Latest / Romancing the Threshold / Weaving the WYRD While Empires White-Knuckle Death

Transcript

Weaving the WYRD While Empires White-Knuckle Death · Romancing the Threshold

0:26
I was four years old in the 1970s in Brazil,
0:30
and the military dictatorship was in power.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: There I was holding my first fairy tale book, The Ugly Duckling.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: Even then, I hated how the ducks treated a different one.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: But what dropped into my body that day was something bigger.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: It was the terror about losing freedom to think, to imagine.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: My mother was a history teacher.
0:57
When she was in college,
0:59
the military ransacked her house,
1:02
hunting for subversive books.
1:04
She'd hidden her copy of Karl Marx's Das Kapital,
1:08
and they missed it by inches.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: Now she was married and with a young daughter.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: And I'd watch her voice drop to whispers when talking to colleagues,
1:20
SPEAKER_00: because you never knew who could report you.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: That mistrust didn't just silence truth.
1:28
It shut doorways to imagining beyond the box,
1:31
the dictatorship placed on everyone's head.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I've come to understand.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: Every authoritarian system is built on humanity's core fear,
1:44
SPEAKER_00: death,
1:45
SPEAKER_00: the ultimate transformation into the unknown.
1:48
And watching my parents meet this taught me there are two ways
1:52
to face that threshold.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: Nine years ago, my father showed me surrender could be grace.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: My father wasn't the deep intellectual thinker as my mother.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: No, he offered a different kind of medicine, humor.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: His humor of dirty jokes,
2:11
SPEAKER_00: dad jokes,
2:13
SPEAKER_00: and wordplay taught me that imagination lives in our bodies,
2:18
SPEAKER_00: in the present now.
2:20
and that every joke is a tiny revolution against taking reality
2:25
too seriously.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: When he was diagnosed with terminal cancer with a year to live,
2:31
SPEAKER_00: he was ready to go before the year was out.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: While in the hospital in his last days,
2:38
SPEAKER_00: he waited for my arrival from Portland,
2:40
SPEAKER_00: showed me his happiness at my arrival,
2:44
SPEAKER_00: and then slipped into a coma
2:47
SPEAKER_00: only to let go of his hold on life the very next day.
2:52
He fought the good fight,
2:54
but he knew when to trust something beyond his body's borders.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: His own death was a doorway for him, for me, and for our relationship.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: But in late 2024, my mother's death was different.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: The one who had hidden Marxist books from military raids.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: The one who taught me critical thinking and intellectual depths.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: And she was a realist who planned futures with fierce agency.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: And yet,
3:25
SPEAKER_00: throughout life,
3:26
SPEAKER_00: I had also watched her postpone joy,
3:30
SPEAKER_00: pushing pleasure to one day in the future.
3:33
often past the edge of exhaustion,
3:35
leaving pleasure,
3:37
no space to be felt,
3:39
expressed,
3:40
and lived.
3:41
She who had given me the tools and training to question
3:46
everything critically
3:48
SPEAKER_00: wouldn't question why,
3:49
SPEAKER_00: for her,
3:51
SPEAKER_00: happiness was made to wait for a future that sadly never arrived.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: Her final words to me were criticism that were armoring her fear.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: keeping us apart as it had always had.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: The way she white-knuckled against the big D of death,
4:12
SPEAKER_00: holding on so tightly at the end,
4:15
was the final expression of a string of smaller deaths that had
4:20
punctuated so much
4:21
SPEAKER_00: of her life.
4:23
The deaths of vulnerable connection,
4:26
the possibilities of pleasure,
4:28
and joyful presence.
4:31
Now,
4:32
I see our systems everywhere that are in the same panic of
4:37
knowing that death awaits.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: And instead of embracing with grace the changes,
4:42
SPEAKER_00: they are white-knuckling it,
4:44
SPEAKER_00: armoring their fear with violence,
4:47
SPEAKER_00: and frozen by the grip of greed.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: Ice raids.
4:53
Frozen water trying to stop human flow while actual ice caps
4:59
melt and flood
5:00
SPEAKER_00: everything they're trying to wall out.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: The irony writes itself.
