I’ve begun speed reading Cormac McCarthy. People have told me for some time now – you know, just people here and there – that I should read him. Something about the way I speak or the general subject matter I seem drawn to or perhaps refer to now and then. I’m not exactly sure.
And when I find myself able to genuinely blow through ‘Blood Meridian’ as though I were sprinting on the softest of sand at low tide, unbothered by any stench that may be wafting from the twice daily reveal, I am soothed. This is what familiarity feels like.
Interestingly, this newfound craze of self-medicating with McCarthy doth dovetail so incredibly well with a practice I undertook some two weeks ago.
I call it my Christmas Exorcism. Here’s how it goes:
I challenged myself to watch as many Hallmark Christmas movies as humanly possible, given my schedule. Why? Well, because they are remarkable productions of safety, security, and abundance. That they do or do not depict reality has no place in this purging activity.
The point is rather to allow myself to spend hour upon hour witnessing dreams coming true, true love being not only possible, but assured. I study these creations on film with the finest combs of curiosity. The comfort and quality of life is tremendously foreign. There is no terror or treachery, no looming and dooming. And there is no speed in consumption. Simplicity reigns.
McCarthy, on the other hand, is giving me the blood balance, the familiarity of feeling, the past. The mud. The pain. The general disease. His words are exorcising my past while at the same time Hallmark dares me to move past the piles of detritus at my feet; to wholly step out of my grief and be new, new, new.
Life is a conveyor belt of sorts, at the supermarket of time. I – simply – became weary of placing each brand new day upon the wet, sticky residue of those days of future passed…the belt just cycling the same sad surface. No more.
I am conveyed instead by this planet amid stars, amid universes, and I will not see the same cycled surface twice. Joy.
I have moved past the blood. I am my own meridian. I sparkle. I shine. I am my own resurrection.
Be new. Now. And let yourself love the holidays.
It’s EASY.
INVINCIBLE is EASY