By Howie Good (1) Strange how you arrive with no address in mind. Objects begin to misbehave, clocks to bend and stretch. And then a procession of pallbearers carrying empty coffins enters – creased, stained, stoop-shouldered. The century feels a lot longer than a hundred years. (2) Facebook announces a suicide prevention app. If the heart stops beating, it sends a text message that says, “I’m dead at x and y coordinates.” Emptiness is now, suddenly, a monument. And no one is sure why. (3) It’s good the children were asleep. We had a lot of time to be neurotic, my wings flapping, your dress like an ink blot. All the colors were unstable. After I prayed the way you said, not only did I get a better car, but it was also bright red. Howie Good is a poet and collagist on Cape Cod.
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By Kat Gal Good morning, Rayn. You are safe. I wake up to the sound of Paradise123, my personal computer. I would never call her that out loud. I only think about it when I’m upset with her. She is an AI. But she is more than that. She is my safekeeper. I am safe. I repeat. Then I go visit Pinky. I do that every morning. Pinky tells me people used to go outside and it was safe. I don’t even know what’s outside. Pinky says it’s like VR, but real. I don’t know what she means. VR is absolutely real. She says VR is not real. That’s why it’s called Virtual Reality. I call bull on that. There is nothing virtual about Virtual Reality. It feels just as real as this chair I am sitting on. She says that they didn’t use to stay indoors all the time. I don’t understand, I say. She says they could open the door and walk out. Take the stairs. Go to the park. Go running outdoors. Watch the birds. But you can watch birds in VR, Pinky. She says they could walk to school and the shops. Though most people shopped online anyways. I’m confused. Is it like turning on the VR and walking into the park with my hologram and playing with Benji? Kind of, she says. We are done discussing it. She seems sad. She always seems sad when she tries to tell me about this thing called outside. Pinky is my great-grandma. She has seen a lot. It’s been nearly 50 years since the Third World Pandemic. She has seen it all. I like hearing her stories. She says that when the First World Pandemic came, some people were scared. It was a new virus. It didn’t seem dangerous at first. But it spread. It wasn’t serious for most, but many still got sick and millions died. They had stay-at-home orders. Suddenly they couldn’t go out, only to the supermarket and for exercise. What is the supermarket? The supermarket is where you get your food, Pinky says. Did your food robots break down too, Pinky? We didn’t have food robots, little Rayn. Now I’m really confused. She says she had a black cat that used to curl up in her lap every evening. That reminds me of that cute orange one in VR. I love scratching her ears. It’s just not the same, she says. A cat is a cat, I shrug, they are all cute. Once the First World Pandemic was over, people didn’t know it was only the first one. People rushed back to live life. But then the economy collapsed again. What’s the economy? I ask. Money, business. She tries to explain. I guess things got hard. People lost their jobs. There wasn’t enough money. A lot of people went homeless. Some were still scared. I don’t understand it. I always felt safe. When the Second World Pandemic came, people were upset. Not another year indoors. But it was worse. Their leaders got stricter. The European Union broke apart. The United States started to collapse. The virus was dangerous. More people died. Including the rich. Nobody expected anything like this. It was worse than the plague. What’s the plague, Pinky? What are they teaching you in school, little Rayn? Not history, I’m guessing. But she doesn’t tell me what the plague is. The Second World Pandemic lasted three years. By the end, people were afraid to leave their house anymore. So scientists and architects started to design containers. It was only an idea then. No one believed it could happen. Where did you live before, Pinky? Houses, apartments. You could open your doors and leave. I don’t understand it. I turn on VR and can walk anywhere. We run around the field with Benji all the time. The Third World Pandemic hit. Climate change was leading to more and more catastrophes too. Fires, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes. There was war everywhere. This virus wasn’t as deadly but left people with long-term damage. They couldn’t risk it anymore. That’s what my history teacher said. See, we have history. I still don’t know what the plague is. The remaining population moved underground into air-seal containers. Oxygen pumping in mechanically. I don’t understand how. Pinky doesn’t either. She says it was a hard transition. She also had my grandma Rose by then. She never wanted kids. Grandma Rose was an accident and abortion was illegal by then. I don’t understand it. Babies are made in labs now when a couple plans to have it. VR sex doesn’t make babies and live-in couples are on birth control. Eggs and sperms are submitted to the lab at 18 for future use. Pinky doesn’t like it when I talk about sex. I am too young, she says. I am not. But I avoid the topic with her. Pinky says she used to play with her grandma by the lake. But, Pinky, we go to the lake all the time too. But for real, little Rayn, for real. But we go for real too. She looks really sad. She tells me about the movies. They were big rooms with many people watching the same film. I don’t understand the point. I feel safe. Paradise123 has always taken care of me. She tells me every morning that I am safe. And I trust her. Then I go into VR. Visit Pinky. See my parents. Go to school. Play with Benji. We play in the field and go biking. There is no danger in VR. I am safe. We used to go for ice cream. Cookies and cream with hot fudge. Pinky smiles. What is ice cream, Pinky? Kat Gál is a writer, runner, traveler, bookworm, and cat-lover. Kat is a freelance health writer creating online and offline content for functional medicine doctors and enjoys creative writing in her free time. You can find her at katgalwriter.com.
