It was June in Berlin. We were living in a friend’s penthouse, making ambient music and barely working. Our weekends consisted of naked parties and eating too much sashimi. Jonah was crashing in Prenzlauer Berg the same week I was. He had a kind face, unusual features that were easy to memorize. His blue eyes sort of rolled out at the sides. It was endearing in the way a pug is cute in its strangeness. Jonah had a little black goatee under his ever present smile and shoulder length hair done up in braids. He had a polished British accent that reminded me of David Attenborough.
He was easy to live with. Whenever he cooked, he always made enough for everybody. When someone shared a story, he listened intently and asked meaningful questions, like a conduit for wisdom. He was a nice guy without trying, his benevolence was effortless. Each time he touched my shoulder and gave me a hug, I felt softer inside.
On a Tuesday night, we went to a friend’s experimental music show. The industrial warehouse looked like an opium den, the floor was covered in mattresses and meditation pillows, the walls were draped with white canopied sheets like the wings of a dove. The lights were red and smoldering, and a Japanese woman walked around doing an essential oil ritual so the space smelled like the wet earth. A smoke machine purred and gave the room an air of mystery, like walking through a thick fog into nowhere.
Jonah and I stood at the back of the room and spoke. I asked him about his life. Before Berlin, he was in a Kali Temple tending to elephants after a mental breakdown. For six years he was an ordained devotee and lived in a shed in the forest of Wales.
For those six years he partook brahmacharya, also known as sexual abstinence. These were his mid-twenties, the years when testosterone was raging through his body and the pull of biology asked him to plant as many seeds as possible. He abstained, and focused on meditation. He had one slip up, since everything becomes more erotic when prohibited.
Jonah had a crush on another devotee. One morning, they were giving fruit to the deities as an offering. He took one of the offerings, a banana, and fucked her with this organic dildo. They ate the banana together afterward, the peel slippery and wet with her desire.
After leaving the temple and monastic life, Jonah met his love, his partner in the truest sense. Before coming to Berlin together, they spent twelve days tied to each other in the woods near Glastonbury. For the entirety of twelve days they were in silence and bondage naked. A five foot rope connected them both at the waist. All eating, walking, shitting, and dancing was done butt naked in tied togetherness.
His lover reminded me of performance artist Marina Abramovich. She was highly intellectual and good at pushing boundaries, she had the kind of intensity that scares most people, but excited some. She hand poked the name of their future children on Jonah’s chest in the shape of a circle. She did durational art performances that lasted three days. Jonah and his beloved were in the process of founding an artist collective in Berlin and did sex work on the side for extra cash.
As I listened to his stories, I felt a strange mix of emotions, one being fascination and the other was subtle, almost undetectable but the longer Jonah spoke, the more the feeling revealed itself. It was fear.
I was afraid; not of him, but of myself. Was I boring? Was I average? Was I one of those people with an inflated ego that are in fact, quite mediocre?
For the past eight years I had been traveling the world alone. I had stayed in temples, but not even for six weeks. I had dabbled in sex work, but not full service. I had many lovers, but none I considered growing a family with or being tied to for twelve days.
My life felt sparse and single threaded compared to the fullness of Jonah’s life. But did I want a life of that intensity?
Jonah had seemed to harness his energy and run with it. Though it was unconventional in its nature, it functioned. He had constructed a beautiful life; a loving partner, good health, and work he derived meaning from. Even the sex work gave him a more complete understanding of human nature and himself.
The night after my talk with Jonah, I went for Italian food with a friend. We chatted over a plate of steaming Bolognese. “Do you think I’m boring?” I asked after a few bites. She wiped her lips, “What are you talking about?”
I told her about Jonah and how I felt inspired and simultaneously threatened by him. Though I was still traveling, my life was somehow more tame. My days were composed of writing in cafes, conversating with strangers, occasionally fucking an old lover. I was stable and slow, the frenzied activity of my mid-twenties was wearing off.
As all good friends do, she re-assured me. “Roxanne, you are not boring, you are learning stability. Adventure all the time creates madness. Continual intensity doesn’t allow time to process life. You are a writer, allow yourself to live it all out then go into your boring little hermit hole and make something from it.”
She was right. The slow gurgle of mundanity seemed to benefit my persona. I am now chewing on the rind of the previous years and examining the taste. Yes, I was more interesting when I had the vigor Jonah possesses, but I seem to be more balanced now. Less messy and confused.
I see two clear methods for living. I can zoom in, and experience everything as if I’m the experience. I can allow my desires and human pulls to lead the show. Zooming in is all feeling and madness and highs and lows. It’s consuming.
I can zoom out, and watch everything unfold with neutrality. I can say no to most experiences, because I see their futility. I can partake in less and witness more. It’s detachment.
So for now, I must accept that this is a phase of un-wilding and doing less. Jonah can be interesting in his involvement in life’s edges, and I can be semi-interesting in my era of introspection. There are tradeoffs in life. I can do anything but I can’t do everything.
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