Essential Enemies
And Non-Hierarchical Personal Adaption & Response
“I wanna make beautiful things even if nobody cares.”
I read this and immediately thought of substack. It can be so challenging and giving to create a piece of art. For me, I create through writing, song and guitar, and yoga. I also create through my days and my children’s birthday parties, through my date nights and homes, through the ways I come together with my friends: I am always creating.
The Earth too. Spring is magnificent. She was BUSY all winter long, coming up with all those ideas! Those flowers and the way that moss color compliments the other moss color! The divine trees and nuances of color in the blues of the spring sky; keeping me wondering always: is it gonna rain?
Ezra has taken to telling me, “You're in luck!” Yesterday I was lucky because it was raining and according to her, “You love the rain”. I do love the rain. While away in Puerto Rico last week my boyfriend, Paul said to me, “Sounds like you need a cuddle and some rain.” Tis true. The tropical heat is magical and wonderful and it is ANOTHER WORLD to be there. I made it to the edge of my known world while there. Took a $2 ferry ride from Puerto Rico to the island of Vieques. Spent another $6 on my taxi ride to a deserted horse beach and thought to myself as I stared out over the water: What a wonder it is that for only $8 I can travel to the edge of the world.
I get why they thought it was flat. It FEELS flat out there: Out there where the only thing for thousands upon thousands of miles is the Atlantic Ocean. Next stop, some country on the western coast of Africa- Perhaps the Atlas Mountains.
The Atlantic Ocean's name, meaning "Sea of Atlas," originates from Greek mythology, where Atlas was a titan tasked with holding up the heavens on his shoulders for all of eternity. The Atlas Mountains on the west coast of Africa are also named after Atlas.
For me, part of the awareness of death is an awareness of “holding up the heavens” on my shoulders as well: A deep acknowledgment that if I go, you all go because in my world, the world I’ve created, if my eyes close forever, the world, you within it, cease to exist. So I can imagine you crying over my corpse or smiling as you feel me in the spring flowers each year, or a warm breeze on a cool day or a cool breeze on a warm day. The feel of cool air from the rain seeping into your hot bedroom like fresh air from outer space: reinvigorating your soul.
It’s all philosophy. It’s all unknown at a certain point. Allen Watts said:
The highest to which man can attain is wonder; and if the prime phenomenon makes him wonder, let him be content; nothing higher can it give him, and nothing further should he seek for behind it; here is the limit.
He goes on to say: Let yourself be free to be ignorant, for fools are also one with God. If you strive to attain realization and try to make yourself God, you simply become an intense egoist, but if you allow yourself freedom to be yourself, you will discover that God is not what you have to become- but what you are, in spite of yourself.
So I’m god. Wait no, Im not god…
Anyway, I’ll be myself, creating art, so the art goes on…
I sat at the edge of the world watching Elliot snorkel and Ezra scream and run from the sea. I relaxed and meditated and took selfie videos. And we walked through ankle-deep warm water to the town of Esperanza - hope, sun setting, turning the water to an oil painting and my heart to mush, as I thought of men I love and felt warm just from the thought of them.
I’m home now and thinking of the flowers, the rain, the way I had multiple yogasms at class today, and how grateful I am to have my body and yoga and the world. And I had a great chat with my yoga teacher after class. She spoke of how having an awareness of death can enhance our day-to-day life. This is something I feel passionately about. I remember Elliot telling me once, “Ya know, it’s hard to know if you’re just tired, or if you’re dead tired and the only way to tell is to go to sleep and see” and so every night for a while now, maybe a year or more, I consider sleep to be death. I fall asleep, go into the darkness, happily, might I add, contentedly, ready, excited to fall in, and then something happens and I respawn the next day.
My yoga teacher talked of how mycelium, the mushroom network below the soil, when touched or stimulated in some way is responsive and adaptive all at the same time.
To be responsive and adaptive all at once.
I’ve been down in the dumps a bit upon returning to Portland. The pressure is heavy here, my yoga teacher Allegra once said, “Gravity feels heavier today.” and I think the pressure systems or the gravity or something just is a bit denser up here at this 45-ish degree latitude. My body feels heavier and my spirit too.
I collected a whole bag of tiny quotes from a free library a couple of months ago. Like little fortune cookies, I open one every once and a while when I need a little direction. One two days ago said, “The brightest candle is placed in the darkest place.”
You need a light and a clear vision, and amazing partners, or you’re fucked. We also need, what Elliot calls, “Essential Enemies.”
I define an essential enemy as someone like a sibling, a parent, an ex-lover, a child, a dog - anyone who pushes you and challenges you to be the best fucking version of yourself, but who in the process may cause immeasurable pain and displeasure. Of course we all know what it feels like to be supported and loved into being a “better version” of ourselves, but we need a bow to the essential enemies who have fueled our flames of growth along the way.
She bows.
And may all versions of ourselves be non-hierarchical. May we just be different, but never better or growing, simply changing and evolving. Adapting and responding all at once to touch.
And when we think about our own death and it adds that sweetness to life, what about adding that feeling of the death of our essential enemies? Will there be sweetness when they go? Will they soften for us? How does it change us and them and the dynamic between us?
Warmly,
Amy
P.s. Stay tuned for upcoming posts:
Man, I have been reading (and smoking) some good shit and I have a lot to say so hold on to your motherfucking airplane seat handles because we are in for some turbulence.
Essential Enemies - Check
Creator vs Survival Mode
My thoughts on planes and turbulence
Your Money or Your Life Book Club Start
:D
Amy Cox: “She couldn’t do a godamned thing without telling the whole world about it.”
Your essential enemies remind me of Carlos Castaneda’s petty tyrants in one of his books about Don Juan.