5:06
They spread cold fear through communities while their whole
5:10
frozen worldview
5:12
SPEAKER_00: liquefies beneath them.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: Now we're under this relentless siege by these white-knuckling,
5:20
SPEAKER_00: grasping-until-the-end systems in a kind of psychic warfare.
5:26
pumping fear through every screen,
5:28
disguised as news,
5:30
information,
5:31
entertainment.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: Let's be honest,
5:33
SPEAKER_00: we've been fed dystopian stories for decades,
5:37
SPEAKER_00: not as a warning for what not to do,
5:40
but as preparation for us to more easily swallow the pill of
5:45
quote-unquote,
5:47
SPEAKER_00: this is the inevitable future.
5:49
Stories that take our presence and attention hostage while
5:53
offering very poor
5:55
nutritional ingredients for our imaginations to see much beyond
6:00
fear's narrow field
6:02
SPEAKER_00: of vision.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: And as per usual,
6:05
the fear that is being pumped through the airwaves comes
6:08
banging pots and pans,
6:10
jarring our nervous systems with noise and urgency in a
6:15
relentless 24-hour cycle.
6:18
It is a tantrum against change that would make Dungeons &
6:22
Dragons warlocks,
6:24
SPEAKER_00: envious of its damage points.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: I feel it.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you feel it too.
6:30
The exhaustion of swimming through fear stories until your
6:35
imagination for other
6:36
SPEAKER_00: possibilities feels waterlogged.
6:40
The daily feeling after another session of doom scrolling,
6:45
of breaking news.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: And again, if anything is breaking, is the news breaking us?
6:52
SPEAKER_00: Of another crisis hitting us like a hurricane.
6:56
Of our muscles tightening,
6:58
of our bodies contracting,
7:01
curving on itself and becoming smaller.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: And that is how it feels when the doorways to imaginations,
7:09
SPEAKER_00: more creatively affirming possibilities,
7:12
SPEAKER_00: close,
7:13
SPEAKER_00: leaving us as captives to fierce myopic perspective.
7:18
Now I see what my four-year-old self knew in her bones but
7:23
couldn't articulate.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: The real battle is for imagination itself.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: Not because imagination is inherently good.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: The same psychic warfare uses imagination to fuel our nightmares.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: But imagination is where we choose.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: Death grip,
7:42
SPEAKER_00: the dying world,
7:44
SPEAKER_00: or midwife what's being born and is worth tending with presence,
7:49
SPEAKER_00: attention,
7:50
SPEAKER_00: and care.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: You see, imagination is image in motion.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: It's somatic.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: It lives in the body, too.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: It needs to flow as if it needs space to move and stretch.
8:07
And more importantly,
8:08
it's relational as it needs us to be able to build connections.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: But if we can pause for a second.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: and just breathe and untighten our knuckles from the grip,
8:23
we can see that each one of us have unique keys to the doorways
8:28
of imagination's
8:30
treasure trove of more creatively affirming possibilities and
8:34
outcomes for our
8:36
SPEAKER_00: future.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: Remember this,
8:40
every book or story that made you feel into different hopeful
8:44
futures still lives
8:46
SPEAKER_00: in you,
8:48
SPEAKER_00: every unexpected laughter you gave when the world wanted you to cry,
8:53
every time you chose the love story of connection and
8:57
transformation over the false
8:59
SPEAKER_00: narrative.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: That's resistance.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: We just didn't know we had been practicing all along.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: You see,
9:08
SPEAKER_00: it hasn't been loud or dramatic,
9:11
SPEAKER_00: but it has been growing in the spaces between fear's obnoxious noise,
9:16
SPEAKER_00: like mycelium grows after rain.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: While fear screams its dystopian futures,
9:24
we've already been growing different worlds in the quiet spaces
9:28
in between.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: We just need some remembering.
