The Horse and the Hen

The one where I took an acid trip on a catbus to Norfolk.

So what's it like being in the Barr house? ​A snapshot:​

It's like a 39-hour psychedelic trip through a house of 9x9 mirrors, each differently formed by the same canon of literature and music and TV shows and sports teams and art supplies and animals, and everyone is lovely and loved, which is true everywhere all the time but some places are closer to reality than others and this is a place for peak experiences. You haven't seen any clocks in the house but the passage of time is indicated by the chalkboards, blank when you arrived, starting to crawl with new magic more squiggles and new doodles, by the disappearance of food and drinks, and the depletion of wakefulness. You see yourself and everyone/thing in every possible dizzying permutation of those 81 reflectors and you're a spider trying to run along every segment of the web as quickly as you can take in as much recon to situate yourself.

To freeze everyone in time, a snapshot of the always moving everything at once, there is naturally huge inertia to overcome. What can a family photo​ say about the Barr household? A lot. You've seen some of these pictures before. They took a lot of energy​ and coordination and ongoing sanctification to capture​. They say a lot​,​ ​but Barr house says more.​ (​You ​really ​had to have been there​ as they say.)​ Here is what the house says: Welcome​, stay. So you ​drift​ in.

D moves and materializes from room to room all self-contained and you never know when your out-of-body float will bump into him or he into you and he says "Hi, I'm D. Now your gallery is complete. Thanks for helping complete my puzzle too." J, mini-AMBB off to college with friendmaking and fomo in the heart, blows you kisses and shares magnificent freshman bucket lists and says "I want to see you see your sunrise no matter how cloudy it is." And L sends you telepathic beckonings "I see you, I see everything, come where you wanna be and heal." and lands you in the midst of your spirit animals. While S firecracker middle child pulls a logistical miracle out of her hat and says "Great! I get to be the hero for sneaking you down. I love this plan." Then when she returns from her latest affliction she lavishes heaping servings of verbal affirmations so generous and random and abruptly sincere that she might be the first person to ever have shut you down with praise. and Joel says "You're here. I'm cool and you're alright with me" while saying nothing at all. And A has a silly big brother mocker smile that says "I am amused and I'm not telling you why. I have lots of thoughts AND a polite filter... for now." AMBB says I've been trying to admit you to the greatest show on earth for all the years we've been friends I like sharing my treasures and I'm so glad it finally happened but not in the way I thought it would and the show must go on, and J&B say "So, how are we? And how are you? Now you know."

Indeed you do know. If you ever want to know anything at all, such as whether you could/should persist in your alchemical angsty long distance relationship, or the meaning of life, or what is the best arrangement of cars and people to get from point A to D toll-free with an ATM along the way, or the chief end of man, you just take yourself and that thing to the Barr house, and let everybody move about around it, react to it, not react to it, while you watch and feel and react, and then you'll know. Like tripping on acid, it can be a rough ride and wildly disorienting crazy fun but in the comedown, everything is understood and you went all the way around the world, your 4th circumnavigation but this time you never even left home.

What is it like on an acid trip?




S: We finished it in your honor

E: By we do you mean you, the royalest we? Its beautiful! Thanks hahah. Its like my angsty holiday hues turn into easter as you move outward

"The Journey"

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

// Mary Oliver

For this weather, wellybeans

Say to the sea,

Thus far shall you come, and no farther,

And here shall your proud waves be stayed.

No more. No farther.

(Not swallowed in the sea.)

Who shut in the sea when it burst out...

and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors?

Say to the sea,

Enough. You have swirled away enough.

Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?

Arise

there is no paralysis that You can't forgive away.

You will love me til the very end

i've seen the world, done it all, had my cake now
diamonds, brilliant, in Bel-Air now
hot summer nights, mid-July, when you and i were forever wild
hot summer days, rock and roll the way you play for me at your show
and all the ways, I got to know Your pretty face and electric soul
the crazy days, city lights, the way you'd play with me like a child

will you still love me when i'm no longer young and beautiful?
will you still love me when i've got nothing but my aching soul?

Father tell me if you can
all that grace, all that body
all that face, makes me wanna party
he's my sun, he makes me shine like diamonds

Anchoring Associations

(just jotting)

When you must dissociate to just survive
the molten chaos you normalize

Muscle through
Teeth grit grind



The bridge over molten chaos seems to require a bit of dissociation to cross.

Because of guh, I've never been friendless in the world. An anchor in reality - or at least the reality that the two of you inhabit together. Validation, perspective check. A compassionate witness that admits your feelings. They were present, engaged, kept their eyes and hearts open.

It helps to have friends who can feel/bear the outrage and heartbreak on your behalf - when you kinda have to swallow or at least normalize it just to get through it and still function.

Someone needs to grieve and recognize the injustice while you're muscling through. You can't afford to feel it all, the abyssal.

I don't want to repress anything.
Loosening grip?

Even when I can talk about what I'm dealing with, SHS says I'm usually pretty disconnected or intellectual about it. Can't afford to feel it all - dissociating a little bit seems necessary for survival. but the sympathy on someone else's face is hugely reorienting. especially in the effort to stay human and not go calloused, I guess.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall of witnesses.

The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me

"the withness of the body"

The heavy bear who goes with me
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there, 

The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,
Climbs the building, kicks the football,
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city. 

Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,
That heavy bear who sleeps with me,
Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,
A sweetness intimate as the water's clasp,
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope
Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.
––The strutting show-off is terrified,
Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,
Trembles to think that his quivering meat
Must finally wince to nothing at all. 

The inescapable animal walks with me,
Has followed me since the black womb held,
Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,
A caricature, a swollen shadow,
A stupid clown of the spirit's motive,
Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,
The secret life of belly and bone,
Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,
Stretches to embrace the very dear
With whom I would walk without him near,
Touches her grossly, although a word
Would bare my heart and make me clear,
Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed
Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,
Amid the hundred million of his kind,
The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.

// Delmore Schwartz, 1938