jonah and the whale
The story of Jonah in the old testament is one of the strangest.
A prophet is told to go warn the city of Nineveh so it doesn’t get destroyed. Instead of going, he runs the complete other way. He boards a ship to sail as far away as possible. A storm arises and threatens the ship, the superstitious sailors know that someone has brought a curse on them. Emo Jonah knows its him, volunteers to be thrown overboard to appease the waves. They toss him overboard, and he gets swallowed by a great fish, a whale.
He spends three days and nights in the dark of this beast. He cries out to god, the whale spews him out onto a beach shore, and finally Jonah relents and goes to the city to save them from desctruction.
Lately, feels like New York kinda ate me. Being here is right, I know that, but still. I feel like I am only now crawling out of the asshole of this monolith and remembering myself and my reasons.
Right here, right now, confidence as a concept to me seems like an optical illusion. It is all a game of comparison of you to the object.
I am bigger than the task, the task is bigger than me. I am smarter than the problem, the problem is a maze. I am strong enough to climb, the wall is too smooth or steep.
Jonah is to me the archetype of the artist. He has this reluctant connection to something greater than himself, that is for the benefit of others. Jonah is for most of the story, an unhappy person. Unmotivated, judgemental, suicidal, kind of a dick. But even people with all those dark clouds around them are still called.
The one thing I’m contemplating lately, and probably forever is that if you feel compelled to do something, you will be a miserable self pitying fuck until you do. You will live a shadow version of yourself, filled with misadventure instead of adventure. I’m convinced that people that are constantly in trouble, conflict, or other noise are actually brilliant minds, but using their own light to shine into their eyes instead of into the dark path ahead. I have known those types and I have been those types.
Nothing taste as good as skinny feels or as I tweeted to zero likes once “nothing taste as good as the pain pill I discovered in my wallet feels”.
I guess at some point, you have to turn your face towards the city, you have to ask for help in the dark, you have to stand on a beach humiliated and covered in seaweed, 1000 miles from where you could have been. But the only virtue is this: starting again. And again. And again. 100 times, 1000 times. We are all birds in a high wind, there is no straight line, there is only a direction.
Whether you are sleeping in the stomach or in the skyline, I wish you all the new starts.