Space Poo

What comes around, goes around, and comes around again.

I’ve been experiencing too much stress lately. It’s hard to turn my eyes away from the government bigotry shit show, for one. Then there is the struggle to make money and keep up with bills. The heartbreak of unrealized dreams. Have you ever been in a relationship? It’s hard work!

Being a yoga teacher I have a critic in my psyche that reminds me of all the tools I have to deal with my anxieties. Whenever my anger rises, it tells me I should know better. What if my students saw me acting like this? Imposter!

“Don’t forget to breathe, Pashupa. Let go. Let go. Let go.”

My therapist friend left me a voice message the other day. He is working with the idea of visualizing how he wants to show up as an ancestor to future generations.

“What are the qualities we want to pass on?”

In my “spiritual” circles there is lots of talk of ancestors. We honor them, give them thanks, sing pretty songs about them, yada yada. Pondering it, I imagine many of them were not so great. Go back far enough and they were primates throwing shit at each other. The prehistoric dawn of social media.

Certainly I can pass on better qualities than the feces I can fling. That’s what keeps me from writing that much about our current president. He is the worst example of a human I have ever witnessed, but saying his name gives him power. Wishing him misfortune doesn’t create a good example for future generations. I don’t want to hitch my fate to political algorithms that circle the drain.

I don’t have any children so I won’t have future blood relations. I am the end of this bloodline. No great grandchildren looking back to learn about me. No DNA passed down to seekers in tomorrow’s Ayahuasca ceremonies honoring me with prayers, or purging the traumas they inherited from me into a bucket.

Instead I think of my Substack readers. You are my literary tribespeople. I hope you will be here after I’m gone.

Still, who knows how long these words in the cloud will last? Someday the sun will expand out and swallow the Earth. Maybe by then humans will have spread across the cosmos, boldly going where no Earth monkey has gone before, delightedly throwing space poo at other life forms.

Do you think I have been a little whiny in my writing lately? Or is it authenticity? I’m not sure, it seems like a blurry line when I look through these old man eyeballs. I have demons to exorcise, or exercise.

My sincere hope is to write in a way that helps you out. Maybe through laughter. Maybe through identifying an aspect of your own humanity. Maybe by giving you a unique perspective.

There’s a perfectionist in me who has been keeping me from writing. Telling me I don’t have enough time to write the post that solves all the world’s problems. Who am I to think I can?

I do have a handful of paid subscribers. The substack gold. I appreciate you. I am recommitting to writing more often. Maybe I can move mountains one cupful of dirt at a time. Start saving up for a proper shovel.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

I’m going to start writing like an insurgent. Stealing time and writing streams of consciousness. Right now I’m at a coffee shop wearing camouflage and thumb typing on my phone while waiting for a dentist appointment. My deadline and my gum line are on a collision course.

Next time you feel like tossing a turd, stop for a moment and consider future generations. The ones who will, by then, be perfected by AI-based child care, living with quantum computers embedded in their tissues. Or imagine different ancestors. Maybe they are your flesh and blood children who procreate and fill the Ayuasca circles of the future with their own buckets of trauma.

Stop for a moment, take a deep breath. Take several. Hold on to your shit. Flush when necessary. Think before you pass something on that will burden someone else.

BTW, I love you, whoever your are. Thanks for reading to the end. I’m gonna try to do this every week. No promises. No shit.