QNTNs.com Podcast

No Taste | Poem


Listen Later

I tried feeding spinach

to my dog today. She turned
her snout up to me, her eyes talking,
"I have not taste for spinach."
For weeks it began,
spinach plugins for the kennel walls,
aromatics, green wafting, mixing
with the redolence of rawhide,
spinach baths, spinach chew toys,
me whispering,
"Spinach, spinach, spinach"
into her subconscious mind
while she scampered,
twitched in her dreams—
hopefully dreaming of spinach.
But even this indoctrination seemed
hopeless. "Would this dog ever have
a taste for spinach?" So I deprived her,
made her life a misery of starvation
so all there was to be was spinach.
Till alas, gaunt and lethargic, she came
stumbling into the kitchen,
cloudy-eyed, wheezing, mewing.
With pathetic jaws she'd take
her first full bite of spinach.
But can we really consider this
a taste for spinach? No.
So we would go on to create
a new breed. That kin
would know only spinach
till the memory of meat be
so faint, so foreign, the thought
of blood be what they have
no taste for.
And you see, what we have
no taste for is a kind of
magnetism, charged, magical,
seemingly effortless—lest
we struggle against these forces.
Then it would take some
serious manipulating, the behalfs
of our environs, to charge
a dissonant force,
a force which individual "grit"
hardly escapes. The meteor upon
reentry may have grit but
that force tears that
trying opposition in
seething flames till it's
nothing more than debris.
Ash. Destroyed upon reentry.
That atmosphere thus
magnetised, repels all
that it has no taste for.
As I pull back my cheeks
to exam my gums, I see
the history and evidence
of past tastes. Even as my dog's
'cisors evince a carnivorous
appetite, so my body evinces
certain appetites.
Appetites, some I have long
forgotten, forsaken, my
environs with me—or
because of my environs.
Some humans come before me
make clear these contradictions.
"You with heart," they say, "do not
show love. You show blind
fear like the heartless beast."
"You with liver pure," they say,
"drink intoxicants, killing self.
You with brain do not think."
Over years the teachers of
these teachers have taken
these teachings as further fodder
for their reversed tastes.
"You," they evince our selves,
"are living wrongly."
See evidence—which is
convincing. That you gag, dog,
eating spinach, is proof of your
flawed nature. You dog. Bad dog.
So we sicken our selves and
blame our selves for feeling sick.
We, our masters of prior selves,
have reversed the tastes of our life.
Our attractions contradict the
magnetism of our ore. Aura.
Say, who cares the nuance of how
this came to be except that.
That is so. Here. Now.
I tried feeding alcohol to
my body today and I
had no taste for it. Tried
the thought of meat. I had
no taste for it. I tried my hand
at cruelty, unkindness, but
not all the forces could
at once make me mean.
I have no taste for it.
I still have taste for depression.
I have taste for poisononous
thoughts. I have taste for
judging these thoughts which
are not mine, are not working
for me. I have taste for struggle,
ignorance, delusion, and my own
annihilation.
As impossible as once it seemed
to have no taste for hatred, so
these tastes of now seem impossible
to fight. I have a taste for fighting.
My environ worships the God of Grit.
When I peel back my cheeks to
check my 'cisors, grit is not who
we are. Yet the magnetism is
strong. My fighting is
breaking me a
part.
Yet we save these words for
this image. This image:
when the time is right,
the poles flip, and that
impenetrable force
that hounds you,
that unceasing appetite
which kills you, quits.
Quits. Now the force is in reverse.
You have no taste for what,
yesterday,
was destroying you.
My warning, son, is not to force
a reentry before you are welcome.
It is enough just knowing where
our true tastes belong.
As easy as it is for the sun to rise,
the bird to sing, so easy will it be
to be your self. But of yet, you are
a mewing dog, a walking fish, a
sprouting rock, a dry ocean.
Not much is right except the
growing knowing for what is right.
So quit this business of thinking
you can overcome magnetism
which is stronger than any one
iron filing. You cannot, must not,
lest you destroy your self.
But caution: once you have
no taste for that which you are not,
you must forgive those ways of old,
lest the atmospheres from those places
of your prior selves also destroy you.
The butterfly stops eating the leaf,
no longer the caterpillar.
It will be hard when you
make it so. So we say,
"The path is hard." But the path
is not itself hard. We, guaranteed,
make the path hard, so we mistake
our having struggled for
calling the struggle real. We,
floating beings, exhaust our selves
to stay afloat.
Easy is the way. As easy as it is to float.
No commotion. As easy as it is to have
no taste for a thing. You stop tasting.
Keep on, then, with whatever
tastes good, even if it be not "good."
Care not when the taste shall leave you
but care what you are tasting
against what you are ready to have.
It is okay to one day have no taste
for what but yesterday seemed
your greatest pleasure. Just don't
then force your self,
wont to do so.
The taste is gone.
No more taste.
Namaste.



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit substack.qntns.com
...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

QNTNs.com PodcastBy Poems, Writings, Essays, and Lessons by QNTN