1) Remember. Attempt to recall the contingencies of your animateness. Who were you? Did the dandelions growing in the cracks of a particular sidewalk give your ghostly presence any nostalgia, or did the sign that displays a faded 1999? Did the faded baseball cap perched languidly atop those boxes make your heart hasten its resounding beat? The idiosyncrasies of your character are crucial to ascertaining any facts about your concrete personage.

2) Reflect. Once you have adequately fabricated a vision of your obsolete self, force your mind to delve into each aspect of your being more diligently. What is it, exactly, in your past that is holding you back? What is the source of the lingering regret that chains you to your phenomenal existence? Are the chains commenced by the woman stooping above a gravestone (your gravestone?), the neglected manuscript stretched over your granite kitchen counter, or even the timorously wilted perennials whose vigor you undertook? Does the charmingly anachronistic portrait of burgeoning Claude Monet posing with a digital camera have any significance?

3) Resonate. Find peace. This instruction is the vaguest and briefest, for it means different things for different entities. You could take it as simply putting to rest the leeching vices dormant in your mind (discussed in instruction 1).

08.17.2024. Grey Area Challenge (What do you say to a spirit stuck in limbo?).

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anaïs Nin

A young swan´s gilded glare gives even Tartarus light,

as dark plays bright

under innocence unbroken;

one pauses to smell the roses despite one´s suspension.

To the crooked badger brooding beneath the tree´s thick, gnarled roots,

wrapped in the all-encompassing shade,

a floral picture

is a view untrustworthy.

A painted petal slowly falling

hints at new beginnings and rebirth to one.

To another,

death and loss are inevitable.

08.17.2024.

When someone feels as if their life is ebbing into a stagnant, still pool of monotony, a subtle feeling of foreboding often emerges in them. The mundane pattern of their daily life will seem to gain a shadow of its own. Uncertainty lies behind each constant action and continual habit. 

The human psyche is a complex entity. 

It is hardwired to expect difficulties, strange situations, pain, and grief– so when the mind is comfortable for too long, it upsets itself. It is attracted to monotony and familiarity. When the monotony and familiarity are all there is, the qualities become repellents.

This phenomenon is because, with a history as arduous and persevering as the history of humanity, the brain becomes nervous in the face of a life too easy. Too simple. It knows, from generations of struggle, that life is not a walk in the park.

So it attempts to steel itself. It puts itself on edge and makes your insides churn with growing uneasiness, because no- it really cannot be that easy. Survival is not that simple.

Elliot D. Cohen says “As is well known, Freud divided the human psyche into three functional parts: the id, ego, and superego. The id is a ´dark,´ ´inaccessible´ (unconscious), a non-rational component of the psyche that seeks pleasure. The superego, on the other hand, is the moral conscience arising from internalized parental authority. Its demands are absolutistic and inflexible, and, therefore, in conflict with the capricious id. Accordingly, the ego’s function is to resolve this internal conflict such that the id can satisfy its drives in a socially/morally acceptable manner. To accomplish the latter function, the ego maintains a grasp on reality (the external world), navigating the headwaters of reality to fulfill its function.”

The ¨id¨, according to Freudian theory, is the section of the brain that contains the most basic primitive impulses. It could be understood that this obscure concept is to blame then; one of the most primitive impulses can be called the fight or flight instinct. It is the stress response given by the amygdala when in an emotionally or physically taxing situation, in which it triggers the two ideas of fight or flight: escaping, running away– or staying, and going head to head with whatever the issue is.

When this stress response is inactive for a lengthy period, as said at the beginning of this piece, the mind grows confused. This inherent drive for complexity and struggle reminds us that even in the quietest moments, our minds are attuned to the balance between comfort and challenge.

08.16.2024.