JP Raite
PROJECTS ︎︎︎ Writing
Out of My Head and Into the Dirt
(2020)
It’s the year 2020 and the world might really be ending this time, but I can’t be certain of that. I don’t have a job and, truthfully, I don’t want one because there’s a deadly virus spreading rapidly across the globe, killing off tens of thousands each day. The government is trying to make us go back to work and school - c’mon, do it for the Economy! - but I’ve got a couple thousand bucks and some vegetables in the yard, so I think I’ll hold out a little longer.
I’ve been hunkered down for months in a cabin in the woods of Maine, oscillating between manic anxiety and numbing depression. On the up-swings, I resolve to use this time to learn new things and make the most of it. On the down-swings, I stay in my underwear, eat cold pizza, cry in the shower.
So here I am, trying to learn German, teach myself the ukulele, cultivate the best garden that no one will see, and become a “good” writer overnight. I throw myself into these endeavors like it’s the last summer of my life (which, to be fair, has never seemed likelier). At the outset of each productivity burst, I promise I’m going to follow through this time, make myself a schedule, get healthy, and become succussful by sticking to a routine!
Within three or four days it starts to feel like someone is turning up the dial on the earth’s gravity.
Okay, well maybe I’ll just put this weed-whacker down and go practice my instrument…
Man, I just don’t have the energy for this. I guess I’ll go read…
Wow, this book is pretty heavy...Sitting up is overrated...I’m going to lie down for a minute.
So here I am, lying on the ground outside, wishing I’d been incarnated as a tree instead. The summer wind is blowing and the leaves are making that water-rushing-over-rocks sound. I’m thinking it might be enjoyable to be firmly rooted to the ground, stretching up and out, just absorbing sunlight with my hands and collecting nutrients with my feet. I imagine it would be a nice break to be a living thing without a brain. Maybe it’s just the self-awareness that’s bogging me down. A tree knows what to do with itself always: grow as much as possible while the weather is good, batten down the hatches when it gets cold, survive winter, and try again when it’s warm. Seems like the right way to live, but then, they don’t have credit card debt.
I shift my gaze further into the sky and squint defiantly toward the sun. The clouds are hurrying past, saving up their rain for someone further inland, so eventually I’ll have to get up and water the poor plants I summoned into this hot-and-getting-hotter world. I wonder if my wilted lettuce enjoys the moments of reprieve when a chunk of cumulus darts in front of the sun, bringing the temperature down a few degrees. I like to look at the thin edges of some clouds when you can just make out the perfect glowing circle of our star without frying your retinas. Then I slam my eyes shut as the light and heat explode through a break in the haze.
Maybe it’s the permanent bright spots burning behind my eyelids (or maybe it’s the cumulative effect of an increase in cortisol from the chronic stress of living through “unprecedented times”), but I’m suddenly gripped by intense vertigo. The inexorable, perpetual movement of everything pins me to the dirt like the G-forces on a carnival ride. The trees are swaying back and forth in front of a flowing current of clouds. The layers of earth beneath me are flexing atop tectonic plates that are sliding on an ocean of magma that is swirling around a twirling molten core. The typical sensation of looking up into space is gone, and I’m now acutely aware of the planet simultaneously rotating, orbiting, and tilting on its axis. Not only that, but I know the star we’re revolving around is also rotating and orbiting. This means we’re actually doing a sort of corkscrew move through the Milky Way, which is being stirred by at least one supermassive black hole. And who knows what unfathomable galactic drain that’s circling!
My cell phone rings. The screen says, “Potential Spam,” so I silence it. I peel myself up and go inside to make a sandwich.
(2020)
It’s the year 2020 and the world might really be ending this time, but I can’t be certain of that. I don’t have a job and, truthfully, I don’t want one because there’s a deadly virus spreading rapidly across the globe, killing off tens of thousands each day. The government is trying to make us go back to work and school - c’mon, do it for the Economy! - but I’ve got a couple thousand bucks and some vegetables in the yard, so I think I’ll hold out a little longer.
I’ve been hunkered down for months in a cabin in the woods of Maine, oscillating between manic anxiety and numbing depression. On the up-swings, I resolve to use this time to learn new things and make the most of it. On the down-swings, I stay in my underwear, eat cold pizza, cry in the shower.
So here I am, trying to learn German, teach myself the ukulele, cultivate the best garden that no one will see, and become a “good” writer overnight. I throw myself into these endeavors like it’s the last summer of my life (which, to be fair, has never seemed likelier). At the outset of each productivity burst, I promise I’m going to follow through this time, make myself a schedule, get healthy, and become succussful by sticking to a routine!
Within three or four days it starts to feel like someone is turning up the dial on the earth’s gravity.
Okay, well maybe I’ll just put this weed-whacker down and go practice my instrument…
Man, I just don’t have the energy for this. I guess I’ll go read…
Wow, this book is pretty heavy...Sitting up is overrated...I’m going to lie down for a minute.
So here I am, lying on the ground outside, wishing I’d been incarnated as a tree instead. The summer wind is blowing and the leaves are making that water-rushing-over-rocks sound. I’m thinking it might be enjoyable to be firmly rooted to the ground, stretching up and out, just absorbing sunlight with my hands and collecting nutrients with my feet. I imagine it would be a nice break to be a living thing without a brain. Maybe it’s just the self-awareness that’s bogging me down. A tree knows what to do with itself always: grow as much as possible while the weather is good, batten down the hatches when it gets cold, survive winter, and try again when it’s warm. Seems like the right way to live, but then, they don’t have credit card debt.
