SOFT UNDERBELLY OF RAGE??? *B88-02
normalcy is not the goal
There is rage in the air, there is joy. Nearly 60 days of Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people/land and it bleeds into morning coffee, into the pine trees across the park bench.
These days I feel safest next to the sickly glow of my laptop. I study Chinese medicine until I feel nauseous. I no longer have boundaries, I blame the insidious aura of minerals torn from earth—the construction of coltan and Congolese blood makes me dizzy. Fused so neatly together. We are learning so much and know so little.
My qigong sifu and I once spoke about anger. It’s been all about rage, lately, ancestral and new. I have so much of it. Rage against encampment evictions, rage against the assholes who hacked the Toronto Library system (talk about kicking things when they’re down), rage against the art elite who weaponize forged “Indigeneity” against actual Indigenous people, against the costly, armed nighttime raids of activist homes, rage against the violent mediocrity of politicians and the rest of it.
I have seen people talk about rage as the engine for movement, as a North Star for navigating the last-ditch arsenal of crumbling regimes. Rage as a tool.
Gently, as always, my sifu offered this: encountering the hard emotion is an invitation to look at its soft counterpart. What is the soft underbelly of rage?
From a Daoist perspective, the Seven Emotions (including Love) and the Six Thieves (the senses) are all roads to entanglements. From my perspective, rage and joy and grief are transmutations of love, and I have felt so much of it lately, in every form, to every degree. Every day I fall in love, weeping, shitting my pants like a baby. Like I said, no boundaries.
But I am exploring this thing: the pole of neutral compassion. It’s a Daoist depiction of the pole that travels through us, from crown of head through perineum. A magnetic existence that extends to the yang of the atmosphere, down to the yin of the earth. You can tap into this Uprightness, the energy of Lung Qi, of immunity, of being alive, at any time. Never to be mistaken with disassociation. An innate knowing, a call for trust. My sifu says it’s not an emotion but more like a virtue—something even joy and rage cannot touch. My friend Bry says it is love. I have to think about it.
I don’t necessarily agree with using rage as fuel; it’s a limiting, expendable facet of love. Maybe the debt’s been paid by your kin already, maybe you’ll pay for it later. But like all other things accrued, I believe rage comes with a price. And maybe the good thing to do is flip the hard thing over, observe it, and let the soft part lead instead.
So, normalcy is not the goal. I am okay with crying behind my mask when I hear precious, precious children laughing at the park. I do not blame myself for seeking beauty in every scurrying rat or crushed pigeon in Chinatown. I allow myself to be witnessed as I hug my favourite tree.
“I’m surrounded by visible and invisible forces that want the best for me.”
Image of a human embracing the large, twisting trunk of an old tree by the water.
Artist unknown. Via @capsulecommunity.
Image of a human embracing the large, twisting trunk of an old tree by the water.
Artist unknown. Via @capsulecommunity.
Read:
❋ A FREE growing community Drive of readings on the occupation in Palestine. Read here.
Including & not limited to these readings:
Zionist Colonialism in Palestine by Fayez A. Sayegh
Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappe
When Anti-Zionism Was Jewish: Jewish Racial Subjectivity and the Anti-Imperialist Literary Left from the Great Depression to the Cold War by Benjamin Balthaser
The Question of Palestine by Edward Said
Freedom Is A Constant Struggle by Angela Davis
Watch:
❋ 64 Palm Routine demonstrated by Master Li Chunling.
I am inspired by the spiralling beauty of Bagua Zhang forms. Cyclical resonance in motion. My herbs teacher told me I need to do more of this, my body agrees.
Listen:
❋ Genocide In The Belgian Congo (Part 1) by the The Global Black History Podcast
There are -literally- no current news articles from reputable sources regarding this ongoing devastation in the Congo. This podcast episode has two parts and was released in November 2020.
❋ God Made Dirt, a new album by Matthew Progress (prod. by Dan Only)
There’s an energy to this album that I didn’t think I needed right now. It is not soft, there is a persistent undercurrent of pleasure here, if you want that kind of healing. Especially enjoying the track Haddaway, because I really, really don’t go outside.
Follow me on my Chinese medicine Instagram @numinous.acu 🍈