life is a garden ➿ and the roots are all touching
eternity
the text below was written on sept 18, tweaked just a little bit for clarity. i wrote it after i had smoked some weed.
for context, in the days preceding, i had been reading pope francis’ encyclical letter that i had printed out, all fourty something pages of it, double sided. the print out has been my companion i read on the train. i read it on the platform. i read it in the time in between my jobs. i read it before bed, as i woke. in these past as a result, i barely scrolled through social media or listened to music for the past few days. though the subject of the encyclical was on the tradegies of modern life, i felt at peace knowing that folks still lived with love, with an immanence and a reach towards transcendence. i’ve been thinking hard about faith.
the summer brought excessive substance use, so for september, i decided on a loose one-or-two-beers-only rule (this is a very loose, suggestive rule, serving mostly as a guideline for mindfulness) as well as eliminating tobacco and poppers for the month (this is an absolute rule to protect the finite quantity of brain cells i have).
my relationship to substances is not one of dependence, but often one of compulsion. i only began a relationship to substance use at nineteeen years old, letting my frontal cortex develop a bit more than my peers who had been smoking weed in their early teens. i can’t even imagine what it would have done to me to ingest lsd before i had any true sense of self. i loved being a straight-edge dork- it is what i needed at that time.
nineteen on, i kind of do whatever is put in front of my face within reason. i am ambivalent on whether this is good or bad. things aren’t so binary. everything is actually quite grey, leaky. compositive.
i love drugs as much as any other guy. i drink like a skater because that is what i know. yet, i also know that transcendence is possible without substance use. i don’t like to be dogmatic about things. sober silence brings me closer to the eternal. taking mushrooms empathetically reunite me with my late grandfather. i just do whatever feels right at the time; this attitude is synonymous to my general belief system.
i hadn’t been smoking much weed since i moved to new york. it feels more like an island time thing. it later occured to me that manhattan is an island, so i recently changed my mind. besides, island is a mindset.
so, i’ve been smoking this funny weed i got from my friend recently. this weed is some bammer-reggie-90s-type-shit that was grown by his uncle. we joke about it sucking, but actually, it is perfect. legal, dispensary weed is too much for me, both conceptually and tetrahydrocannabinolly. i want to be giggly, not in ego-death march amongst spiritual gnomes.
smoking weed recalls a much more neurotic time in my life when i had been living in baltimore and had a tulmultuous relationship to sleep (and if were being honest, to life in general). everything felt so hard back then. as much i wish i didn’t consume the quanitity of cannabis and alcohol i did in my early twenties, i have compassion towards the self that did what i knew best. besides, like i mentioned earlier, i am a little bit compulsive. thats just the dog in me. in recent years, we are a little more trained.
now, when i smoke weed, it is a funny little occurence, infrequent and intentional, kind of like a bit.
after a particular busy day of working both of my jobs, i smoked a little bit of that funny weed my friend’s uncle grew. falling asleep on the 18th, i felt particularlly full of love, moving me to type away in my notes app as i drifted off into a cannabis induced rest. pope francis was a loving soul, and if heaven is real, he is there for sure. the cicadas lulled me to a gentle meditation; i thought about eternity.
here is my quiet resignation from evils that taunt me, the projections of the material world that cloud what is true. none of this is real because it isn’t. all that i know is love is truth.
i want to stand with love in my heart, pulsing through me because i simply just can’t help it. i release envy, fear. this world is part of me, and i am part of this world. i will eventually decay. nature is perfect. nature decays. this is my daily prayer: may i never forget death and life are one, intertwined in a dance only they know the choreography to. it is not for me to know, just to watch in awe, mouth agape. a perfect union so beautiful, i can look away.
truly beautiful things incite terrors once unknown. an angel, radiating a beauty so grotesque. beauty is not digestible.
god knows im not perfect. im not even trying to be. i dont even know what matters to me anymore- not in a nihilistic way, but just… im thinking.
i’m thinking of a number between one and eternity.
i’m thinking of the life work of this cycle that needs attending to, in this time that is finite. the earth that is here, the we who inhabit it, how tomorrow is so different from today as each moment passes by us without warning. the kindest irish goodbye that holds eternal gravity; the urgency is not an alarm, but more an encouraging nudge to orient ourselves to what is honest, what is true. what is true is that i love you.
i love you today and i loved you yesterday. i once lived ignorant to your existence. how blissful it is to engage in knowing. how painful to become. how mortifying to reach towards something unknown. how sublime it is to change.
we are never the stasis of selves past. we are stretching and growing and contracting and transforming through each movement of the heart, each moment blood:
the cicadas sing to each other outside this window, a perfect symphony. we are all here, together, and i imagine that they are singing to me too. all of creation gathered. we are all gathered here today. the cast of characters will not be the exact same tomorrow.
nothing matters more than loving. someone, something. everything. loving in the truest essence. loving as the purest expression of humanity.
love is different for me now. love is not a feeling, nor a list of things to accomplish. love is a full body mind spirit embodiment. love just is. love exists in the trees the rivers the everything. nature is perfect. nature is love. i am part of nature. so i must love.
love is to hold someone’s dreams, to hold them as preciously as your own. to have them hold yours, to see them as true. love is to see the true spirit of a person, to look past veils of vague opacity. to see death and life all in their gaze.
i am terrified as i reach towards you. all the same, i am terrified of the tragedy in retreating towards myself. the latter is a narrative i refuse to repeat.
