by LORIN DREXLER
Welcome to the Summer edition of Genesis Journals. Before I jump into it, I'd like to thank you. Whether you're a friend, family member, acquaintance, artist, or art purveyor, it means a lot that you're joining me on this journey. I hope you get something valuable from it; I try to leave as much of my heart in these words as possible.
I'm sitting in a coffee shop in my hometown, Chicago, watching the rain hammer the streets, thinking about where to travel next and if I should work with this editor I met with today on my collaborative poetry manuscript, street diaries. We had a phenomenal connection, so I'm guessing yes... and maybe Puerto Rico... and/or Jamaica. This has been a fantastic season for writing and travel... Leaving Mesa (where I currently reside) by car (which began as a family trip), the first overnight was in Flagstaff, AZ (where we dined at the tasty Cornish Pasty)... from there, we traipsed through Navajo Nation and Moab, UT (which feels other planetary), stopping next in Loveland, CO (such a quaint, artistic town); the cascading beauty of the Coloradan landscape never disappoints... further ensuing, we passed through Cheyenne, WY, and onto Rapid City/Wall/Sioux Falls, SD (where I found the lovely poetry book, Whereas by Layli Long Soldier, in the famous Wall Drug)... toting on, the next part of the journey halted in Omaha, NB (to celebrate my exceptionally baseball-talented nephew's bday & graduation)... and finally, on the last leg of that part of the trip, we grazed through Iowa and onto Chicago, IL (home sweet home; friends & fam, good food & coffee shops). For the remainder of the summer, I'll be toggling between St. Joseph/Stevensville, MI (more family time and Nana's bday celebration), and my Windy City roots (stopping and writing in random coffee spots in miscellaneous towns along the way, such as Red Cup Coffee in the charming Chesterton, IN)... and lastly, before heading back to the desert at the end of the summer, I'll get my transient fill in either Central America or the Caribbean.
Much of why I enjoy traveling has more to do with creativity than anything. New places, new faces, new foods, new languages, new cultures, and everything else that goes along with an unexplored environment can be inspiring. Not to mention my greatest creative motivations, removing objects of familiarity and falling into the uncomfortable unknown. This is the out-of-your-box essential in having a fulfilling experience in any aspect of life... to truly live—rather than remaining static and worried that "bad" things might happen, while forgetting great things could happen, too (and more often do). Traveling helps you realize your aliveness. That you're in this infinite moment, and that moment is the only one you'll ever have. It's everything, and yours to do with as you please. Might as well choose the route that scares you the most because we're going to die no matter what we do or how safe we allow ourselves to think we are.
Sidenote: There's a difference between fears for the "right" reasons and fears for the "wrong" reasons. I use quotations around those words because they're subjective and relative in defining your best life, as opposed to there actually being a right or wrong, which goes beyond our scope of assumption to think anything else in the universe really gives a shit about our ideas of nature and morality. But relative to your progress and the evolution of your soul, what is right and wrong for you can be stated in your own democracy. So let's, for a moment, assume fears for the "right" reasons, such as being barefoot and approaching broken glass on the ground: the fear of not wanting glass in your foot is sensible and necessary. Fears like this are primal and part of our natural instinct. Not being scared of a predator in the wild will surely get you killed without this alarm. These fears are essential to survival. But more often than not, our fears go beyond necessity and prevent us from experiencing our lives: fear of success, fear of judgment, fear of failure, fear of traveling or moving, (I love this one) fear of doing what you love because it's not "realistic" or because you're afraid you won't be able to survive doing it. These insidious psychological (and pathological) fears keep you from experiencing a life you've willfully chosen not to live. A life you've decided against yourself. These are fears you hold (and hold you) in preliminary regret. Fears you should move toward overcoming, in whatever ways deem necessary. So, in this moment, if you suffer needlessly from anything like this, I encourage you to stop roleplaying with those imaginary bullshit thoughts preventing you from living the life you'd be happiest living. Why? Because we always have less time than we think, and before you know it, you'll get tied into a life you didn't intend for, and many of the sands in your hourglass will have crossed to the other side. Do what makes you uncomfortable, and run full speed at the things that frighten you. It's what you fear most that, when faced, has the potential to be the most rewarding in your life. That's where the magic happens.
For me, traveling abroad was one of those irrational fears (amongst countless others) that consumed me. It was the unknown: you could get sick, mugged or killed, stranded, or whatever other silly thoughts may arise. All these things are real and can certainly happen, anywhere you are in the world, but they shouldn't prevent you from living your life and being free with your ambitions. Deal with things as they come, not as they inhabit your paranoid mind or irrational conditioning. Live accordingly. Not without fear, but courageously ahead of it.
What I experienced walking head-on into my fears were feelings of enlivenment and being enticed beyond my complacent sensory perception. Seeds of enlightening grace were planted somewhere deep inside me, reinvigorating a source of vitality. Traveling has been this nourishment of growth, in all its various shapes and provocations. We are all artists in some way, creating with the same ambition as we ourselves were created (for how that creation may inhabit you). Traveling provides content to create, to that which may've grown tiresome, opening doors to further dimensions in the portal of your Great Artist—your Godlike genius. I'm constantly looking for new ways to be inspired and put those inspirations to work. Globetrotting and coming up with new combinations of words has been one of my favorites.
