The Slow Joys

FINDING PURPOSE IN MEANINGLESSNESS

Art by Nate Bibaud

You walk slower than you once did. 

You used to hustle like a pack of feral raccoons were chasing the seething bag of garbage you draped upon your shoulder. You used to burn like kerosine on a scalding summer night in the thick of the pines, all in the name of keeping your people close. Like moths to a flame, you were the first responder to a call of desperation hurled in a chasm of thieving kings. You always brought a smile and a toolkit, only you never learned how to use it on yourself. 

You move like milk toward an expiration date. 

Your skin thickened but your sillage soured, all the while you wondered how time had waned so quick. You were a cold carcass in a white casket, set aside by a longing for sweeter comforts. Lay down your arms and rot with no recompense, rest your fragile fingers and let breathe your brittle bones. Cold cuts and crumby bread will never fill your wounds. They’ll join the milk someday, and so will you. 

Get out of bed. Seize the day.

Restless you claw through cotton sheets, the only thing that doesn’t bite your skin like freezing rain. The sole reason your pillows stay plump is because your screams are the only entities that rest within them. 

It all starts the same: I hit the snooze button like an overzealous contestant on Family Feud, eager to perform and lacking an answer. After a few rounds I skate down a flight of carpeted stairs, grounded in gray sweats and holding an ice-cold aluminum bifold with dozens of unread emails. No dress codes to violate here; even hell can get cozy when you settle in. 

What’s the point in dressing up when the people you see the most only know you from the neck up? How did I find myself neck-deep in contempt? These days it’s just myself and a calendar free of social calls. I’m drowning in black-and-white documents, stupid fucking Oxford commas and rounded edges. Here lies the sad clown, spinning in circles and choking down words unspoken. 

Even the boring things were once easy to write. Broad brushstrokes would fly across the canvas. Ugly, beautiful—it didn’t matter, as long as it meant something. Now I pedal poetry for pigs with a fine-tooth comb, meticulous and rigid, always searching and straddling the line between what will please and what will pay. It’s not about feeling great anymore; it’s about getting by. 

Your creative strengths can and should be monetized, but not at the cost of your love for it. When you work at something for nine hours a day, five days a week, shouldn’t you have some say in how it turns out? I know this is just how things work, but these confines are a detriment in which I can no longer operate. I’m on a witch hunt for an exit in a coal mine for creative minds, and all I can find is an empty staircase in a silent corridor. 

I’d eat concrete for breakfast if I could muster up the courage to peek outside. I’d feel my teeth shatter like glass and taste the life I want like blood in my mouth. For now, I’m just another cog in the capitalist wheel. 

Keep your subjects docile and reward them with tokens for twisted spirits. Let them believe in five o’clock freedoms. Let them believe they can make a difference. Make them believe there’s no other way. There’s no fork in this fraudulent path. Wait for the rain to come, and dance to the rhythm of its drops. A crack of thunder will cut the sky like a hot knife through butter, muting your mangled voice. Plants don’t grow without water, but your tears might do the trick. 

Wrap your hands in twine, unravel your thoughts in blankets and before you know it, the universe will conjure a clean slate. That’ll surely disappoint the devil, but as sure as tomorrow comes he’ll be back. We’ll rehearse the whole song and dance over again, and I’ll greet him with tired eyes and rust. 

Will you remember to eat today? Maybe you’ll try something new, but what if you feel the same? I’ve blurred the line between myself and my surroundings. I roam restless in these walls more than the bats in the attic. Even the dust bunnies know me as a regular. I’ve moved my workspace  so many times to get a fresh perspective that the whole house feels like an office. I’m thinking about installing a water cooler and a time punch at this point. 

Thankfully there are things of beauty beyond these shaded valleys: crepuscular rays that slice the sky, imperfect wooden towers that live and breathe beside us, invisible waves of sound that –  when arranged just right – can wash away the hurt. What I’d give for a symphony of screeching trains, whirling down a cavern at such high speeds that I could be swept away.

There’s meaning to this journey, and I’ve gone blind by looking in the wrong direction. I’ve slipped into this wretched place a handful of times, but I wouldn’t dare dwell there long. I’ve returned countless times and I’m due to return again—but only to visit this time. Beyond that, I have no business being here.

In the end I have the friends I’ve met, the music I’ve made, and the unapologetic love I feel for all of it. There’s a bed atop my ivory tower, a dark cotton dune, and a beautiful Persian rug where I spin stories. There’s even a girl who loves me—and how irretrievably in love I am with her.

These are the slow joys, the steady stream of euphoria that makes light dance and mortals glow, the reason I’ve made it through the meat grinder time and time again. Suited wolves will sink their fangs into thin skin and drain life from sunken eyes, but I refuse to get lost in the rat race. You can’t take me.