9:33
Because what they're really trying to kill isn't just our hope
9:38
and creative agency
9:40
SPEAKER_00: or even our thoughts.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: It's our ability to imagine ourselves out of their imposed,
9:47
SPEAKER_00: single-eyed story and into the multiple possibilities of our own stories.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: Still, I need to be honest.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: Most mornings, I wake up afraid.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: When I see these Sauron surveillance states,
10:07
SPEAKER_00: the gold hoarding dragons of late-stage greed,
10:11
SPEAKER_00: claiming everything they touch,
10:14
when institutional violence bulldozes through communities like
10:18
it's just another
10:19
SPEAKER_00: Tuesday,
10:20
SPEAKER_00: my body braces for impact.
10:23
And that old hypervigilance from my four-year-old self kicks
10:28
right back in.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: What do we do with all that fear being pumped into our airways,
10:34
SPEAKER_00: poisoning everything it touches?
10:38
SPEAKER_00: After my father died,
10:39
I was drowning in grief when I stumbled on this ancient story
10:44
that made more sense
10:45
SPEAKER_00: to me than any Kubler-Ross stages of grief ever could.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: It was about Menelaus,
10:53
SPEAKER_00: Helen's husband,
10:54
who got everyone to launch their 1,000 ships to help him get
10:59
his wife back from
11:00
SPEAKER_00: Troy.
11:02
After 10 years of war in Troy,
11:04
he finally was sailing home when his ships just stopped.
11:10
Flaccid sails hanging like all the impotence of being stuck
11:15
when you desperately
11:17
SPEAKER_00: need to move forward.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: So this king learns that he has to catch Proteus,
11:23
SPEAKER_00: the shape-shifting prophet of the seas,
11:26
SPEAKER_00: to get some answers on how to get unstuck.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: But to catch a god,
11:33
SPEAKER_00: Menelaus has to humble himself completely,
11:37
SPEAKER_00: hiding day after day in a cave full of seals,
11:41
SPEAKER_00: covered in reeking seal skins,
11:44
SPEAKER_00: pretending to be one of them,
11:46
SPEAKER_00: waiting.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: Because Proteus only came at dawn to count his seals.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: And that was Menelaus' only chance.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: He had to lie down with the seals.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Finally, one morning when Proteus returns, Menelaus finally grabs him.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: But Proteus drags Menelaus underwater.
12:09
Now imagine trying to hold on to a god when you can't breathe
12:14
while he shapeshifts
12:16
SPEAKER_00: into all forms of fearsome things.
12:19
First,
12:20
Proteus shapeshifts into a ferocious lion with a thrashing mane
12:26
and a deadly maw.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: Then, as a giant serpent that could strangle you into a pulp.
12:33
Then,
12:34
your hands flail through a violent whirlpool that drags you
12:38
deeper into the seas.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: And then, your hands burn as you hold on to a raging fire.
12:46
And finally,
12:48
you feel your hands scraping and bleeding over a solid tree
12:52
bark.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: every form designed to make you let go.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: But Menelaus holds on until finally Proteus,
13:01
SPEAKER_00: exhausted,
13:02
SPEAKER_00: returns to his old man form and asks,
13:05
SPEAKER_00: who are you to hold on to me like this?
13:09
And here's what shifted things for me in my grief journey when
13:13
I first read this
13:13
SPEAKER_00: story nine years ago.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: Was Proteus' answer to Menelaus' predicament?
13:19
SPEAKER_00: For you see,
13:20
SPEAKER_00: Menelaos left Troy without honoring the gods,
13:24
SPEAKER_00: specifically Neptune,
13:26
SPEAKER_00: the god of the seas and imagination.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: You can't just skip the rituals of recognition and expect to sail home.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: Like many of us,
13:38
SPEAKER_00: Menelaos committed the same sin,
13:41
SPEAKER_00: the failing to recognize,
13:42
to acknowledge what needs honoring before moving through the
13:46
threshold to another
13:48
SPEAKER_00: phase.
13:50
He needed to honor the right gods,
13:53
and especially Neptune,
13:55
if he wanted to return home.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: And here,
13:57
SPEAKER_00: we can think of the gods as archetypes,
14:00
SPEAKER_00: these forces beyond our understanding,
14:03
SPEAKER_00: or even our feelings and emotions,
14:06
SPEAKER_00: but things that need to be recognized,
14:09
SPEAKER_00: acknowledged,
14:10
SPEAKER_00: and respected before we can move on.
