“Begin their mutual arising; as they breathed so too grew the trees; so too the sun spoke in exhales of their increscent breaths…”
The Girl floats done-this-my-whole-life-smoothly and shouts across the water at Zero,
“No matter how deep this gets, ya’know, it’s just more of the same. Same. Same.”
From cross legged on the shore, like the tail end of inertia,
Zero jumps.
“Just keep looking,” he jubilates, “only nothing can stay the same for very long.”
Zero and The Girl stretched their methods upon the bank, within the dust encrusted over shoreline.
The wake distending broken upon the mosses; a provocation of eddies.
Zero watched high about the trees when red beaked against the leaves snapping up bugs, crickets the size of chimneys, dipping, driven to beak-dive, the bird plummets to pluck polliwogs and froglets from beyond just the shoreline in perspired pockets of pond water squishing between Zeros toes the brash bird lands, and bends in for the nibbling…
“Hey!” cried Zero, “try bittin’ your own toes! See how it feels!”
Cro nipped a final peck against Zeros knuckles and hopped to toss some lift across his ankles
squawked
and propped himself from shoulder, to head, to shoulder.
Across the rocks The Girl postured the flattened billow of her fist cocked back suspended above her head she yells,
“Do I strike?!”
But slick like a joke she’s back underwater.
All fists flailing and kicking currents now bobbing just chin deep and she yells,
“I got em!”
She spins her inevitably soaking sibilants and spits,
What label has been given to you? I know mine. I know the words; I know the labels; I know the criteria. This is what my PCP calls Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; the thing that this is trying to describe is something I call; Running From Zero. After 3 years of daily Adderall dosages of 10mg/2x daily I found myself no closer to being able to calm down my hyperactivity and control my attention than I was in the first place; the hyperactivity on Adderall only manifested itself in bruxism and a tightening of my muscles and mood; I could focus; I could zero in on some-thing and that would be the focus for me…
But I was just running from a different Zero.
ADHD is a label to describe something that the animal side of me is doing; it’s panicking; it’s wild; it doesn’t know how to behave as a human; it’s just faking it. ADHD describes that sense; the loss of calm; the loss of self; the loss of control.
Running From Zero is my word for it because it’s how it makes sense to me in a senseless world.
My Zero is a calm; it’s also a sphere; the sphere of everything my senses are feeding me; the present rumble of the AC unit mixed with the chirping of cicadas outside; the sense of the chair touching my ass, legs, elbow, back; I can see what I am typing and I feel the keys beneath my fingers and I can smell the Coumarin Pipe Tobacco I use for my vaporizer pen; I can taste that too. This place here; this is my Zero right now. This moment; living in the Now; this is my Zero.
I am not centered on an axis between attention and a deficiency of it; I am not a 2 dimensional zero on a + and – axis of hyperactive and calm; I am a sphere of my senses that collapse into a specific focus; I have many axis on which I may travel; X, Y, Z.
When I leave my Zero I become anxious; I lose my connection to my calm; I feel lost amongst a vast depth of stars and chaos as cosmos; when I find myself in my Zero; I know the world goes on; I know the universe continues to universe; I know that wars are fought; I know that I love; I know that the Hubble Space Telescope should be funded; I know what is happening in the south; I know who my neighbors are.
With ADHD or when Running From Zero; the calm breaks; severely; I carry with me a nervous energy that feels like I’m inside of a Fisher-Price Brilliant Basics Corn Popper.
When I don’t run from Zero I find my calm; I am within a sphere of my immediate senses and the frightening world that I do my best to be a part of dissolves; I am only me as I carry my Zero with me; nothing is frightening here; nothing is a trigger; there is no anxiety; this is where I can love from.
This video shows (better than I could have hoped) the sensation of having ADHD; not allowing ADHD to have me that is; I have it; by the throat and I’m telling it; your name is Zero.
Taking my PCP’s label and, instead, naming it in the way I understand it gives me the control I require; I don’t have a daily medication doing it for me; I have me; in my Zero; doing it for me.
The art is allways a long process; the process itself though; that’s the art. The image at the end; that’s only the result; this video is me; me; fully enveloped by Zero; fully still in Zero; fully calm in Zero; knowing that if I run from it – it runs with me – so I keep it.
This video itself is one of my Zeroes; all of my poems, each are a Zero; my love; my fiancé; you and I make my favorite Zero.
Welcome to my Zero; I am in love with being where it is calm.
-...Running From Zero...+ 