Dear Readers,

Its been a while since I have talked about the brokenness of the world, of how horribly wrong things really are, and how we forcefully drag ourselves through half of our existence, facing the perennial river of consciousness, rising and falling back again to the depth of our existential abyss. Well, this year was horrible enough to live through, let alone read and tell stories of horrors from the past. Many posts were scheduled for publication this year at Berkana that I couldn’t bring myself to finish. I started working on them, worked halfway through, abandoned them, moved on, and then returned to them because I felt guilty for not finishing them, resumed working on them, and then abandoned them again. I know that sounds inconsistent, but that's the messy truth behind most creative processes. I am convinced that these hard-to-finish posts deserve to be in Berkana’s archive of obscurity since they deal with less talked-about cultural shadows. However, I just cannot seem to talk about more grotesque stuff this year. Let's reserve them for 2023.

I am ready to send this over to my memories folder, so let us conclude this year with this post to remind you that - be whoever you want to be and not let the darn world mould you. Do yourself a favor and wear your weirdness on your sleeves like a boss. I can blatantly admit to you that I don't feel embarrassed anymore for being delightfully quirky. Like the fact that despite being a perfectly capable adult, I do not understand how to small-talk about the weather. I have somehow managed to spend all of my adult life without engaging in a single small talk ever. At least not without making it all awkward. I am the kind who would write 5-page essays on how bizarre and enthralling the weather is and how it evokes our fermented admiration for life, but I go blue in the face and release an awkward snorty chuckle when someone starts talking about how abnormally cold the day is. I shall be more insufferable by telling them that weather change is wreaking havoc because humans cannot seem to be ingenious where self-interest is not a motivation. Yeah, not a comfortable place to be in a weather conversation, is it?

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I am aware that my work and consciousness are not for people who would think - “Woah intense stuff!” or “Too deep for me!”. I have never been a non-intense, conforming little bird who sings for anybody’s delight and never will I ever be. I am a natural stir-shit-up cuddly mascot with a whole other level of ‘leave the table if you want’ sass tucked within my soft felt pockets. I scavenge through lost and obscure alleys of culture-centric stories to find rare gems and collect them for my gallery. That is who I am. My idea of taking a relaxing soak into sanity is when I go deeper into the observation of the world around me. But maybe I am the anomaly for experiencing my reality deeply, for refusing to small talk, for writing elaborate essays on things that move me to tears. Call me insane, but I refuse to live by norms. Sanity is massively overrated anyway. The older I grow the more I realize that the world is not worth impressing. I am not here neither are you to please anybody who is not bothered to be here when they do not like your reality. You are here to speak your truth irrespective. To prompt incantations of your experiences and blow them onto the invisible wings of time. They will spread inevitably, and without permission from your critics, they will infuse into the neural libraries of collective consciousness. I tell myself to create prolifically and consistently but also to not fight against the world. I try to remind myself that I am part of the same world with all its wonders and horrors that I so vehemently try to change. The voice with its desperate beckon for change within me yields as soon as I realize that I am not a separation but a part of the whole. I also inhabit within me all the possibilities of danger this world is capable of inflicting. Upon realizing this, I allow myself to surrender to the absurdity of the world and its way. I become an observer, and to tell you the truth - it is quite liberating to be so. I am not preaching you to be indifferent, or lose the passion for your experiences and ideologies. In fact, I am telling you to be passionate and revolutionary without letting the ugliness of the world seed a bullet of disdain and mistrust within you. Practice your anger in your work without letting the anxieties destroy your inner peace. I am urging you to heighten your compassion but release all the tension that it creates when you encounter something outrageous, to embrace the duality. To know that you will not know peace in this world without knowing violence but also not letting the knowledge of violence make you miserable. I am learning with my work here at Berkana that if I leave the cultural shadow work unchecked, it will seep in and destroy my capacity to love, encourage, and feel deeply. So I need to do it with detachment simultaneously without losing sensibility and passion.

Have you observed how nature gets shriveled up into its devised shell when winter arrives? Winter is the season of survival. The surface of Earth retires into a white blanket of frozen molecules of nature while lava still blazes within its core ready to gush out on the slightest of tectonic nudges. The wisest of people are the ones who can confront the winter when it arrives in their souls. Humans have lived thousands of years fighting against nature - to protect ourselves and our tribe against nature’s treacherous trials and dangerous unfolding. But what if we grew out of our necessity to fight and survive to propel ourselves into the next stage of thriving? What if we could embody the nature surrounding us, and reflect its qualities to teach us a specific mode of existence that doesn’t involve us fighting but being in sync with what is? While the blazing core is shielded from the chills of the external world, can we use our fear of the cold to teach us how to navigate through the infertile times of our creative lives? I am learning to allow myself to be modeled by the weather, by the moody swings shifting from spring to summer to monsoon to fall to winter, oscillating and yet consistently existing in equilibrium, holding the whole planet in place. I do not want to constantly fight against the world to be alive and find meaning inside formulated limitations of what 'meaning' means to society. I do not want to overstimulate my brain only to cower back on inviting extreme spells of intellectual draught. I want to ease out into the process effortlessly. So I am reminding myself as the year is cusping towards the end, to love enough but with a slight detachment so that I can keep what meaning Berkana could add to this frighting yet beautiful world this year and blow the rest away with kindness.

I implore you to allow yourself to let go, let the cold guide you. Let it sit in every crevice of your skin, shake you awake from the constant ramblings in your head. Let it free you from yourself, from the self-imposed shackles that you have created all year long by telling yourself that you have got to become the version of what they imagine you to be. And please for Merlin’s sake, don’t let it get you down, don’t get psychological pneumonia. Stay warm and awake by holding on to the scepter of compassion. I am allowing the cold to teach me what I am supposed to detach from without anger or denial while still being full of love and gratitude. What will you be holding on to and letting go of this year?

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Stay well and warm!
I will see you after the Holidays!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in advance to all you lovely readers!