14:13
And that's why I think this story matters now when we're told
14:18
we're back to normal
14:20
SPEAKER_00: post pandemic,
14:22
SPEAKER_00: when there are signs all around that our systems,
14:26
SPEAKER_00: as we grew to expect them to be and stay,
14:30
SPEAKER_00: are shape shifting right in front of us.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: And we find ourselves stuck with our own flaccid sails,
14:39
nothing really moving in a way that feels generative because we
14:44
haven't honored
14:45
SPEAKER_00: what we've lost,
14:47
SPEAKER_00: what has changed and what's dying.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, we see the fascists and their enablers also stuck.
14:56
but stuck in a rage that's destructive precisely because it
15:01
refuses to transform.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: It just keeps detonating in place like a trapped explosion.
15:09
And for them,
15:11
rage is the only acceptable way because it doesn't seem weak.
15:16
And that matters to them because their worldview is built on
15:19
power over others.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless,
15:24
their psychic warfare through every screen is as violent as
15:29
street brutality
15:30
SPEAKER_00: because it gets inside us,
15:32
making us doubt what we know in our bones is not the only way
15:38
through a world that
15:40
SPEAKER_00: is both dying and being reborn.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: During what I've been calling my cave year,
15:47
SPEAKER_00: after my mother died,
15:49
SPEAKER_00: stories became my way of lying down with the seals,
15:52
SPEAKER_00: as Menelaos did.
15:53
This seal cave is where I learned to hold complexity while it
15:59
shapeshifted.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: Not scape, survival.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: Each romance novel teaching me how grief moves,
16:08
SPEAKER_00: how power shifts,
16:10
SPEAKER_00: how love transforms people at a molecular level.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: And this is where it connects to something larger.
16:18
The battering ram of fear and all their abuses is their violent
16:23
way to try to nail
16:25
SPEAKER_00: shut every doorway to other worlds where different possibilities live,
16:32
SPEAKER_00: where other ideas,
16:34
ways of being and living beckon us to move in a more creatively
16:39
affirming way.
16:41
But we have to remember that we are not alone because we are
16:45
part of something I
16:47
SPEAKER_00: want to call the weird network.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: Weird,
16:51
SPEAKER_00: spelled W-Y-R-D,
16:55
is an old Anglo-Saxon understanding of fate as something we're
17:00
actively weaving,
17:01
SPEAKER_00: not some fixed destiny.
17:04
The weird way reminds us that we have agency in the creation of
17:09
our destiny.
17:10
It is not a one-and-done narrative,
17:12
already written,
17:14
unchangeable,
17:15
and sealed.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: But instead,
17:17
SPEAKER_00: we're actually weaving it together,
17:21
SPEAKER_00: not only with our fellow human beings,
17:24
SPEAKER_00: but also with both the seen and unseen realms.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: If quantum physics has taught us anything,
17:33
SPEAKER_00: it's that our reality has layers,
17:35
SPEAKER_00: doorways into other realities.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: So can't we believe that we're not alone in all of this,
17:44
SPEAKER_00: but that the unseen realm,
17:46
SPEAKER_00: unseen to our physical reality eye,
17:50
but perceived and felt through our other senses and most
17:54
definitely through our
17:56
SPEAKER_00: imagination and its creations.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: For you see,
18:00
when someone finds deep medicine in a romance novel everyone
18:05
else calls trash,
18:08
or when someone experiences divinity while drinking coffee at a
18:13
gas station,
18:15
SPEAKER_00: or when one feels the power of the numinous while hiking a trail,
18:21
SPEAKER_00: or the hand of fate in a chance encounter.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: Oh,
18:26
SPEAKER_00: and like me,
18:27
who would listen to my father's dirty jokes and understand that
18:31
reality has
18:32
SPEAKER_00: multiple layers.
18:33
This is all done because we brought a certain kind,
18:39
a certain quality of attention to it.
