ashi  🏳️‍🌈

I don't have a SoundCloud but I do have a story: I posted this joke right before getting on a flight. I love flying because when you're up there it's like you can see the whole world—this warm blue marble hanging in space, life bubbling out of every crack and corner.

I also hate that I love flying because I can feel the whole world burning, and it feels my fault. I've swum dying reefs on several continents. I've met incredible people everywhere whose land is being stolen, cultures killed, lives shrunk to nothing.

There's less oxygen in planes and this makes you more prone to crying, and so I do. I think about killing myself. It's stupid, I'm not going to, but once you've opened yourself to those thoughts they never really go away. It's an escape fantasy; a way to process intolerable pain.

There are two things that help when I feel that way: 1. I remember what an amazing gift suffering is. How exquisite, this ability to feel the sensation of our hearts tearing open even though they aren't. How incredible that we can take on even a shadow of all the world's agony.

2. I remember that the salt in my tears is the same salt as in the ocean below because we are all the ocean below. Wen you expose water and chemicals to energy what eventually happens is they form into bodies which start to explore and fuck and love and dream.

I don't know why this helps, exactly. I just know that when I remember it I feel tiny and powerful all at once. Tiny because at that scale, my one life is a blip.

Powerful because we are the reefs, the jungles, the sky. We are the the universe playing hide and seek. We are the curiosity of the sea, who so wanted to know the stars that she became all life on Earth to someday meet them. You are infinite. Never forget that.