Oh Those Damn Thumbs

There is a distinct possibility that I am folding in on myself. I’m not referring to the mastering of some yoga pose wherein I become a klein bottle, or manage to bend and twist until I’m small enough to meditate while tucked inside of my wallet. This is a crisis based on the specific detail that I have thumbs. It is my thumbs that are the grandest clue that I don’t live in a nice, downy nest hanging on a tree branch and fly around eating bugs all day. It is my thumbs that distinguish me from a charolais steer, or a wheel-barrow, and it is my thumbs that have me here, clothed, sitting here typing instead of being thought, time, or a molecule in your iphone charge chord. Here now, with two perfect thumbs, stuck inside this human body, I’m finding the world a challenge.

 If there were a kiosk where I could turn in my thumbs and become a singularity, I would be there in a snap. Imagine, some little table set up on a shaded side street where some darling kid was selling lemonade, and/or, the singularity option. You could buy just the singularity option, or the lemonade, but she offered a discount if you opted for both. Of course, once you paid, you would have to tend to your lemonade first. Hard to be the centre of a black hole and enjoy a cool drink at the best of times. Likewise, the same difficulty to face as a steer, or a charge chord, but since I have yet to see any crayoned street signs –

    LeMonaDe 50cents. HuMAn EgresS $1, 

I suppose I must endure, but I do need to develop some kind of plan to combat this folding.



What do I mean by folding? I mean that I am succumbing to stresses of this physical world that previously did not bother me. For example, the road noise that I can hear at night, layered underneath the crickets, and the sounds of the wind through the trees, I find almost unbearable now. It is as if the unnatural sound of each car tire uses my very spine to fine tune itself, like a barber with his strop. Leaf blowers and lawn mowers stress me, to slightly lesser degrees. Grocery shopping in the larger stores with their harsh lighting is a challenge. I feel as though the light enters my retinas and uses the inside of my skull as a skate park, and not in a good way. This, along with my suffering under the erroneous findings of whatever statistics asshole has decided that my shopping cohort likes to listen to Boston, presses me to shop like a ninja–in and out so fast that my shadow struggles to keep up. In a general sense, it feels as if my defenses are crumbling leaving me exposed and more fragile than is healthy. 




What is causing this folding? The foremost trigger is the trauma of the meanness I see on Twitter.  My own fault for exposing myself to it, I know, but I want to be informed. I haven’t listened to news broadcasts since Trump was elected, because I couldn’t control how the journalists doled out the info. I just wanted the specific fact of the action, if I wanted it at all. With Twitter, I could control this by scrolling through at my preferred pace, stopping at my trusted news posts, and following the journalists that I trust. I had already begun to pull away from social media over the past year, since Doug Ford, our own Canadian jerk, was elected. I just couldn’t believe that all of this was happening, then yesterday, while scrolling through, I came upon video footage of a young Mexican man being badly beaten by a cop. That was it. I slammed my laptop closed, and paced around my apartment, cursing my thumbs–the fact that I am a human in this world. 

There have always been terrible things on this planet; wars, famines, and the dickweeds who construct them. I know this. In the recent past, I have marched in marches, and signed petitions, and contributed to the cleaning of the oceans, but lately, I have found myself suffering symptoms verging on those of panic attacks, and have skedaddled into the forest to stand, breathe, and get my bearings. The plan wasn’t to just hug a tree, I wanted to slide inside of the bark layer and hide completely, thumbs and all. This won’t do. 

I’m not sure what’s going to change. I suppose that, letting go, easing up on my appetite for world info, might be a good start. People do, and they appear to lead productive lives, and they’re happy, right? They are, aren’t they? Aren’t they?  I can’t promise to completely look away–that’s not who I am, but in truth, I would much rather experience a blossoming outward instead of all of this folding in, crumbling. Of course. Who wouldn’t?  I’m keeping an eye out for that lemonade stand, but at the same time, I’m on a quest for answers–me and my damn thumbs.