Learning from wombat poo

and nature's general roundness

I’ve heard it said that there are no right angles in nature. It’s not entirely true, but since when has truth stopped us from forming strong opinions? Fact is, right angles are at least very rare in the natural world. But for us humans, these builders of tools, we seem addicted to them. We slam them everywhere, hammering out hard corners to make things fit better, stack cleaner, sort easier. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe our anal, pattern addicted brains are just not right for this messy planet we happen to live on. Maybe our desperation to impose order leads us to bad places. Maybe the answer to our most annoying problems can be found in the rounded edges that time forges on cliff sides, the bends of branches, the butts of bugs. Sure when things snap or crumble it’s a bit jagged, but over time everything softens, weaves, blends, wears down. All the crispy angry sides get mushy and smooth. Nothing is cut and dry, black or white, fully yes or no. 90 degrees is just not the way things naturally are. Am I projecting my desire for a less rigid world onto objects that have no feelings? Of course I am.

you’re such a square

We humans have always sought to conquer nature and beat it into submission, but that’s beginning to look like a sadomasochistic endeavor. We’ve signed ourselves up for a global, BDSM dungeon of our own making where we thought we were holding the whip, but it turns out the gimp mask is zipped snuggly on our heads. “Please mama nature, we’ve been a bad boy. We tried to force you to comply, now punish us for our transgressions. Oooh yeah, your wrath hurts so good.” So as Europe burns and spherical hail stones the size of ball gags rain down upon us, we curse the gods, blaming them, not us, for right angling the shit out of this beautiful round planet.

As I hear every new NPR story that begins “today president Trump…” my desperate need to find things to organize, declutter, throw out, or fit snuggly into a smaller space expands. Something about the complete lack of order out there makes me desperate for some semblance of it in here. But no matter how many couch cushions I de-pill and refluff, or how many Tupperware containers I organize into lids and bodies, I can’t seem to find any solace. The right angles that used to calm me aren’t solving the bigger issues. Their order is temporary. I am reminded of Bruce Lee’s wise words, “be like water.” But these days I’m more of a broken cinder block in an abandoned urban lot with jagged rebar sticking out of me. I’m about as far from being like water as I can be. My flow state is fully constipated. On some level I think we all may be suffering from some version of this. Can we be prescribed a societal soul laxative? Does our insurance cover that, because the human race needs to officially unclench. I had hoped the legalization of cannabis would’ve helped. It has not.

As I stare into my square computer screen, connected to my square router, talking to the 500,000 square foot data center with the water guzzling racks of rectangular servers, searching for information about nature, I learn that wombat poo is actually one of the few examples of right angles in the real world. These cheery little marsupials pop out cube shaped rump nuggets. They seem to have lots of chill. Almost no cultural anxiety as far as I can tell. Supposedly they’ve evolved to create these shapes so their dung doesn’t roll away when they plop it on the top of rocks to tell the world they were there. That’s a way better form of communication than misinterpreted text messages. Maybe I could be more like the wombat. Squeeze the insides tightly, doing daily man kegels to force my world into square shaped, Lego poo bricks. All my feelings now neatly stacked into towers of scat. Wouldn’t that be great? What’s that? We gutted more environmental regulations, just put it in a poo block. No longer vaccinating children against deadly diseases? Just shit a brick. A horse just got nominated to be a supreme court justice? Plop. Stack. Forget. I think that’s what I’m trying to do when the New York Times alerts pop up on my phone screen 87 times a day and I sprint into the basement to find something to throw out/stack/clean/organize. I’m attempting to wombat poo my feelings, but it doesn’t work that way. You can’t just box it up and jettison it, so the emotional constipation swells.

no bad feelings

I need to roll with things, round my edges, like rivers winding through canyons, letting bad news slide over me. 30% chance of rain today, the same as 42 tornados touching down last night. Kennedy Center hosting WWE Smackdown 666 the same as a new Beck tour date announced. Let all information be equal, each bit rubbing me down just a little bit more until I’m nice and oval, smoothed out and flat. A perfect stone ready to be flung side armed by the all knowing force at incredible speed across the great, glass lake surface of the universe and skipped off into infinity. Breathe in, breathe out. Don’t force corners where there are none. You got this.

later y’all!