Sometimes, you get stuck. In mud. It’s a thick mud, and it weighs you down. Not in a soul-crushing, demoralizing way. Just in a way that slows you down and makes it hard to move. You can look around. You can still move your head and your eyes and you can breathe fine. The mud isn’t poisonous, luckily, and it feels fine enough on your skin. It’s just gunky. Gets in your joints, stops the gears from moving, and keeps you from wanting to get the gears moving again.
Feeling stuck, he takes a deep breath and plunges into the mud. He opens his eyes and, lo and behold, he can see! It’s a clear sort of mud. It’s an ocean of mud. Like coffee. But thicker.
He comes up for air and he is somewhere else. He thinks he is somewhere else, although the mud seems to have gotten in his ears, toyed with his brain a little bit. It might be making him forget.
He closes his eyes and lets himself sink back down into the mud and be enveloped by it. He tries to allow the mud to do whatever it wants to him, to allow it to mold him and to not fight the shifting sensations, to let it flow freely. It may be thick and gunky but it still flows if he lets it.
It’s hard, though. It’s hard to let the mud take him over completely. There’s an intrinsic instinct to fight its movement and to keep it from getting into his pores and his ears and his mouth, to control it and make it unnatural. In order to avoid doing this, he has to actively avoid trying. Because if he tries, he is by the very nature of trying, resisting the natural tendencies of the mud, which is exactly what he has set out not to do.
It’s a strange process, a weird mix of passiveness and activity, where the activity is something he feels the need to unconsciously fight. Unconsciously because, if he does it consciously, it defeats the purpose.
This is the nature of the mud.
No one really knows how to do this. There’s no hidden art to becoming one with the mud, at least as far as he knows. Closing his eyes seems the most reliable strategy when his mind begins to wander and his limbs begin to twitch in automatic resistance to the forces surrounding him. Closing his eyes grounds him again, relaxes him, slows his heartbeat, lets him feel at peace with the stuff around him. He has to do this more and more often as the mud gets more and more suffocating. Close his eyes and open them again.
He has to make sure he isn’t really trying, because trying means death. Active resistance means defeating the purpose. He has to let himself go, be guided completely by the stuff around him. It’s hard to do. It should be the most natural, effortless action — a complete lack of action. But for some reason it isn’t. For some reason he’s been taught otherwise.
He thinks that might be because it’s easy to attribute a lack of action to non-action, but really they’re different things. He is embracing passiveness. He just wants to let the mud do its thing, do what it will to him, because during those fleeting moments where he’s able to fully embrace the mud as a molder of his body, he is able to find utter relaxation and peace. They’re short moments, and they are sometimes few and far between, but they are worth it.
He doesn’t associate them with a lack of care, because he knows the mud will not harm him. At worst it’ll nudge an arm here or a leg there, or it’ll get into his ear a little bit and tickle and feel funny for a few moments until he gets used to that sensation, too. But it really isn’t out to get him. It doesn’t have a motive at all, it just is, and that’s the lesson he wants to learn from the mud, how to just be mud.
He feels free right now. Aimless, but good. Like thinking and being in the mud are all he really needs.
He doesn’t want this to be a task. He wants this to be the definition of passivity. He wants this to relax him. He doesn’t want to force himself to be overtaken by the mud, doesn’t want to swim in it if he doesn’t feel like swimming in it. Discomfort is not the goal. There is no ultimate goal, other than letting himself go ragdoll in the mud.
Feeling stuck, he takes a deep breath and plunges into the mud. He opens his eyes and, lo and behold, he can see! It’s a clear sort of mud. It’s an ocean of mud. Like coffee. But thicker.
He comes up for air and he is somewhere else. He thinks he is somewhere else, although the mud seems to have gotten in his ears, toyed with his brain a little bit. It might be making him forget.
He closes his eyes and lets himself sink back down into the mud and be enveloped by it. He tries to allow the mud to do whatever it wants to him, to allow it to mold him and to not fight the shifting sensations, to let it flow freely. It may be thick and gunky but it still flows if he lets it.
It’s hard, though. It’s hard to let the mud take him over completely. There’s an intrinsic instinct to fight its movement and to keep it from getting into his pores and his ears and his mouth, to control it and make it unnatural. In order to avoid doing this, he has to actively avoid trying. Because if he tries, he is by the very nature of trying, resisting the natural tendencies of the mud, which is exactly what he has set out not to do.
It’s a strange process, a weird mix of passiveness and activity, where the activity is something he feels the need to unconsciously fight. Unconsciously because, if he does it consciously, it defeats the purpose.
This is the nature of the mud.
No one really knows how to do this. There’s no hidden art to becoming one with the mud, at least as far as he knows. Closing his eyes seems the most reliable strategy when his mind begins to wander and his limbs begin to twitch in automatic resistance to the forces surrounding him. Closing his eyes grounds him again, relaxes him, slows his heartbeat, lets him feel at peace with the stuff around him. He has to do this more and more often as the mud gets more and more suffocating. Close his eyes and open them again.
He has to make sure he isn’t really trying, because trying means death. Active resistance means defeating the purpose. He has to let himself go, be guided completely by the stuff around him. It’s hard to do. It should be the most natural, effortless action — a complete lack of action. But for some reason it isn’t. For some reason he’s been taught otherwise.
He thinks that might be because it’s easy to attribute a lack of action to non-action, but really they’re different things. He is embracing passiveness. He just wants to let the mud do its thing, do what it will to him, because during those fleeting moments where he’s able to fully embrace the mud as a molder of his body, he is able to find utter relaxation and peace. They’re short moments, and they are sometimes few and far between, but they are worth it.
He doesn’t associate them with a lack of care, because he knows the mud will not harm him. At worst it’ll nudge an arm here or a leg there, or it’ll get into his ear a little bit and tickle and feel funny for a few moments until he gets used to that sensation, too. But it really isn’t out to get him. It doesn’t have a motive at all, it just is, and that’s the lesson he wants to learn from the mud, how to just be mud.
He feels free right now. Aimless, but good. Like thinking and being in the mud are all he really needs.
He doesn’t want this to be a task. He wants this to be the definition of passivity. He wants this to relax him. He doesn’t want to force himself to be overtaken by the mud, doesn’t want to swim in it if he doesn’t feel like swimming in it. Discomfort is not the goal. There is no ultimate goal, other than letting himself go ragdoll in the mud.
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