Learn
to Chew
There
are many supposed folk-remedies for a troubled mind. You hear of
fumes and drinks that shake the globe and make it sparkle for a time.
But the flakes will stick again, will hold fast to the glistening
floor, needing a more reckless stirring every time until it slips
through your fingers and is lost. Such it the convention, as many see
it.
But
the mind is not made from glass, no. Rather, it is plastic: A
stomach. A stomach that is stretched and expanded much too far, to
the ill advice of those with fattened heads. Your eyes, your ears,
swallow the world whole. Every novel concept, each new experience -
and all of the turmoil in between - is served as a single course,
and makes you sick. In its desperation, the stuffed gut forces the
banquet lower, undigested, into the bowel. Solid and barbed, scraping
and catching as it descends, causing great pain. When it comes time
to pass these thoughts and volitions, the process is slow, and
punishing. Words of wanting, drippings of stagnate conflict and
confusion, left to dry on a thin white sheet. It is this constipation
of emotions, this retentive tendency to ruminate over the wrongs and
the whys that make your life seem so unappetizing.
Some
will suggest you allow the belly in your skull to swell with acid; to
let it corrode your nourishment with ferocious inclinations, blending
everything into uniformed paste. Others will say you need only hold
shut the mouths that slurp up the bitter speech and unsavory sights -
to starve yourself of all things until what festers falls away to
dust.
But
it is best, perhaps, to merely take small bites. To savor each
flavor, as though you might never taste it again. To chew and make
solvent, so that every refined line fertilizes the sterile page;
giving way to a bountiful new place where others may seek sustenance.
-
A.T. Buesching
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