 I want to thank FN for this collaboration and inclusion in Genesis Journals and on the Gen Society blog. His work is fabulous. To learn more about this digital artist, check out their biography below and visit their links.
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What are Gen Society and Genesis Journals? In addition to being the LLC umbrella for creative services and music artist services performed by lorindrexler.com and loryn.net, Gen Society is a gallery blog for visual art and poetry collaborations. Genesis Journals is the seasonal newsletter from the blog. In Genesis Journals, the season's featured artist's work will be scattered throughout the sections. Other elements that may be included in the blog are book releases, music releases, and novel excerpts created by writer and musician Lorin Drexler. All these project updates are located in the following section below. |
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**Novel Excerpt**CHAPTER IIITRUTH & LIE
The more profound and abstract challenge
that faced the individual and the collective in modern civilization
was relegating truth from lie;
from subjective source to objective recipient,
as it corresponds between all facets of manufactured living.
From waking in the morning and
reaching for product "anything"
(in such being the stimulant of industrialization)
to fleeing your origin as an exile of war,
it populated everyone's existence—
the existing byproducts indigenously beside it.
For had one known—in the interrogation of compelled submission:
at its root, at the very base,
was its foundation built on
Truth
or
Lie?
The question determines longevity... and quantifies degree of suffering.
:: Beyond the Experiential ::
Truth | tro͞oTH |
a phrase of altruism;
expressed verbally computates
a compressed linguistic distortion
that exhibits the highest-order love;
what is seen, felt, and interpreted by source
at the nature of its necessity as it pertains
to the nature of its symbiotic environment.
The hierarchy recognizes beyond its apex—consumers and producers.
[The fruit tree is bountiful in the garden of good and evil] Lie | lī |
an inaccurate representation
of an identified and acknowledged reality,
in disregard to conscious—subconscious
behavior, in an exhibition of fear;
[generally] fleeted in misdirection
and concerned with self-interest. [The aisle blares in commercial conceit] In the corporeal:
Truth evolves
and changes over time
as its initial principles remain convergent.
In the spiritual:
Truth is
and always will remain timeless—
even as its lower-order doctrines progress. Knowledge
is
inherent,
not
learned.
A lie,
at least a concrete one,
in reciprocal of objective perception,
under the imposition of true reality,
may or may not reflect intrinsically.
However, if reflected,
shall further undergo a distortion process
through interpretation and re-explanation.
a Lie
always dies
when its Truth
is revealed.
by LORIN DREXLER |
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hell is not a place but exists in a place i've heard of. people are not evil, for if that's your catch, it is the nature inside of all things that is. there is no devil, only the sour face of god. what has she ruined, other than the tiny world inside us?
and for that, love—the candle that dies at the sight of our reflection?
it was burnt before it was set before us.
the self is responsible.
the self is responsible.
self-centered, though we pretend that were a "bad" thing—
if love could really know the difference between "right" and "wrong,"
or, for that matter, if anyone cared enough to regulate it... even god.
to think such an entity could take sides in such "trivialities,"
but, for all we know, sHe may be open to it...
love thyself, for dost thou love thy neighbor.
shine upon me, great sun,
upon my corpse—
my cadaver,
as it peels into the screams of your greatest hour.
for if god knows all our shit, sHe must know—
the ways we'd undress each other and laugh.
i write for her, but should i?
she lets love burn... or maybe that's me?
perhaps we do what we know best:
set fire to the village so we're all that's left to tell its story.
the dream lay unattended as its victims feast in the halls of valhalla.
her hair in flames like rivers of blood and vitriol.
me, left dripping and orgasming at the deprecated shadow of her ghost.
i know she's found another lover, but i don't care. none of it will work.
at best, this wildhead of love is a failure at self.
she was never mine, never for me—for there is no such thing.
i've only used her as a tool of myself,
to dance the part of purpose at the wounded knee of survival:
inventing her lips,
those burning black strands that go on forever,
long thin legs with button toes,
big breasts with dark oversized areolas,
tiny ass sculpted like the rest of her commanded physique,
and
that portal into dreamsphere at the very edge
of what entices and confuses universal conception.
The stage was set before me to love myself—
for this relationship i know will last/till death do us part.
burning my desire, flickering my empty casket.
setting off the moon to chase the sun,
over and over,
until the record concludes its vinyl feminine, and the music dies.
when all that's left are blood-creamed walls and
that terrible click-spin reminding us silence was better.
she's not for the faint of heart because that heart is black.
charred in wedding pyre—devoured
by the soulless grip
with the hardest might,
from the darkest wish
on the coldest night.
death has become us...
though beneath it, under the six inches of soil
that separates the new from the forgotten,
the moon has peered its browless head over the horizon,
whispering something new is about to begin:
what then of us begins to fill.
by LORIN DREXLER |
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U n t i l N e x t T i m e ;) |
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