On Impermanence

There is not a single thing I can say to you that you don’t already know.

This morning as I sip my coffee (one of my favorite daily rituals) I’m reflecting on the sheer amount of information that we are consistently overwhelmed with in modernity. How are we ever supposed to know what’s meant for us or otherwise?

I’m attempting to retrain my brain away from the quick dopamine hits of social media scrolling— to remember the slow joy of reading that I grew up with. It’s been so long since i’ve felt truly lost in a book, and I feel nostalgic for the days when leaving the house without a phone to tend to wasn’t a political act.

From 2021-2024, I hosted a youtube series called Loose Leaf Tea, where I would talk and share my thoughts on current events and life. Eventually I stopped, because there was too much to tend to in the day to day — my substack, managing my social media, working on my films and music, making a living, relationships.

I started to feel hung up on how much physical data space each episode would take up, and the part of me who resists clutter began to feel claustrophobic. There are times when I don’t want to think anything or say anything. There is not a single unique thought in the world. There is nothing I can say that you don’t already know. So why say it? Other than of course, the need to express myself, feel authentic, and alive. As a filmmaker, artist and archivist, I use so much of my life force energy to translate and speak about life. And there are times when I feel the urge to throw everything I’ve ever done away and start over.

How do you decide what to read, and what to absorb from the outside world when at your fingertips is a flood of data constantly being pushed into your mouth for you to choke on? This is a dilemma that is 100% tied to the ways capitalism pushes for perpetual growth, which we all know holds the tension of inevitable collapse.

When I was younger, I would scooter with my parents and my older brother to the magazine store on the corner. I have no idea what my parents would gravitate towards, but my brother would go to the sports magazines, and I would go and sit cross-legged in the corner with the magazines about puppies and kittens (So cute, so wholesome lol). I used my 5 or 6 year old willpower and curiosity to find and thumb through the pages of cute animals because it’s what interested in me. I wanted a pet.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, the library and Barnes and Nobles were places of comfort. I was always reading, and I enjoyed finding the youth or teen section and searching for the next fantasy or romance or teen angst book to sink into. I never got into Harry Potter, instead I was drawn to a series about another young wizard called Charlie Bone.

I started journaling at a young age too, building on the legacy of Amelia’s Notebook—I learned about the magical privacy of emptying out your thoughts and feelings on a page.

Past college, I read and write less than ever, I think due to the sheer overwhelm of how much I’ve already accumulated in even just 31 years of life + a nearly 10 year run in burnout from how hard I worked during undergrad. Now, I am curious about somatics, about being deeply present inside of my body, and on tending to the aches, pains, and pleasures that keep me alive to the moment. This type of attunement feels like the only way to survive the constant flooding that we now live in.

I still have all of my journals beginning from 4th or 5th grade. I started archiving life and my family in middle/high school, so I now have drives of photographs at my disposal.

But who are all of these archives for? Eventually all of this material will go away.

In 2015 I wrote an article for Slant Magazine, a news start up that had a built in writing platform not dissimilar to Substack’s. They were attempting to revolutionize the way we write and consume news. I enjoyed the job, and found myself writing personal op-eds, cultural pieces, and film reviews. When the start up eventually failed, I lost all of my writing, which I had written and edited directly into the platform. I lost work samples that could’ve helped me to get more jobs, but what I was most heartbroken by—I’d written an article about grief after my grandfather passed, and I lost that too.

It’s probably to this day one of the most heartfelt and honest things I’d ever written, and losing it felt tragic.

Since then, I’ve become meticulous about archiving my drafts. I make sure to write them in Pages before I add them to Substack so I don’t have to face that loss again. In similar form, I’ve lost hard drives of images to technological failure, so now I double back up all of my drives. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing, but the sheer volume of it all overwhelms me.

Then on the other side of that same spectrum, I think about the fact that I’ve never seen a single photograph of my paternal grandfather (who died when my dad was young), because our family did not have access to the troves of archiving materials that we do now. I mourn this. How much a single image would mean to me, to be able to download that information into my imagination and never forget it. To be able to describe from memory what he looks like. To have in image to place on our altar of him when we pray.

Still, I am writing this directly into the Substack interface to practice being with the inevitability of impermanence. I want to be selective about my artifacts so that they hold more meaning. I want to make films and albums that weave together the individual images and sounds of my life in a way that is more impactful than digital box upon digital box of data. I want to enjoy the fleeting nature of this thought, and know that one day it will dissolve into the pool of infinite and unfragmented god consciousness, where we feel only wholeness, but lose the beautiful distinction of experiencing ourselves.

Even just speaking this out onto this page makes my spirit feel lighter. We were never meant to hold it all, but we can be intentional about what we do hold onto. We can be intentional about what we consume, digest, and release. We can resist the holds of capitalism in these ways.

(I’m remembering now that last night as I was falling asleep I was thinking about language—what/if it does anything to say “to hold” versus “be with”, in relations to our emotions or experiences. But maybe this will be my next writing prompt.)

I hope that the end of your year gives you the opportunity to move with the cycles of Winter and let somethings shed, die, release. Otherwise we become too heavy for new life.