Questions for an anxious world

And what?

vultures in rural Catalunya, taken by me, May 2025

And what if I take this whole day off, shut off my pocket screen and settle into a book, contemplate the trees that still poke daringly out through the stuff we paved them over with?

And what if my to-do list remains arrogantly bloated, unconsidered, unbroken?

And what if there's untold messages that warrant reply, a thousand tabs unentered portals, an email chain in purgatory, a DM that's TBC?

And what if I flee this stifled apartment to the ocean and swim up next to some bodies that I'll briefly commune with, if only for the fact of our sharing breath, our helpless legs kicking the same small edge of the Atlantic?

And what if this is my last full summer in this continent which I've pieced a careful home out of?

And what if I spend the next few months wandering this place of conquest and overdrawn borders, if I retrieve my old rucksack from storage and take shelter in strange places with people who speak in foreign vowels, trying to figure out who the fuck I am again, like I did when I was younger?

And what if I get lonely in all of these unknown places, if the feeling knocks at me and I swing myself open to let it in?

And what if I keep kissing boys I barely know, who I'm not even sure I like, but who I might love, for I can't help but love anyone who has also made a beautiful bed of their suffering?

And what if some people observe love more than they incarnate it, if love is something they behold, watch over as sentinels, and only inhabit when it rushes up to them like an unsuspecting tide, knocks them over, winds them?

And what if I am one of those people?

And what if I keep downloading and deleting all of the apps in a ritual of disembodiment, because it is deeply soothing to play life out on the internet, to be lonely but to be safe?

And what if the air is slowly compressing us, if we are increasingly only together in our isolation, if this project we've all signed up to has managed us out of the tender joy of being held in the moments we aren't toiling?

And what if this is life is a series of becomings and unbecomings with no discernible meter, and that the only cheat code I've found is to luxuriate in the moments where its absurdity is laid out in full?

And what? And what? Will I topple? I have yet to. Will I spontaneously combust like those black and white men I read about in the Guinness World Book of Records as a child, before I knew what an algorithm was, before I mentally tracked the days until rent was due, before people I loved began to push out little versions of themselves that I watched grow up in the warp-speed time of the internet? No, I don't imagine.

I remain. I stand treacherously before unseen paths and I keep choosing one, relentless, sometimes curious, often bored. I remain because remaining is the only constant I see around me - the stars, the trees, the cycles of things that will outlive us all. If nothing else, what can we do but live in tribute to their awe-some example? If nothing else, what can we do but keep choosing?

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The other day I found myself by the landing of a waterfall, surrounded by a pool of mountain water in the Pyrénées, where no other people could or would be. I took my clothes off and bathed in the water like an infant, humming something so I could place myself in the walls of noise around me, shrieking insects, crackling trees, the punch of water on water, the far off calls of birds I couldn't see.

I was tired, anxious, nursing a full head. Vultures circled above and I knew that they knew something I didn't, and I was jealous of their wisdom. I leaned further into the stream and at once it occurred to me that in a place so unfathomably far from others, in the midst of such a cacophony, that if I wanted, if it would help even an iota, I could also make noise. I could scream. That for once I didn't need to hold everything in my head - that I could impart it into the air, rid myself of it, like every being around me was doing in open chorus.

I decided to unburden myself, to re-become animal.

I drew in breath, distended my belly.

No sound, not a whimper. I floundered, tried again. My voice caught. Eventually, flabbergasted, I sunk under the skin of the rushing water and screamed below its surface, let the water carry whatever couldn't withstand the air. It is always the water.

I don’t know what it means - I don't know what most things mean. But one day I will scream out to the world without fear of the force of what it might scream back. And when that day comes, I will know that there is a part of me, a part that formed in me before I had words to name it, that has done its full orbit and found its resolution.

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Thanks for reading. The next few months I am working hard, moving out of my apartment here in Lisbon, and will be walking through a cloud of logistics and farewells and various other hallmarks of transition! I will still be writing, though to what extent we will see. Thank you for always meeting me where I'm at, for subscribing to this newsletter and supporting my writing. I appreciate it and you immensely!