The poetry of rubbish1
What’s it like to really Feel It? Feel what, Parkin?
It. Whatever is there when you sit still for a while, or manage to relax, or simply bring your attention to what’s going on in your body. It. It could be the pain you feel in your knees when you sit still for a moment, or the sense of sadness that’s there when the noise of your life subsides; it could be the beating of your heart; it could be the memory of how you used to be when you still had dreams; it could be the shaky tension you feel in your whole body; it could be the blind fear you feel at the prospect of carrying on; it could be your deep, dark sense of loneliness; it could be your awful sense of regret; it could be your over-excited enthusiasm for living; it could be your sense that you don’t really belong, or that you absolutely belong.
It could be a sense of peace and oneness.
It could be a sense of desperation and separation.
It.
What’s it like to Feel It? Not to ignore it or turn away and distract yourself from it; not to judge it; not to pretend it’s not even there; not to wish it wasn’t there; not to cover it in thoughts; not to want it to stay forever.
When you tune in, what do you feel? Qigong, meditation, mindfulness, and many other spiritual practices are about simply tuning in and noticing, without judging what’s going on. We don’t turn away; we look at whatever is there, being felt, straight in the eyes. And we feel it.
And, if we feel like it, we ask, ‘What do I feel like doing (with that)?’
When we feel rubbish, we seem to live that experience not as it is (‘I’m feeling rubbish’), but as the absence of feeling nice (‘Why don’t I feel nice? I should feel nice!’).
What would it be like to experience feeling rubbish as it is? What does it feel like? What is the experience like? What is feeling tired like? Or stressed? Or upset? How do your thoughts swirl, how does the heat move in you, what are the sounds of it? What happens in your body? What do you look like?
In the movie American Beauty, one character spends his time filming rubbish blowing around in the wind. And through the eyes of that guy, we suddenly see the poetry of (literal) rubbish.
When we stop seeing the idea of rubbish and we see what is actually there, then we see that the actual object is just so beautiful. That plastic bag is so beautiful, like the most poetic sculpture, so aimless, so un-made!
So what would it take for us to see the poetry of our rubbish?
1 Brits often describe themselves as feeling ‘rubbish’ (known as ‘garbage’ in the US), which is a telling way to define your state of health – akin to the stuff you throw away.