Kern Carter's Blog, page 70
December 7, 2021
Sacred Acts of Desire
The orb of iridescence is bright amongst the deafening silence. You are captivated by it as you watch it listlessly bobbing amongst the absolute darkness. It suddenly and playfully jiggles quickly before settling again. Now you are very curious. It is beautiful and ghostly, and seemingly beyond possibility.
You move in for a closer look, it seems to drift steadily back like a chased rainbow. You pause and contemplate it again, feeling anxious and unsettled yet entranced by its alien strangeness. The orb drives you ever more curiously to get closer, and closer. It doesn’t move back now, you can reach out and just, gently, touch it.
‘Hhawkh’, or some other ghastly onomatopoeia of air rushing out of your lungs, is the last sound you’ll make as what feels like fifteen butcher’s hooks punch through your soft solar plexus, and ten more like dragon’s talons down through your shoulder blades. Feeling your interstices fill with your own blood, the trance now a lifetime behind you, it all comes back with a rare clarity, ‘they said not to touch the orb.’
Photo by Daniel Gaffey on UnsplashThe Anglerfish is an ambush predator, a subsistence capitalist of desire, that waits patiently in the dark, dangling a beautifully iridescent orb, ready to punch holes in captivated fishes and swallow them up whole. We too, like the humble and unassuming little fishes, have desires that if fulfilled can have, for better or worse, drastic consequences for the course of our lives. And so, we hold things sacred to protect the course of life that we have chosen. But perhaps, it is the ordaining of the sacred that paradoxically creates the trouble to begin with.
Holding something as sacred is a promise to protect what is rare or significant, vows to a lover or soulmate, vows to culture, vows to our health. But enshrining something as sacrosanct, giving it supreme value, is what makes it vulnerable to acts of devaluation; it is a somewhat circular blessing to bestow.
Holding something sacrosanct makes what it denies ever more desirable because the inherent value of the sacred is placed above all else. After all, we do desire what we can’t have, can’t deny that. The value of these other things is denied through our sacred ignorance — through vows, rules, and fear — but, in secrecy, it is not lessened.
The paradox of sacredness, or naive sacredness, is that it prevents us from living a life full of the experiences that give us the knowledge about what is and isn’t sacred to us. Experience teaches us what is cheap desire and what is rare and valuable, or actually sacred. Experience actually teaches us that we can’t just accept that someone else’s “sacred” should be ours too.
However, the laws of what is sacred are often something that we are told we must obey based on sociocultural principles, rather than something we’re allowed to figure out for ourselves. Most of us that have figured out that rules are more like guidelines feel that living by them to the nth degree is a perfect soufflé of misery.
But what about on the other hand, as an obvious example, the misery that comes when your partner cheats on you? The ‘just a guideline’ argument doesn’t hold up there. It is gut-wrenchingly painful. Your partner touched the orb, but you got eaten because you protected your union as sacred, and they did not.
Time for some tough questions though. Sure, you both agreed and so there is no excuse for the betrayal, but would it have been so miserable if you hadn’t made your relationship so sacred from the beginning? If desire is cheap, then sacredness is very expensive. If sacredness doesn’t exist, then choice becomes free, and if this really is your soulmate then you will be chosen. Suddenly, the orb is free of the Anglerfish, free to be beautiful and desirable without the cost of blood.
It is painful when others break the rules because we have made rules in the first place, rather than allowing fluid understandings and open conversations. Rather than cheat, if your partner had come to you with an open conversation about their desire then you could have decided together if it was acceptable. If you say no, then they must choose what is more important to them, and there may be pain in that choice.
Of course, it is valid and ok to say no when someone wants to cross the sacred laws, but is it ok to say no every time? When we are consistently denied our desires then we shift into the realm of the sacred where the choice for cheap desire suddenly becomes very expensive but no less alluring.
But it’s now no longer about fulfilling a cheap desire of lust, it now represents desire for the beauty of the fluid human experience, perhaps the most sacred thing there is, and well, your ‘sacred’ relationship cluttered with power dynamics and closed communication is not going to compete with that. Maybe then, it is desire that is truly sacred because it is the expression of our imperfect humanity, rather than of a tiringly perfect dream.
Ultimately, we want to be the reason why someone else didn’t live a full life. It might seem absurd and obtuse to think of it that way, but that’s what it is. There are too many songs in the world about promising to be true to only you. An ego driven desire to be sacred, usually based on perhaps illogical sociocultural hand-me-downs that you may not have actually thought about very deeply, just accepted.
So, I urge you, first, lick the universe outside of your culture and find out what it is that you truly value. Don’t try to bend people that disagree, respect them by sharing and receiving ideas openly, and keep going. Think deeply about what you think is truly sacred and have open and honest conversations with the people that you want to share that with. Ask before you cross the line, because a dishonest chase for desire may feed the people you love to the fishes, and for what? You may not even like it, or at least, know that the satisfaction won’t last but the separation will, guaranteed. And lastly, stop denying another soul the opportunity to live just because you’re scared that they won’t come back, because that denial makes you the Anglerfish that has already ambushed and eaten them. Once someone has been eaten, they just want to be free.
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[image error]Sacred Acts of Desire was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Overwhelmingly Hopeful
Image provided by CanvaHope can be Human.