I shift my gaze further into the sky and squint defiantly toward the sun. The clouds are hurrying past, saving up their rain for someone further inland, so eventually I’ll have to get up and water the poor plants I summoned into this hot-and-getting-hotter world. I wonder if my wilted lettuce enjoys the moments of reprieve when a chunk of cumulus darts in front of the sun, bringing the temperature down a few degrees. I like to look at the thin edges of some clouds when you can just make out the perfect glowing circle of our star without frying your retinas. Then I slam my eyes shut as the light and heat explode through a break in the haze.
Maybe it’s the permanent bright spots burning behind my eyelids (or maybe it’s the cumulative effect of an increase in cortisol from the chronic stress of living through “unprecedented times”), but I’m suddenly gripped by intense vertigo. The inexorable, perpetual movement of everything pins me to the dirt like the G-forces on a carnival ride. The trees are swaying back and forth in front of a flowing current of clouds. The layers of earth beneath me are flexing atop tectonic plates that are sliding on an ocean of magma that is swirling around a twirling molten core. The typical sensation of looking up into space is gone, and I’m now acutely aware of the planet simultaneously rotating, orbiting, and tilting on its axis. Not only that, but I know the star we’re revolving around is also rotating and orbiting. This means we’re actually doing a sort of corkscrew move through the Milky Way, which is being stirred by at least one supermassive black hole. And who knows what unfathomable galactic drain that’s circling!
My cell phone rings. The screen says, “Potential Spam,” so I silence it. I peel myself up and go inside to make a sandwich.
Please Send Word
(2025)
If you’re receiving this message
from some time in the future,
please send word.
Let me know if it all works out
because it’s not looking so great
at the moment...
-
Let Them Play Golf
(2021)
Thousands of years ago,
an ancient people lived in synchrony
with the sun and the moon and the stars.
In a place now called Ohio
they moved the earth into mounds
with their hands and sticks and shells,
a basketful at a time.
They traced the orbits
of their celestial gods,
signalling from below:
“We see you. We know you.”
And now, for just a few thousand dollars a year
you can join the private country club
that hosts an 18-hole golf course
on top of some mounds that survived
the spread of surrounding suburbia.
Come on down and whack a Titleist
off the crest of a sacred formation,
then zip off in your cart past “Big Chief”
on your quest for par four.
And in response to those
who would see this astrological wonder
preserved as a monument for all humanity,
a place to align oneself with earth’s only natural satellite,
the club says,
Sure, just fork over twelve mill
and we’ll tear up some new land,
to cover in sterile, unproductive sod
that guzzles millions of gallons
of water and nitrogen
for our exclusive,
frivolous sport.
See You Tomorrow
(2020)
“See you tomorrow,” we say, without actually knowing if we will or not. We intend to, we plan on it, we hope it’s true. Yet, no one can be certain that tomorrow will come for any of us.
Maybe it would be better to incorporate a common Spanish phrase: ¡Si Dios quiera! which translates to If God wants; or the Arabic Inshallah meaning, God willing.
The Qur’ān teaches, “Never say of something,‘I shall do it tomorrow,’ without adding, ‘if Allah wills.’ And remember your Lord when you forget and say, ‘Perhaps my Lord will guide me to a nearer course to the right than this.’”
In the Bible, James tells the followers of Jesus,“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’”
And for us atheists? If no omnipotent entity is stewarding us down the correct path into the future, on what should we hinge our hope? Perhaps our confidence in reaching tomorrow is simply based on the logical likelihood that we will because we have reliably continued to do so every day thus far.
Perhaps saying “See you tomorrow,” without a caveat, without a maybe belies another kind of faith.
What we really mean is, “I am willing tomorrow to come. I believe I’ll make it there, and you will too.”
I can’t think of anything more beautiful and human than that.
(2025)
If you’re receiving this message
from some time in the future,
please send word.
Let me know if it all works out
because it’s not looking so great
at the moment...
-
Let Them Play Golf
(2021)
Thousands of years ago,
an ancient people lived in synchrony
with the sun and the moon and the stars.
In a place now called Ohio
they moved the earth into mounds
with their hands and sticks and shells,
a basketful at a time.
They traced the orbits
of their celestial gods,
signalling from below:
“We see you. We know you.”
And now, for just a few thousand dollars a year
you can join the private country club
that hosts an 18-hole golf course
on top of some mounds that survived
the spread of surrounding suburbia.
Come on down and whack a Titleist
off the crest of a sacred formation,
then zip off in your cart past “Big Chief”
on your quest for par four.
And in response to those
who would see this astrological wonder
preserved as a monument for all humanity,
a place to align oneself with earth’s only natural satellite,
the club says,
Sure, just fork over twelve mill
and we’ll tear up some new land,
to cover in sterile, unproductive sod
that guzzles millions of gallons
of water and nitrogen
for our exclusive,
frivolous sport.
See You Tomorrow
(2020)
“See you tomorrow,” we say, without actually knowing if we will or not. We intend to, we plan on it, we hope it’s true. Yet, no one can be certain that tomorrow will come for any of us.
Maybe it would be better to incorporate a common Spanish phrase: ¡Si Dios quiera! which translates to If God wants; or the Arabic Inshallah meaning, God willing.
The Qur’ān teaches, “Never say of something,‘I shall do it tomorrow,’ without adding, ‘if Allah wills.’ And remember your Lord when you forget and say, ‘Perhaps my Lord will guide me to a nearer course to the right than this.’”
In the Bible, James tells the followers of Jesus,“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’”
And for us atheists? If no omnipotent entity is stewarding us down the correct path into the future, on what should we hinge our hope? Perhaps our confidence in reaching tomorrow is simply based on the logical likelihood that we will because we have reliably continued to do so every day thus far.
Perhaps saying “See you tomorrow,” without a caveat, without a maybe belies another kind of faith.
What we really mean is, “I am willing tomorrow to come. I believe I’ll make it there, and you will too.”
I can’t think of anything more beautiful and human than that.