The Trickster

2:03

A friend just sat down beside me and I told them that I am writing a blog post that no one will read. Then they said: “isn’t that the point of a blog?” And I said “huh - yes actually.” There is something electrifying about this diary with a bit of danger, splurging and typing for the sake of splurging and typing. I think I hear the Trickster yawning while drinking cold soup near me.

I have returned from the bicker of stimulus and the alertness of art school intensity, perhaps for a flicker, a gale, or perhaps for a season. I am seated at a coffee shop in Idaho across from my friend Emily, a mirror into my own comfortably leaky float. A couple months ago in Harvard Square, we went to the FOGG museum and browsed lounging and uptight paintings, cultural collections, and our own moods. We entered a section of the gallery featuring a vast diversity of global historical depictions, including that of miscalculated horse faces, tranquil sages in deserts, cute Chinese men and owls in little sacks, bearded and robed dudes fondling skulls in their studies, geometrically-haired, doomed-looking Catholics, and enormous dog testicles. Enormous. I am genuinely disappointed I cannot ask the medieval painter about his artistic choices.

Many visitors around us were abiding by the social contract of appearing peacefully wondrous of the high academia of art. Meanwhile Emily and I could hardly hold back our unauthorized giggles, ripe with hilarity for the seeming ongoing silliness of humanity, wide, tangled, pointing at what’s missing and therefore missing the point. The same themes unfurling again and again. Views of heroism that collapse when no one is looking. Socrates stoned, witches burned, truth-tellers exiled. The others around us glitched at our parade of absurdity, fairly annoyed by these two girls making some tragic fun out of all this cyclical seriousness, details on muscular medieval dog butts, warfare, consciousness, and all. When you’re a couple of girls staring down the familiar, ancient nose of the unnecessary human tidal wave of clenching onto unownable things, you might as well have a chuckle in inappropriate spaces.

After another mouthful of drastic contrasts, being in Idaho has my brain wondering how much darting between places it can take. I find myself drifting into corners of sagebrush and caring less and less about how naked I am in public. The temptation to skip introductions and kiss whatever attractive stranger seems to clash against the equal temptation to slink into a huckleberry patch and avoid the perils of modern dating forever. Pleasantries are flimsier than they used to be. Emily and I are sanded down by the charm of a neglected nature, to the point where we are performing divine feminine oracle card readings in dive bars at noon, eating burgers before a hardcore kettlebell workout, and going for 20 mile bike rides without really realizing what we are doing. 

June 11th

I played guitar for snarky Raven and my friends last night by the river. I’d like to take credit for curiously rippled neck feathers, but likely this visit was instigated by desire for our human food. Once we were done eating, however, Raven stayed, swooping and hopping closer. Why not tell yourself Raven is pulled by your matched gaze and sound? Perhaps because this is the line where others begin to call you crazy.

Five days later, I am now seated at an airport window table, bothered by my brain’s hopeless attempts to reorient my past selves and experiences sensically. Time is drooling from my lips as the present moment seems hard-edged. I’ve also got an opinionated pimple on my scalp. Crowds swell and recede, in similar form to how well I relate to myself through the last decade. Thousands of stories hurry along: origins, triumphs, and pains. There is something very moving about sensing the great amount of hidden humanity just beneath all focused faces, yet being restricted to access the cache of full details. There is an odd pleasure in truths that cannot be entered. Like knowing that all the places I have ever visited are still humming, ruminating through night. Every creature on Earth has a relationship to rain.

How many times have I been in the same building with my best friend and not been aware? Is there a particular number of butterflies that could lift me above clouds? How many people do I pass that I could fall in deep congruence with, but never chance? What are the turtles I used to swim with doing? I wonder if the moose I saw awkwardly clunking away from a semi truck the other night is emotionally recovered, as I glide across the planet away from things I once was going toward. The ramble goes on. I suppose it is worth thinking about such ungraspable things. Maybe because awe blooms in sensing, but never owning, these answers.

And I believe awe makes for more humane humans.

Speaking of jokes and humane humans, the verse of the universe seems to be as comedic as heck these days. I’m in the mood almost constantly to slip on a banana peel and chase my shadows. This ~cosmic humor~ can be a wee bit pessimistic and bloated. I am picturing a hungry person with a giant feast but missing their mouth each time they go for a bite. Meaning: there is a strange glee and liberation that fruits from stepping into the big darkness that swirls the truth of all we cannot wrangle. Curiously, every other species seems to live and die on this planet as if they belong here. Humans exile themselves from beauty, opting, rather dumbly, for a feast they cannot enjoy or a bed they cannot sleep in… spending the whole day getting ready for the day. 

At some point one just has to accept that the things you cherish as you reflect on your life are often the things you had the day you were born: connection to self, others, and nature/non-human. Hilarious, right? This notion intervenes in the common idea of progress, that the gain in life is what measures advancement. At times scraping off the gain to reveal what has always been the core can offer wisdom. The Trickster is one of the oldest human archetypes, a shapeless entity that disrupts the status quo. Irrational, brazen, amoral, and playful, the clever Trickster keeps humanity in check, reminding us that nothing will ever quite make sense, good or bad, pretty or ugly, fixating on pure rationality can part us from truth, and laughter/lightheartedness is a language of mystery. Opposite answers may hold the same intention. The Trickster is what gives us a story.

”We are feeling creatures who think.”

I really appreciate the Trickster character not only for beautiful depictions of animal/human relations and general mystique, but also for hinting at the risk in our own brains that may play a role in complexity, relationship to the non-human, and certain kinds of evolution: admitting to chaos. Trickster represents creativity, standing between you and the ultimate answer, saying, “there are other ways”. Trickster raises an eyebrow at rules and pours wind on stiff identities. Trickster drinks cold water in front of a desert-stranded you and asks why you are ignoring the oasis. Trickster will be jumping bizarrely to Rodriguez on your trampoline eating spinach while you are at your office job. Trickster makes sure that two twenty-first century girls come across a medieval painting of giant dog testicals one random Tuesday. Trickster is unemployed but wears a suit and tie anyway.

All of this to say, I am allowing myself a chuckle. I used to get so mad when my little brother would poke fun at me for my mood, but now I’m starting to see the joke. Perhaps there is some thorny promise to acting ridiculous. Maybe processing and moving from the

injustices of the world can be accompanied by the Trickster’s memory of a long-term trend and patterns of life. Holding suffering is not replaced by laughter. Rather, giggles may supplement action and respect.

Hmmm I think that is all I have in the tank, and I am sure the Trickster is laying in the grass near me, applauding sarcastically and ready to do cartwheels and hang out with baboon spiders instead.

And now, the stage turns to you - I would love to hear your own field notes on these topics. Feel free to continue the conversation below.