Finding Peace In ChaosNo matter where you live, the world has become a very loud place. Whether it is the drawl of city life, with vehicles drowning out all other noise until it is impossible to hear the voice in your own head; or the white noise from constant contradictive opinions about current affairs spoken more at you than to you in everyday conversations. Add the pressures of work, studies, and social life on top; or even the basics of life; getting enough sleep, eating well, and being all round ‘healthy’; life is a lot. And as a young adult trying to find his way in the world, struggling emotionally as much as everyone else, I think it is time to start actively prioritising mental health and spiritual health.I believe we need to stop seeing spirituality as joining a religion or a cult; and more about your own moral compass to help you navigate the world and making conscious, everyday decisions.
Of course, we have all heard lots about mindfulness as a new trend. But practising it does not mean having to sit for hours trying to meditate to a voice-over app. Many people experience mindfulness in their hobbies and do not notice because it either has not been pointed out to them, or because it has been called a different name. Spirituality or mindfulness did not come very easy to me at first but to cut a long story short, it was Muay Thai that opened the door to feeling connected to something bigger than myself. Throughout the years of training various martial arts, I never resonated with anything so well than with Thai boxing and I believe it was due to the spiritual side of the sport that I so desperately needed in everyday life. I fell in love with the sport instantly, throwing myself into the hours upon hours of training, fight shows in market halls and nightclubs and pretty much any other place the promoters could put a ring in. And as I began to fight regularly on local and national shows, I truly learnt peace. During the chaos of a round, with the crowd shouting and screaming, for me or against me, there was a quiet inside myself. Before I understood what this was, the only way to describe it to my family was ‘being in the zone’. Now I have experienced this feeling in other aspects of my life, I understand that it is ‘being present’. To be completely in the moment as they happen. Of course, in the fight I had to be, there were consequences if I was not present. It took several years to experience ‘being present’ in another situation, and in that time Thai boxing had become an integral part of my life and identity. It helped shape who I wanted to be by exposing me to different role models and life ethos from a different culture. Of course, in the fight I had to be, there were consequences if I was It took several years to experience ‘being present’ in another situation, and in that time Thai boxing had become an integral part of my life and identity. It helped shape who I wanted to be by exposing me to different role models and life ethos from a different culture. I was lucky enough to be able to move to Sydney in 2018 and had to put Thai boxing on the back burner for a few years. However, this opened a new door to surfing. Another sport where I could only control my actions, how I responded to the situation. In this instance, the situation happened to be the ocean, and waves, and whatever they decided they wanted to do on that day. Some days they were wild, heavy, and thick waves trying to swallow me whole just to spit me back towards the beach, daring me to try and catch another; other days they were gentle and rolling, allowing me to try different things and feel like I’m cruising with the most beautiful style in existence. The biggest thing I learnt was to be there, in the moment, as it happened. Be present. I noticed the similarity between Muay Thai and surfing pretty early on. They both have their individual cultures, influenced by different things, but to me they both teach a moral compass. They both teach (indirectly and directly, depending on aspect of the sport) compassion for people, and for the planet. And they both demand mindfulness. Regardless of whether you want to be the best in the world or just a casual surfer, or if you fight for the love of it, if you aren’t there when its happening to respond and act/react, you’ll never be good. Or even worse, you’ll never understand why you fail. Mindfulness and spirituality doesn’t need to be a cult or religion. It can be about resonating with your reasons why you act the way you do in life. How you impact the world and people around you. Everyone thinks they’re a good person, but do you make conscious decisions to follow your moral compass, and not act based on expectations? It’s about being in the moment, in the zone, being present in as much of life as you can. My advice for a starting point is your favourite hobby. The aspect where you cannot coast, the aspect where you need concentrate to keep improving, or as it was in my case, to stay above water. Start there, recognise that feeling and try to find it in other areas of life. You don’t need hours of meditating every day. You just need to find your starting point, as every book ever written on mindfulness says, it’s your own journey, you need to find your own starting point. Sometimes peace can be found buried in chaos. |
Photos used under Creative Commons from France1978, JarleR, Raed Mansour, Ruben Holthuijsen, L a r a -