nothing matters, it all matters, all at once

it all matters, and none of it does.

Greetings. It is I, whoever the hell I am. I have returned from two weeks of family vacation and then nearly two weeks of playing music/traveling/coming into touch with all my anxieties and insecurities about life and myself. Casual, I know, but the bottom line is, I’m here. I’m alive af. I’m trying to figure it out. And I’ve really missed writing to you here.

Today’s topic: all things matter and nothing matters, all at once.

In 2019 I tried mushrooms for the first time. I’ve written about this briefly/publicly on Twitter and Instagram (and a little bit here) but I am really becoming interested in unpacking some of my experiences a bit more; I haven’t been posting on IG for I *think* around 3 months now, and it’s like I have a newly empty walk-in closet in my brain the size of Russia. By the way, it was really something in there when I cleaned it out. I found a couple of un-opened boxes of condoms and a can of paint I’m never going to use and about fifty thousand tiny boxes of self-loathing thoughts. Every time I opened Instagram I’d open the closet door, pick up and open one tiny box of self-loathing, read the thought inside, then add three more boxes from Instagram, shut the door, and put the phone down. Somehow I believed that eventually that was going to add up to A General And Obvious Sense Of Feeling Happy With Myself. It’s math. It’s science. It’s truth. It makes sense. Right?

Well, then my dead grandmothers appeared to appear to me in two dreams I had a week apart from each other. ***I say “appeared to appear” (and anyone who knows me well and attest to this) because, especially when it comes to mystical experiences, I don’t know what’s real. I think a hell of a lot of things *might* be real, but I like to be honest about the fact that I truly don’t know for sure, and I’m not claiming to know. How’s that for a grain of salt for you? Please take it.***

Anyway, as I was saying; well, then my dead grandmothers appeared to appear to me in two dreams I had a week apart from each other. In the second dream, it was my mom’s mama, Bertha Marie Hicks. She took me into my bedroom, which was piled high with shit. Boxes of papers, old clothes, random unused toiletries, books and empty cans and and and and. She told me it was time to let go of all the things I was carrying with me from my old lives and my old selves. That, just because I got rid of what they’d held on to, it didn’t mean those selves wouldn’t be with me anymore. In fact, she said, it was hard for me to stay in harmony and close contact with them, because they were always up in their old bedrooms rummaging through their things. She said she would help me, so the two of us went through every single item and Marie Kondo’d the hell out of that bedroom. We told stories to each other about each object we picked up, then placed it in whatever pile it belonged in. Gradually the light, which had been blocked by the towering piles I’d slowly built in there over the years, began to sift through and then shine in fully, bathing the room and us in full sunlight through faded old sheer floral curtains and onto an old peach low-pile carpet. We sat in there and she showed me around my new room. There were only three things left in it; an old pair of her rubber flipflops (thongs, as she called them) under the bed, a pile of sweaters and shirts that I still loved in the closet, and a pile of art and music supplies on the bed. And then I woke up.

I asked myself what didn’t serve me anymore. Instagram was first on the chopping block. Maybe that will change, but I really hope it doesn’t sometimes. It’s so much more quiet and still in here. So quiet and still, in fact, that I’m actually feeling my pain and experiencing my feelings now because getting rid of IG gave me so much CPU availability back. F***in ouch. It HURTS in here. And I sort of hate it in here right now. Sometimes I wish I could put all that shit back in the room so I couldn’t feel the sorrows I’m finally free to unpack. I don’t want to feel how I’m feeling. All of a sudden I can see the Post-It notes all over my walls that say “I can’t” and “I don’t know how” and “I never will.” They’ve been up for years, and now I finally get to take them all down; what’s so wild and weird to me is that I have such a hard time deciding to let go of the things that are hurting me. All I have to do is take these Post-Its off the walls. I think I’m ready now.

Right after my first mushrooms experience in 2019 I had a thought. “Nothing matters and all things matter all at once.” If you’ve ever felt this feeling, you know exactly what I mean. It ALL matters. Every blade of grass matters. And yet, somehow, cosmically, none of it does. I imagine this might sound confusing. I like to think of it like this; when everything matters, nothing matters. When nothing matters, everything matters.

This paradox lines up for me with others I’ve found to be similarly liberating. (yin yang, wu wei, the tao that can be named is not the eternal tao.) It is in holding these paradoxes that I seem to be finding actual, measurable, delicious and abundant inner peace. I hope you enjoy these lyrics from a song I wrote that year, after that first mushroom journey, that someday I might make available to the world.

XO,

Audrey

“Under The Sun”

Audrey Assad © 2019

Pictures of strangers and lovers hung on the walls of my heart

I see myself in ten million mirrors and I think I’ve known from the start

we are golden cities speaking mysteries to everyone

turns out it’s true not one thing’s new under the sun

all of this suffering I cling to is nothing but dust in my hands

I open them up when I see you; this road may be narrow but here I stand

I’m all lit up like a thousand fireflies with your love

now that I know not one thing’s old under the sun

Illusion shatters in Spirit-laughter’s radius 

All things matter and nothing matters all at once

Turns out it’s true not one thing’s new under the sun

Now my heart knows, not one thing’s old under the sun