One Hundred Days in the Jungle

Trying to move to a small town and trying to fit in and make friends and try to be someone that I thought I wanted everyone to think I am. I realize I’ll never change myself, not really. I’ll always fit in as much as I ever did on day 1 as I do on day 100. Besides, people always seem to be complaining about broken things. Trying to fit into a broken shape is exhausting. I was running away from my responsibilities to myself too, from seeing who I really am and how I really feel. But I only ran into other people who were doing the same, who were better at the game of pretending. No one ever plays pretend with you the way you wanted them to.

At first, everyone took care of me, but eventually they stop and go on with their business of living. I just wanted everyone to like me, but now it doesn’t matter so much. I am learning to take care of myself. Where I came from I was insane and I belonged at the edges of lives. I was a one-eyed man living among the blind. I am trying to get better at losing my mind. They are so good at it here. My body turns blue with sadness but I am relieved.

Life in the jungle feels exactly like a jungle. Unpredictable and scary sometimes. A constant soreness of the body or mind. Wild and unknown and lonely but sweet in its purity and explosion of life in its rawest and most passionate moments, like the indescribable flavour of tender fruit and never ending heat. The ocean, on the other hand, is infinite remembering, infinite waiting and infinite hoping.

The people from the jungle are extreme and instinctive and impulsive and do not follow any rules that I know of. I think they are good at seeing in the dark and hunting. They are able to see things in my darkness that I don’t, and they are very hard to evade when they want you. And the people who are from the jungle by the ocean are the same, but very, very sentimental. Harder to evade. They will hunt you on land and they will hunt you in the water, psychically and emotionally.

I feel closer to the presence of gods here. People are smaller and the gods are greater. Destiny can be a magical romantic thing, warm and generous, or it can be cold as ice. What is true love to one man is a cruel game of fate rolling dice to another. But there is worship and reverence and bewilderment just the same.

Most houses are built only strong enough for the rain not to get in. These are the rules that bind people to each other. People depend on each other too much and eventually blame each other for things. The rainwater and everything else flows a bit downstream, searching for original cause, original sin. In this sense I am the same. Something lost to collective memory that must be retributed, and they silently hold each other captive to their own judges. Dancing and movement is closer to truth, and it is the only freedom. I have learned bitterness and I have learned to listen to the body closely.