Welcome to Jinjin Fear with Zizi. A space for confusion and interruption. A space where no one is too scared to change their mind, or seem a fool, or be angry. Think of your ideas as butterflies, light, metamorphosing, ugly, beautiful, moving, and quick to die.
She comes from a far away place. A place where fear is used for survival. Free from phobias, they form friendships, they have sex, they eat street food and do not spend their money on insurance. They do not make useless expensive things, say like bombs. In the absence of a bomb industry, they have no use for a war. In the absence of a war, there is no need to make an enemy. They are not afraid of their neighbors or what their waters may deliver to their shores. Even if their hairstyle is different. They welcome hairstyle difference. And privacy.
They have no illusions around immortality or being good. They are not afraid to die, and are not afraid to live. Curiosity is stronger than dread. The private and public intertwine. Jealousy has very little place. There is no absolute father. Narcissism cannot rule.
They are survivors of the worst nightmares. They have known hunger, they have known cold, they have known loneliness, the have known pain. They accept nature as a force. They accept imagination. They accept sexual drives. They accept love. They accept pleasure. Cosmically wandering. Interspecies-ically communicating. They seek adventure. Deep into the forests, tasting new fruit, being serious, being silly.
Fear is a very useful tool to run away from the hungry tiger. Fear herself can be the killer beast feeding on fear growing into epic phobic.
Normalizing phobia calling it fear. Making the extreme normal and the irrational rational. The death of joie de vivre. Are you too scared to live.
She has always been afraid. She will always have fear.
She is terror.
she wakes up with a jolt of panic, again. She is sleepy but too afraid to go back to sleep, a slumber of repeating loops of anxiety, halfway into a dream of her mother dying. She must get up, her feet solid steel at the end of the bed, her body refusing to engage in the horrors of the day to come. Promised failures. Parents aging. Estrangement. Pain.
Her homeland burning. Her homeland disappearing. Bodies facing death here and there, seeking life, met with hate.
Her language muddled, living between worlds, neither here nor there, afraid of being erased. Rootless. Roots gone too deep. Unrecognized, represented, misrepresented. Afraid of not fitting in. what an exotic name. stomach turning. Where do you come from? Boredom.
Boredom—now that is really scary.
She goes for a calming walk by the beach. Everywhere she looks, there is another sign that promises horror: Stop! Danger! Rip waves! Sudden currents! Images of dogs flying off cliffs, bodies meeting their end!
A turning point: She could have said no, she was sick to her stomach with fear, her body rigid, she hated it, she really was too scared to go swim with the turtles. Fucking asshole turtles, who fucking cares? But she was also scared of shame, of being the party killer, she was scared of being recognized as the scared one. She should walk away, go get a beer.
Once down there with her eyes wide open, she was safe.
It makes Zizi’s blood boil pausing sometimes at the selective powers of the mind in front of fear. What is real, what is fabricated, what is postponed and denied and what is mandated.
Statistics used to support an intellectual conclusion that these phobias are legitimate, and indeed ground for action. FDA approved drugs drug monsters thrive on normalised sicknesses, fabricated, packaged, advertised, sold! Numbers speak to the mind bullshit, this is no more rational than it is rational to absolutely trust your mind. Hysterically following the phobia du jour.
We have become our own worst enemies.
Afraid of our own bodies, suffocating them, taming them, cleansing them, controlling them, imprisoning them, hating them, domesticating the wild in them. A reflection of our relationship to the natural, natural is a style, in today, passé mañana. A projection in how we are approach the natural. The wild. The savage. Destructive. Self destructive. That is real horror.
The horror of dropping out of the human race, point A is point Z and repeat, a tightrope, a small slip leads immediately to the abyss. The horror of being left out, weird, off track, a drop out, a loser, among the scummy leftovers of the human race. The place where terrifying creatures roam the lost-land-nesses of anarchy, the unemployed, underemployed, artists, philosophizers, unnecessary children, obsolete elderly, hippies, unicorns, and those with body hair where they should not have it–Radicalised. In truth they are scary, because those are the insane that are sane and know that the sane are indeed the insane.
Hahahahhaaaaaa. The horrors normalised. No time to pause, must work hard, get health insurance and build up for a pension. Millions of lives dominated. And not in the fun way. This is real horror.
Stepping over living bodies like there were nothings, sharing pictures of dead bodies like they were pudding, plugging into isolation in metal boxes worming underground, ticking away day after day in windowless rooms without a view, postponing love to the weekend, that is real horror.
The real horror is in being the bricks of a wall. The wall is already here. The real horror is in the fear of the other. The real horror is in the surrender. The horror in not knowing how to be angry anymore. Forfeiting other instincts so one instinct can grow and superpower us all into submission.
Indeed, what is the fear fad of the day? Som fears seem timeless. Others take different shapes to cope with the times. Some are short-lived, convenient.
Give your instinct a chance, it knows when to activate against danger and when you are being made a fool. Sympathetic system activate! Your body knows. Your brain is washed, fried, manipulated. The power is in your heart, in your gut oozing with mucus and so bored with deprivation.
We each have a fear-ceiling. To some comfortable and cozy. So matter of fact almost unseen. But honey, it is paralyzing, a prison. Claustrophobic. Actually phobic of all sorts (start with xenophobic get to fun-o-phobic through live-o-phobic and repeat).
You do not see things entirely different from the rest of humanity. Be more generous and less impatient. Your lucky days will be those that have the sun start awkwardly. Do not expect to pass through life like you had enough fiber. And there will be a fair share of good and evil, have you ever had earl grey tea with milk? The secret is a secret inside a secret and it can only be truly obtained if you do nothing and everything. And try if you have any love for whales not to freeze. Creepy clowns. The large guns in small hands make true fear. The hyper mall of fear for all. How much does fear cost you? terror.
Surrender to Zizi tonight and you shall be free.
San Francisco, the lab, 2016786