18:42
And these and many more examples show how we've been weaving
18:46
other possible realities.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: Something they, the fascists, if you will, literally cannot digest.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: They've succumbed to one story, one meaning.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: While we're out here proving that a hockey romance can be about grief,
19:06
SPEAKER_00: that mythology still teaches us how to live more fully,
19:10
that what may be dismissed as guilty pleasure or flights of
19:14
fancy might be exactly
19:17
SPEAKER_00: right for where we're going and in what we're shape-shifting into.
19:23
Every day,
19:25
like many allows,
19:26
I lie down with the seals,
19:29
noticing the tides shifts hour by hour.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: I watch for signs that we might turn this around,
19:36
SPEAKER_00: hoping the next punch lands on the side of justice.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: As Hollywood movies have taught us,
19:43
the bad guys give many punishing blows before the good guys
19:47
flip the story.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: But institutional violence is a juggernaut,
19:54
and I feel lost about what to do beyond keeping these doorways
19:58
to imagination open.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's not enough,
20:03
SPEAKER_00: but maybe,
20:04
SPEAKER_00: and this is what I hold onto,
20:06
SPEAKER_00: like Menelao's gripping his shapeshifter,
20:10
maybe tending the doorways is the honoring that lets us finally
20:15
sail somewhere new.
20:18
Not because it's guaranteed to work,
20:20
but because it's what we have and we have always had.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: It's what we know.
20:27
It's what keeps us human while they try to make us into
20:31
machines or worse,
20:33
SPEAKER_00: fodder for the machines.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: But I also need to tell you something about anger.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: It lives in me all the time now, right under the surface.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: My own Bruce Banner situation.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: When I see them bulldozing everything with their bottomless greed,
20:53
SPEAKER_00: destroying not for rebirth,
20:55
SPEAKER_00: but just to feed a cancerous hunger,
20:57
SPEAKER_00: wasting resources that could heal and help,
21:01
SPEAKER_00: I become someone I don't recognize.
21:04
This rage feels like possession,
21:08
like they're trying to make me into their image.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: And I hate that.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: My inner Jason Bourne,
21:15
SPEAKER_00: which by the way is my patron saint of dismantling corrupt systems,
21:20
SPEAKER_00: wants to go full Bourne identity on their whole operation.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: Their disease isn't just physical.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: It's spiritual, psychological.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: Like Hercules Hydra, you can't just cut off heads.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: You need to get to the root.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: And that root lives in realms that the physical fighting can't reach.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: We need to engage where they can't follow.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: The inner worlds.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: The story realms.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: The places where the weird still operates.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: While everyone's mesmerized by the world crumbling,
22:00
SPEAKER_00: and yes,
22:01
SPEAKER_00: it is,
22:02
SPEAKER_00: they're forgetting that something new is being born in the rubble.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: Birth is messy, painful, needs tending.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: You can't just watch the demolition.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: Someone has to catch what's emerging.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: And that's what I've come to understand.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: Tending doorways isn't instead of action.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: It's midwifery for what's trying to be born.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: The systems need us to stay in their timeline,
22:32
SPEAKER_00: fearing tomorrow's catastrophes,
22:34
SPEAKER_00: nostalgic for a past that never existed in their simple way of seeing.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: Sure,
22:42
SPEAKER_00: the 1950s America had its ease,
22:45
SPEAKER_00: for some,
22:46
SPEAKER_00: but it was full of shadows they pretend weren't there.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: They pumped this false nostalgia alongside future fear,
22:55
SPEAKER_00: keeping us anywhere but here,
22:58
SPEAKER_00: where transformation happens at the speed of recognition,
23:02
SPEAKER_00: not bureaucracy.
23:04
My mother postponed joy and pleasure for futures that sadly
23:08
never arrived.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: while my father's jokes cracked open the present moment.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: And stories taught me there's a third way,
23:18
SPEAKER_00: where time becomes fluid,
23:20
SPEAKER_00: where change can happen in a chapter,
23:23
SPEAKER_00: where love really does conquer fear.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: Not marvel timelines,
23:29
but learning that the powers that have one quote-unquote
23:33
inevitable vision of the
23:35
SPEAKER_00: future is just one story among thousands.
