It's not boring to be here

Certain poetry evokes the awe-inspiring expansiveness of what life is.

This is one of my favs.

Audio by Steven Roggenbuck
Video edited by Haley Farrell

Transcript:

We are animals on a rock in space. Sometimes we forget that. Because we have jobs, school, political systems, debt, law, clothes, television stations, but most people on earth seem kind of bored or kind of annoyed about life.

If you're ever on a subway train or a bus, look at all the people, nobody is shocked about being an animal in space. People get so used to the fact that being a human being. Sometimes I want to shake people and say, “Are you paying attention to what is going on?”.

It's raining, water is falling from the sky, and I can sit on a computer and hit a few keys and radically change how somebody feels on the other side of the world. And I mean, we have the sunrise. And I mean, we have the pink light on the bottom of the clouds during a sunrise, and there used to be dinosaurs on our planet. Probably in the place you are now.

So like something goes bad — “Oh, my dog shitted in my bed! My dog shit in my bed. I really hate this, ugh fuck”. My dog like hella pooped on my bed. Okay, okay, that's true. That's true, I got to deal with that but also, we are floating through space on a cosmic orb. And, nobody knows why we're here. But you know what, also I'm going to take this moment to remember fruit and sex exists.

I like being around people who are dancing, because it seems like the closest that people usually come to directly celebrating the fact that they're alive. Well, what I really want is that moment when somebody brings it up. When somebody refuses to let pointless filler and formalities use up our time with each other. I just want somebody to say, “Hey, right now is our life. And I'm grateful that this is the one I get. I'm grateful that you are in it. I'm grateful that we get this moment together.” I just want to say that and sometimes I'm too nervous to say it.

But when I'm looking for it I can find those moments all the time, the first drink of the seltzer water right after I opened it, eating a whole watermelon with my friend, reading Walt Whitman out aloud for hours, vegan pizza, and I liked the fall—everything about the fall. I like Halloween. My dad offering to make popcorn when my friends come over, trying to make my brothers laugh during dinner at my grandma's house, hugging my mom for 15 minutes at a time and even when it means being fully sad—crying alone in my apartment after leaving my girlfriend of six years, crying alone on a train after touring for nine months. I love the internet so much but sometimes I have a nightmare where my eyes are stuck on a screen and I can't look up from it, like I'm not allowed to see anything else in the world anymore. I just have the screen now. My life gets froze on that. And I'm worried sometimes I'm doing this to myself. Sometimes I need to just close my computer when I remember and go hug somebody in the room or jump up and down and run laps outside or I just stop and try not to think anything and just be in the place that I am.

I don't want to be in a haze. I don't want to coast through any of that. I don't want to regret later that I didn't pay attention now. I don't want to sit through it like I'm waiting for something better.

Napping with the person I love on a nine hour bus route, Christmas lights, and my hometown radio station, hailstorms. Sometimes I like love the cold air. Boston in the snow, Chicago in the snow. New York City, sharing a sofa with three friends trading off who chooses the music.

Waking up early only ‘cause I have to but loving how it feels. Driving the tractor at dawn in a bean field only because I had to but loving how it feels.

And the moon. Sometimes you can forget about the moon but then one day when you're walking out of the building, there it is in the sky and you say “wow, waxing gibbous already? That's fucked up”. And it kind of reminds you that you are on a rock in space too. And when you look at the stars or when you image search for pictures of galaxies to photoshop cats on them, that's something you're part of too. This is our family photo album.

We are animals on a rock in space. We are part of this gigantic, confusing, brutal and awe-inspiring world and it's not boring to be here.

And how can it ever be boring at all?