they too often give rise to spiritual beliefs, because anyone who thinks they’ve got this all figured out is suffering from a psychedelic drug deficiency, because we built this submarine out of NO and it’s being hopelessly flooded with an ocean of YES, big YES, intense YES, intimate YES, YES into even our biggest NO parts, YES into even the parts of ourselves we despise, YES into our guilt, YES into our shame, YES into our rejection of all the gifts we are swimming in because we cannot accept them because NO it can’t be that easy and NO I am not worthy and NO I deserve only crumbs and I must scrape and struggle and apologize to get them.
And some find themselves submerged in an ocean of YES, suddenly realizing all their beliefs have been lies.
Some find. Some seek. Some find their way out of seeking. Some find their way out of finding. The water is crashing in, and we’ve been waving that white flag since before the Big Bang.
Peep peep.
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31 responses to “Some Find”
A gorgeous piece, Caitlin. Your ability to interweave the mundane with the sublime in a single sentence inspires me. Thank you for continuing to create art like this — we need it and you so desperately.
Thank you Caitlin Johnstone !
Thank you !
Some find easy to not care about the rest and look where we are now.
https://open.substack.com/pub/frankmiscione/p/boy-in-the-corner-track-3?r=c93n9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
You don’t know what you don’t read, but if someone were to read the essay that is at the end of the following link, then they would know that they had probably read the most important essay that they could ever possibly have read.
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2022/10/16/for-its-security-and-survival-china-must-understand-rothschild-zionism/
That was a really good one.
Thank you for sharing.
Battling shingles pain, so far over 6 months with no real medical remedy, drinking a cup of coffee in the pre-dawn hours in Florida just watching it gradually get light and for some reason unknown my mind goes into hyper gear with voices? noise? reruns? I have no idea but just suddenly it stops and then a quiet calm emerges, a feeling of peace, acceptance and knowledge that it is going to be ok. It was just a feeling, but I treasure that experience. My point is that it is your experiences that are real and while the rational thinking brain can ask the questions, it can only point the way but sooner or later, one way or another this opens up for all of us.
Peace…..
A friend of mine, although very sceptical, got rid of shingles through acupuncture, for what it’s worth. Clay poultices are also recommended.
Thanks
You’re welcome. Then again, it was in the first days. After months, things may be more complicated. But never say never :o)
Chlorine Dioxide is the real weapon to get rid of that….Check this out with Dr Andreas Kalcker !!!!!!
My wife has postherpetic neuralgia, the pain of shingles that remains after the shingles outbreak subsides.
Everything her doctors prescribed did not make the pain go away and one of them, long term opiates, actually made the pain worse.
The use of CBD gives temporary relief, and cryotherapy worked best, but neither is recognized by the medical establishment and cryotherapy is not readily available.
Good luck. We need it.
If you try CBD buy from a state where it is regulated, like Colorado.
Scammers are only too willing to take your money for crap.
My wife suffered intensely for 14 mo. and had given up hope since pain meds really didn’t help.
Then they tried Klonopin and that did the trick.
get well soon!
Thanks.
The pain overstimulated your nervous system, a doctor can give you steroids but you’ll still need time for your body to fight it. Eventually you’ll get through it. There’s also an effective vaccine.
“Some find that enlightenment will cost you everything, but once you’ve paid you realize both “you” and “everything” were always made of pipe smoke and bedtime stories”.
After changes upon changes, we are more or less the same. Only the level of fear diminishes if we set about freeing ourselves from that ball and chain.
“And some may find that the peace they are seeking hides right behind all their efforts to find it, like someone running around as fast as they can trying to catch up with something called rest. Like someone frantically pounding on the inside of their own front door begging to be let into their home. Like someone scanning the distant horizon day in and day out looking for their own eyeballs”.
Or even walking toward the horizon, hoping to find their eyeballs there, which is reminiscent of the donkey and the carrot dangling from a stick before him.
He will always be frustrated if he chases the carrot unless he learns to enjoy running, another way of phrasing the Taoist tenet that happiness lays not in reaching the goal but in walking the path.
Only our lack of presence in the here and now and acute awareness of each of our physical moves blindfolds us and keeps us in the dark.
The greasy pole hands out a similar philosophy. A friend of mine who was hellbent on achieving social success and had started several businesses once told me. “I feel that all my life, I’ve been climbing a greasy pole. Every time I stretch my hand to get hold of the jackpot, I slide back down”.
During his last attempt, he got Alzheimer. Funny enough, before he was sick, he always looked worried, but Alzheimer seemed to have liberated him: he looked very happy and loving even though – perhaps because – he didn’t recognize anybody. Go figure…
Life is basically a surfing session. It takes technique to get the most out of riding the wave but the prerequisite is that there is a wave. It’s like the wind of history. Washington, Lenin, De Gaulle would never have left their marks in the annals if they hadn’t been caught in the wind of history.
The ancients used to call it Destiny, the three Fates, the Moirai, the Parcae – karma in the East… Even the toughest cookies like Caesar or Pompey wouldn’t attempt anything without first consulting the oracles to learn whence the wind blew – even if it was superstition and the oracles were crooks only possessed with certitudes.
If the wave is not here, there’s nothing doing but if the wave is here, it all boils down to having the courage to change what we can change, the strength to bear what we can’t change and the wisdom to know the difference, being aware nevertheless that in the end, “the Tao never takes any action and yet there is nothing left undone”.
Mektoub, que sera sera, c’est la vie, let it be…
Climb a mountain high enough and it looks like people are shit machines. To the universe that is what we are. We amuse ourselves with the eccentric ways we make shit but at the end of the day that is what we make. We shit on the universe.
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“The fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. <– From the hotel room book.
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I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them? <– More from the book.
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Considering the situation then, not sending weapons to Ukraine is good work. Weapons will be used if sent, and the weapons sent will kill. Some day some way. That shit I don't want on me.
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I wish there was someone I could vote for that I respect. My wish is not unreasonable, there are people who deserve respect. None of them are American politicians. In America politicians wanna-be the hegemon. Without the privilege earned.
It’s perfectly reasonable for Americans to expect to be able to vote for things that most people want (like peace), especially considering that all of our wars are supposed to be about democracy.
I didn’t even begin to start to find myself until after the first of this year, after I stumbled on a video on YouTube about narcissism and the whole spectrum that includes sociopathy and psychopathy. And, now gaslighting.
I see it everywhere, the constant play to alter my chain of thought to move me toward not only the dark side, but to cheapen my own beliefs in myself and my god being able to see myself as damaged goods and the efforts of others to see myself as worthless crap, I see them in a much clearer light, what your poem just covered mostly in the form of questions, though, never uttered so as to preserve the purity of the answer should it ever reveal itself. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Very nice poem with as much as you’ve covered this subject matter previously in prose, this piece would certainly serve nicely as an introduction to a lay coverage of the psychodynamics of the human heart and soul. If you don’t have some sort of creative artist contract saying that you can’t be creative outside the realm that you already perform, I’d like to read that book if you ever find the time to compile it.
You need to find peace and calm inside yourself, while you need someone or something to by calm and peaceful, you are still no there.
Enlightenment is a travel, not a destination.
Personally i think the idea of major breakthroughs is misleading, i always found them to be far less climactic then one might imagine.
You think the idea of major breakthroughs is misleading?
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But doncha-know you got to:
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Break on through to the other side.
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You know that day destroys the night and night divides the day.
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Try to run, try to hide. You got to break on through to the other side.
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Break on through, ow!
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Aw yeah!
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Maybe you want some music when you are off Zelenskyy’s payroll?
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https://youtu.be/YCohm_CilUY