23-9-2021: Day 104
Over the past six months of self-exposure to the chit and chatter of social media, scarcely has it felt so alien as on this day of days. The twenty-four-seven feeds have left feelings of displacement, disorientation, and destruction – an earthquake of doom cracked under the scrolling finger – and no amount of digital self-esteem tokens of blue likes, red hearts or insightful comments can stem the rising flood waters of loneliness.
Slithering between the social platitudes of Facebook, between the ripe vines of smiles, blessings and self-congratulatory pats on the back, there is a snake in the grass. The algorithms have fangs, the adverts venom, a coiled threat of manufactured consent. I am being sold trauma healing, energy workshops, and mindfulness quotes, tailored like a cheap suit.
Hop over onto the Twittersphere and the battle for hearts, minds and followers feels like a ceaseless pilgrimage towards the dying of the blue light filter. My dwarf rag-tag army of followers and followed appear to be hungry and craving spiritual nourishment in the digital Trenches.
So, I take my phone, wielded like a wired and weary crack-addict, and plug it into the wall till tomorrow’s sunrise, far from the maddening digital crowd.
25-9-2021: Day 106
I was awake with the third dawn chorus. The silence of night broken first by seagulls, then secondly rolling juggernauts on the A27, and finally capped off with the street birds chirping excitedly outside the bedroom window. This gloomy dusky morning was kissed with promise, I mused, headed downstairs. To breath in the day, with a head-full of dreams, words on my tongue, and a dry thirst for life.
The dreams were unshakeable, cast like leaden sculptures in the die. I could pick them up. Touch them. Examine them. And I was feeling emotionally tactile and curious staring out at the maudlin dawn outside.
One dream was a strange and cerebral sculpture. It opened with Mick Jagger relaxing on a green chaise longue, in a five-star hotel in downtown Havana. He was waxing lyrically about the Revolution, and starstruck, I listened with the ears of a child. When it was time, he pressed a crystal rock into my hand. I slipped him a tenner and walked past the waiting police and security outside the hotel into the Cuban night.
28-9-2021: Day 109
Autumn is coming. The ashes of an Indian summer have been blown away by the prevailing winds of the in-coming season. The trees are dropping their patchwork confetti blanket of reds, oranges, and yellow leaves in the street gutters. The Harvest Moon has gone to seed, the Equinox passed in a blink of the eye, and the world is tilting precariously on its greasy, oil addicted, axis.
Meanwhile the garden of my mind is in seasonal transition too. I recently reduced the dosage of the psych meds to 15mg, and while this act of self-medication is a bid to hack through the gnarly undergrowth (the weeds, nettles, and thistles are coming through thick and fast). In the mornings, I can hardly see the woods for the weeds, and the blurry medicated vision takes hours to clear.
But somehow, the soul comes calling on these winds of change. The long-term cultivation of the garden of my mind in these changing seasons becomes the overriding impulse, as the shadows lengthen, and the leaves fall from the trees.