the text below was written on sept 18, tweaked just a little bit for clarity. i wrote it after i had smoked some weed.
for context, in the days preceding, i had been reading pope francis’ encyclical letter that i had printed out, all fourty something pages of it, double sided. the print out has been my companion i read on the train. i read it on the platform. i read it in the time in between my jobs. i read it before bed, as i woke. in these past as a result, i barely scrolled through social media or listened to music for the past few days. though the subject of the encyclical was on the tradegies of modern life, i felt at peace knowing that folks still lived with love, with an immanence and a reach towards transcendence. i’ve been thinking hard about faith.
the summer brought excessive substance use, so for september, i decided on a loose one-or-two-beers-only rule (this is a very loose, suggestive rule, serving mostly as a guideline for mindfulness) as well as eliminating tobacco and poppers for the month (this is an absolute rule to protect the finite quantity of brain cells i have).
my relationship to substances is not one of dependence, but often one of compulsion. i only began a relationship to substance use at nineteeen years old, letting my frontal cortex develop a bit more than my peers who had been smoking weed in their early teens. i can’t even imagine what it would have done to me to ingest lsd before i had any true sense of self. i loved being a straight-edge dork- it is what i needed at that time.
nineteen on, i kind of do whatever is put in front of my face within reason. i am ambivalent on whether this is good or bad. things aren’t so binary. everything is actually quite grey, leaky. compositive.
i love drugs as much as any other guy. i drink like a skater because that is what i know. yet, i also know that transcendence is possible without substance use. i don’t like to be dogmatic about things. sober silence brings me closer to the eternal. taking mushrooms empathetically reunite me with my late grandfather. i just do whatever feels right at the time; this attitude is synonymous to my general belief system.
i hadn’t been smoking much weed since i moved to new york. it feels more like an island time thing. it later occured to me that manhattan is an island, so i recently changed my mind. besides, island is a mindset.
so, i’ve been smoking this funny weed i got from my friend recently. this weed is some bammer-reggie-90s-type-shit that was grown by his uncle. we joke about it sucking, but actually, it is perfect. legal, dispensary weed is too much for me, both conceptually and tetrahydrocannabinolly. i want to be giggly, not in ego-death march amongst spiritual gnomes.
smoking weed recalls a much more neurotic time in my life when i had been living in baltimore and had a tulmultuous relationship to sleep (and if were being honest, to life in general). everything felt so hard back then. as much i wish i didn’t consume the quanitity of cannabis and alcohol i did in my early twenties, i have compassion towards the self that did what i knew best. besides, like i mentioned earlier, i am a little bit compulsive. thats just the dog in me. in recent years, we are a little more trained.
now, when i smoke weed, it is a funny little occurence, infrequent and intentional, kind of like a bit.
after a particular busy day of working both of my jobs, i smoked a little bit of that funny weed my friend’s uncle grew. falling asleep on the 18th, i felt particularlly full of love, moving me to type away in my notes app as i drifted off into a cannabis induced rest. pope francis was a loving soul, and if heaven is real, he is there for sure. the cicadas lulled me to a gentle meditation; i thought about eternity.
here is my quiet resignation from evils that taunt me, the projections of the material world that cloud what is true. none of this is real because it isn’t. all that i know is love is truth.
i want to stand with love in my heart, pulsing through me because i simply just can’t help it. i release envy, fear. this world is part of me, and i am part of this world. i will eventually decay. nature is perfect. nature decays. this is my daily prayer: may i never forget death and life are one, intertwined in a dance only they know the choreography to. it is not for me to know, just to watch in awe, mouth agape. a perfect union so beautiful, i can look away.
truly beautiful things incite terrors once unknown. an angel, radiating a beauty so grotesque. beauty is not digestible.
god knows im not perfect. im not even trying to be. i dont even know what matters to me anymore- not in a nihilistic way, but just… im thinking.
i’m thinking of a number between one and eternity.
i’m thinking of the life work of this cycle that needs attending to, in this time that is finite. the earth that is here, the we who inhabit it, how tomorrow is so different from today as each moment passes by us without warning. the kindest irish goodbye that holds eternal gravity; the urgency is not an alarm, but more an encouraging nudge to orient ourselves to what is honest, what is true. what is true is that i love you.
i love you today and i loved you yesterday. i once lived ignorant to your existence. how blissful it is to engage in knowing. how painful to become. how mortifying to reach towards something unknown. how sublime it is to change.
we are never the stasis of selves past. we are stretching and growing and contracting and transforming through each movement of the heart, each moment blood:
- enters
- exists
the cicadas sing to each other outside this window, a perfect symphony. we are all here, together, and i imagine that they are singing to me too. all of creation gathered. we are all gathered here today. the cast of characters will not be the exact same tomorrow.
nothing matters more than loving. someone, something. everything. loving in the truest essence. loving as the purest expression of humanity.
love is different for me now. love is not a feeling, nor a list of things to accomplish. love is a full body mind spirit embodiment. love just is. love exists in the trees the rivers the everything. nature is perfect. nature is love. i am part of nature. so i must love.
love is to hold someone’s dreams, to hold them as preciously as your own. to have them hold yours, to see them as true. love is to see the true spirit of a person, to look past veils of vague opacity. to see death and life all in their gaze.
i am terrified as i reach towards you. all the same, i am terrified of the tragedy in retreating towards myself. the latter is a narrative i refuse to repeat.
last edited 9/20/25