23:40
But the deeper truth I'm grasping is that these story doorways
23:45
lead to actual allies.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: Every story that's ever rearranged your molecules, that's contact.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: That book that falls off the shelf when you need it,
23:58
SPEAKER_00: the show that finds you exactly at the right moment,
24:02
SPEAKER_00: call it synchronicity,
24:04
SPEAKER_00: call it the Fae,
24:05
SPEAKER_00: call it quantum entanglement.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: The unseen realms are communicating through our imagination.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: They understand our righteous anger.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: They'd probably help us blow shit up if that would work.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: But they keep pointing us toward these other ways of shifting reality.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: Those hoarding power and resources can track our purchases,
24:32
SPEAKER_00: but not what happens when we sob over fictional characters.
24:38
They can monitor our clicks,
24:40
but not how our fake dating story teaches us real courage.
24:46
Our inner worlds are like Proteus,
24:49
ever-shifting,
24:50
impossible to pin down.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: They're trying to map something that changes shape every time they look.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: This is how the weird network actually works.
25:02
Mycelium,
25:03
those underground fungal threads connecting everything in the
25:07
forest.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: One person touched by a story becomes different.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: And that difference ripples out in patterns too complex for algorithms.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: Say you read something that cracks you open.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: You treat the grocery clerk differently that day.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: They go home lighter.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: Their kid feels it.
25:30
Endless flowering patterns of small shifts that look like
25:34
nothing but change everything.
25:37
This network is not some kind of organization with meetings and
25:42
manifestos.
25:44
but this living web of everyone who's ever let a story change
25:48
them at a cellular level.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: All of us finding medicine in what others dismiss as fluff,
25:56
SPEAKER_00: each story we digest adding another thread to the pattern.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: And here's the faith part.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: We're not weaving alone.
26:05
Those books falling off shelves,
26:08
those perfect timing shows,
26:10
something wants this healing too.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: Something is weaving with us.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: Even when it feels like we're just hiding with the seals like menelaos,
26:23
SPEAKER_00: waiting for wisdom that might not come,
26:26
SPEAKER_00: we're held by invisible threads we are only beginning to sense.
26:31
But invisible threads can feel like wishful thinking when the
26:35
world's on fire.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: So let me get practical.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: Here's what matters.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: Recognizing what we're already doing and understanding why it matters.
26:47
Every story that calls to you is keeping your connection to
26:51
imagination alive.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: Tending your inner world when everything outside wants to flatten it.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: Yes, they love when we consume stories as mere entertainment.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: Bread and circus, keeping us passive.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: But here's their mistake.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: Even mindless entertainment changes us if we can bring curiosity to it.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: The difference isn't in the story, but in how we meet it.
27:22
They want you to feel ashamed of loving a vampire romance or
27:27
binging reality shows,
27:29
SPEAKER_00: dismissing them as brain-dead escapism.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: But what if your guilty pleasure is actually your soul staying limber?
27:39
SPEAKER_00: Each story you truly digest is practice.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: Dying to who you were, being reborn slightly different.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: Not resistance, but flexibility.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: Not fighting their world, but staying too alive for it to contain you.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: Choose your stories like medicine.
28:02
And then do the work of actually digesting them,
28:06
letting them alchemize you.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: Notice what calls to you.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: That noticing is the practice.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: Feel into the layers.
28:17
Sure,
28:17
the plot,
28:19
but also how it hits you specifically,
28:22
what it reveals about these times.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: Let yourself feel it somatically.
28:29
The tears,
28:30
the rage,
28:31
the unexpected joy,
28:33
teaching your nervous system new patterns.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: When a story breaks something open in you, share that opening.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: Don't just say, oh, I loved it.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: But this changed how I see dot, dot, dot.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: That's how the mycelium is strengthened.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: Not through consumption, but through communion.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: Still, I don't know if this is enough while the jargonaut rolls on.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: Some days, the stories are just escape.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: Just a way to regulate my nervous system and quiet the racing fears.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: That's okay too.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: That's still medicine.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: But even on those days, I noticed something.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: They shift me out of fear's possession into other possibilities.