Zoom in.
How much of what is occurring is making sense?
Like,
human being to human being sense.
H is for heartfelt because in reality there is nothing else.
Beatings in the street.
Attacking the weak.
Robbing the rich.
Murdering hope until the next beating heart revolts.
Will the chair kill you?
Slowly get away.
Shooting for the stars means you must tap into your resilience today.
Give yourself your grit.
It is imperative.
Maintain urgency in your well-being.
O is for operating in the belief of beyond what our eyes can see.
Trust.
Emptied magazines make school children scream.
Guns,
run for your life.
Determining a destination impacts our internal fight.
Stay with yourself.
Find your internal fight.
P is for power.
Hour after hour someone else dies because of the way someone else lived life.
Does that feel right?
Right for you may not be right for me.
Was your desire to live the same as mine when both of our creations were designed?
We are both human beings.
E is for experiencing the present.
Being alive right now is a present.
Gift yourself with your grit.
Find your stillness and sit.
Hope can be Human.
[image error]Overwhelmingly Hopeful was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
December 6, 2021
Call For Submissions—What Brings You Joy?
We get deep on CRY, super deep and incredibly vulnerable. So for this week’s writing prompt, I figured we’d lighten it up a bit.
Let’s talk about joy. What brings you the most joy? What makes you smile or gives you that bubbly feeling in your gut? It can be a person or situation or something specific that happened, or it can be waking up and looking out at your view. It’s totally up to you. Get creative with this one!
Same rules still apply:You can submit to this or ANY of our past writing prompts. Just scroll through our previous newsletters. They’ll be marked “Call for Submissions.”If you’re already a writer for CRY, go ahead and submit.Be as creative as you want in your submissions. As long as you stick to the topic, we’ll consider it.Just because you submit doesn’t mean we’ll post. If you haven’t heard back from us in three days, consider that a pass.Please reach out if you have any questions at all. We can’t wait to read your submissions!
[image error]Call For Submissions—What Brings You Joy? was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
December 5, 2021
December 4, 2021
December 3, 2021
When Kitten Pushed Me to Get Out of Bed
Here is a kitten that went just as quickly as he arrived but made sure he left a message.
Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash.My house cat gave birth to three kittens last year of which two were adopted by loving homes. One remained and we decided to keep him when he started showing signs of attachment with us.
This was during the worst part of the pandemic when I hadn’t gone out in months and craved a change in my daily routine. That’s how Kitten walked into our lives, or rather trotted past us. I had started going to therapy for a few weeks before that. But my recovery from constant anxiety attacks and depression sped after his arrival.
After a very long time, I had something to look forward to. His well-being, his growth and his daily shenanigans. He imprinted on my dad instantly and became his biggest fan. His presence was a constant source of laughter and suddenly home felt a lot more livelier. He symbolized hope for me during the worst of times.
He forced a routine I badly needed.College felt drab. My friends had been reduced to alphabets on texts and little neat windows in an online classroom. I had a cat and an indie dog at home but for the longest time, they felt like a burden rather than a source of joy. Regardless, my dog missed me and my cat didn’t care. In retrospect, I’d stopped seeing colours and found it increasingly difficult to get out of bed everyday. But Kitten suddenly pulled me back to reality.
Before I knew it, Kitten’s early morning screams for food and milk started waking me up. Suddenly my days were taken up cleaning up his pee and poo off the floors because he was a reluctant potty-trainer, feeding him properly and playing with him actively so that he tired out and finally slept!
Just a regular online class day with Kitten by my lap.He made sure I developed Good Habits.I stopped dozing off during my online classes because my legs were going numb with him snoring away on my lap. And this is not me complaining. Cat videos and video calls amused him. The sound of my professor lecturing was his cue to hop onto my lap and nap. Once he even climbed onto my shoulder and offered to lick the hair on my head (immediately finding it distastefully long and of a strange texture. That was probably his first clue that his cat mommy isn’t one of him).
One night I had the worst of migraines which had started making appearances for the past few months. It was impossible to sleep and I finally sat up crying because the pain wouldn’t leave. Kitten looked up at me seeing an unusual light turned on and hopped over to my bed. At this point, you must remember he is a tiny 2 month old kitten.
He stared at me with his big eyes as I howled in pain holding my forehead and then I felt a soft paw on my knee. I pause for a moment to find him sitting in front of me with a paw on my knee. I do not know if he meant comfort but he just sat there and finally curled beside me till the pain meds kicked in and I decided to sleep.
Interestingly, the migraines never made an appearance except for maybe one more incident. My days were full of Kitten and his love. After that night, I was reminded by him that there is yet more to experience and live for. That I must continue waking up every day in order to feel all that.
Fresh Kitten paws.And then he left…As he grew older, he slept indoors all day and went about prowling in our yard at night. He was always at our doorstep when dad opened the door every morning. Last October marked one year of Kitten with the family. And one cold November morning he didn’t return. We searched for him and kept hoping he’d walk back into our lives like he did as a furball, all in vain. We passed through sporadic bursts of grief and finally accepted that there would not be a return. My family missed Kitten for all the joy he brought into our home, but for me he will always be reminiscent of the hope he came with that there is yet more to live for.
[image error]When Kitten Pushed Me to Get Out of Bed was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