29:27
Not magical help arriving,
29:29
but my mind remembering it can think beyond their narrative.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: Part of me still wants to go full Jason Bourne on them.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: But when I tend stories like prayers,
29:42
when I trust that imagination is where the battle lives and
29:47
where it will be
29:48
SPEAKER_00: healed,
29:49
SPEAKER_00: I remember we're not just fighting.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: We are midwifing.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: The doorways were never closed.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: My four-year-old self clutching that ugly duckling book, she knew.
30:03
Even under dictatorship,
30:06
even with the terror pounding in her small body,
30:09
she found the door.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: Every one of us has been doing this since childhood,
30:15
SPEAKER_00: slipping between worlds when this one got too tight.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: While they exhaust themselves trying to board up every portal,
30:23
SPEAKER_00: banning books,
30:25
SPEAKER_00: surveilling screens,
30:26
SPEAKER_00: pathologizing imagination,
30:28
SPEAKER_00: we have already gone.
30:31
We are already deep in conversation with whatever speaks
30:35
through fallen books and
30:36
SPEAKER_00: perfect timing songs.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: already shape-shifting through every story,
30:43
practicing dying and returning so often that transformation
30:48
isn't something we do.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: It's what we are.
30:52
They are trying to govern people who have spent lifetimes
30:56
becoming other things.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: Wolves, warriors, lovers who choose the monster.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: We learn early that imagination isn't escape.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: It's survival.
31:10
And we never stopped walking between worlds,
31:13
even when we forgot that that's what we were doing.
31:17
Even when they called it guilty pleasure or killing time,
31:21
every story a door.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: Every door still open.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: Every one of us already more than they can count.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: But this is the weird at work.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: Not just personal fate, but collectively weaving.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: Each time you share what a story broke open in you,
31:42
each time you choose the tale your soul needs over what you
31:46
should consume,
31:48
SPEAKER_00: each moment you recognize another person's eyes lit up with a story.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: These aren't small gestures.
31:57
They are threads in a living pattern too complex for dead
32:02
algorithms to map.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: Yes, keep tending your doorways.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: Yes, keep trusting that righteous anger can fuel more than destruction.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it fuels the fierce protection of what's trying to be born.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: We're not just fighting their dying world, but midwifing what comes next.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: Protecting the tender possibilities that need time to grow strong.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: And yes, I'll be honest, most days I still don't know if this is enough.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: The jargonaut keeps rolling while I'm here talking about story medicine.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: But even when it feels like breathing underwater,
32:45
SPEAKER_00: holding on to something that won't stop shape-shifting,
32:49
SPEAKER_00: even when the wisdom seems too quiet against their noise,
32:54
SPEAKER_00: I keep returning to this practice.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: Because we're not waiting to sail free.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: We're being changed by the holding itself.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: Becoming people who can stay present with chaos,
33:07
SPEAKER_00: who can midwife and fight simultaneously,
33:12
SPEAKER_00: who know that transformation is always one good story away.
33:16
My four-year-old self with her fairy tale book and my
33:20
middle-aged self still
33:22
SPEAKER_00: wanting to be Jason Bourne.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: We're both here, tending the same door.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: And neither of us is tending it alone.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: So that's what I got for you today.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: No need conclusions.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: No five-step plan.
33:38
Just this invitation to notice which stories are calling to you
33:41
right now.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: What doorway is falling open?
33:45
SPEAKER_00: What medicine is trying to find you?
33:48
SPEAKER_00: Trust it.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: Tend to it.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: And know you're not tending alone.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: This is me,
33:55
SPEAKER_00: Vanessa,
33:56
SPEAKER_00: from wherever you are in the weird network,
33:59
SPEAKER_00: reminding you every story is a door and every door is still open.
34:05
If this resonates with you and you want to explore stories as
34:09
doorways together,
34:10
SPEAKER_00: you can find me at vanessacuto.com.
34:18
you