DISBELIEF
by Ana Karina Luna
Everyone has a moment in their life when they believe in almost nothing. Do they? Everyone? If so, it’s my turn. I’m at that moment, which I never thought would come to me. I say never because I used to believe in everything — everything or many, many things — and there were so many options to believe that I never thought they could expire like that, out of nowhere.
(Okay, I know it wasn’t out of nowhere, it was a 2-year thing — but, see, a person spends 48 years believing in everything and, suddenly, starts believing in nothing... it is as if the heart changed sides or turned backwards in the chest).
Would believing have meant keep going? Look, if the poet doesn’t believe in absolutely everything, the golden carriage won’t move. However, it wasn’t always that I got it that I am of the imagination. (Wait, let me say it again because I wasted a lot of time not saying it: I Am of the Imagination). Those who are of the imagination have to believe in everything, otherwise they lose a lot. You miss out on a lot of little things. And those who don’t believe in anything can’t see their imagination.
This my situation right now. I’m a poet and I don’t believe in anything. What will happen to me?
For now, all I repeat to myself is: but I’ve always believed in everything. Always, always, always. No chance of disbelieving. (So, gee, how did that happen?) Disbelieving would be like falling to the center of the earth, like Jules Verne (fell). (Did he fall? I don’t know yet). I’ve never read this book, “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, it’s on my Kindle, for me to read, if I’m not mistaken. (I collect books and put them on my Kindle, one day I’ll read them, because if I don’t do that, I’ll forget about them later and never get to them.) And here I am, citing books without having read them. Do you see why I don’t believe in anything anymore? (And I’m not even on Instagram, I’m on my own Blog.)
Well, right now, I’m writing this here and I’m already starting to not believe any of this. (How do I know that all of this is true? That it’s not just my own nonsense? That it’s not marketing?) Even in words, my gosh, even in words I don’t believe anymore. How is that possible?
I blame Instagram.
It was about four months ago that this broke out. I looked at Instagram and didn’t believe in anything. Worse: I believe that I had been looking at the little squares on Instagram and shaking my head for many months, and I hadn’t realized it. I hadn’t realized what was already happening around my heart: a possible death of the imagination. Oh my god, I’m even afraid to think about it. That is, I lied to myself that I believed in Instagram, and I also didn’t believe that I didn’t believe. I believe that’s how it happened. You know, it comes to me now that I have a habit of writing it InsCREgram. Always unintentionally, but, deep down, Freud must explain it. EVERY time I write it like that I have to go back, delete, and then continue from that. Yeah, maybe it wasn’t InsCREgram that insCREwed everything up, but it was on it that I realized that everything was insCREwed up.
But... how did that happen? Yeah, I think I was in denial. I kept scrolling and scrolling on my phone screen to see if anything would appear that would confirm one or another belief inside me, confirm a very positive and Pollyannaish affirmation inside me, but my glasses, my rose-colored glasses, were already cracked. Until... I think it was in March of this year... I fell off Instagram. I fell to the ground. Like Jules Verne fell into the center of the earth (it’s not wrong to say that, but I’ve already said that I haven’t read the book yet; before reading it, you know, it’s normal to have these imaginations about what’s going to happen in the book, but then nothing like that happens, but don’t take away from me at least this possibility of allowing myself to imagine any nonsense that doesn’t live up to Jules Verne).
So, it was in March: it’s a lie, it’s a lie, I repeated, a bit irritated, a bit desperate (but I hid it), a bit “didn’t I tell you?”
Well, this one who said “didn’t I tell you?” was the one who knew it was all a lie, but I didn’t want it to be a lie. Instagram, Facebook, the internet. Etc.
I already knew marketing was a lie; I’ve known it for a long time; oh, every day I vomit a little on it, almost every day. On marketing. Like a fetish. Or a punishment, for having had to work as... ok, no, I won’t say anything further so as not to push my luck against the wall. Never mind. In a text about disbelief, lies and marketing, perhaps omitting something so as not to fall into hypocrisy is the most honorable of things.
It turns out that I learned that marketing was a lie in the US. I’ll only say this much. (If my brother were here, he would correct me: don’t say marketing, say advertising.) ‘Ads’ is a lie too. Yes, yes, I know the etymology of the word. Do you think I didn’t try to save marketing anyway? Well, I used to work there. I’ve even thought: marketing is not a lie. I had to think like that in order to produce. I know that marketing means “taking to the market”, right? Well, well... to my despair, I even found out I got an allergy to a defenseless street market... this process of disbelief is horrible, horrible.
I never thought I would go through this. To disbelieve things.
In this process, I also saw other strange things, I mean, curious things: while I believed in all this craziness, I remember it well, at the same time I was doing the opposite: I didn’t believe in myself much. Well, I am even too light as I say this. I believed in basically nothing about myself. I thought those great things outside of me were wonderful. Marketing, the internet, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. Gods. And I, the subject. Will I ever get there? Where? I don’t know... I don’t know where I thought I would get with these “gods”. Let me clarify one thing: isn’t there something that they, the “social gods”, make us believe is going to happen? That something big or good is going to happen? They don’t exactly say directly, “Hey, I’m going to take you to the Moon, designer babe.” Or to Venus. Well, Elon-The-Fool-Musk mentioned Mars. But anyway, isn’t there always something between the lines, as if there were a promise?
A huge realization has dawned on me now! I’ve had my share of encounters with crazy narcissists and I know a few things, and didn’t I just about have déjà-vu right now?
(The irony: at this very moment of disbelief, a truth comes to me. Oh! I’m going to make up a saying, since it’s all made up anyway — “disbelieve to believe”. Really? It sounds biblical. Yeap, I have faith... Faith? Oh! How peaceful it would be.)
So, they, the narcissists, do the same thing: they don’t tell you exactly, directly, what they’re going to give you, or what they’re going to provide you, but they suggest a series of promises. Like this: let’s say you’re in a romantic relationship with them — then, the narcissist doesn’t say “I love you” or “I want to be with you,” they say “we have a long way to go.” Then you think, in your (my, our) infinite neediness and belief in the best, “he/she didn’t say ‘I love you,’ but he/she will say it because he/she has already said he/she will be with me for a long time.”
Yes?
Let’s go slow. Look at this literary construction: they suggest promises. Got it? It’s embarrassing to even explain what suggesting a promise is or could be.
Okay, now I think that Inscregram, especially it, suggests a looooot of promises. Tell me, does it suggest or not? Tell me if you don’t always get the impression that with the next swipe of your fingers something... really... cool... will happen. Yes? But it doesn’t; then, maybe, on the next one. Not yet; then, on the next one. And the next one. Further ahead, in the next one, in the next one, in the next, in the next, the next, the-next the-next the-next-the next-next-next-go-go-go-go-come-come-come.
Oh how I would love to hear at least a word from Freud about Inscregram. What would he say? Codependency? How I wish for a lecture from Freud about Insta.
So, I blame Inscregram for my beliefs’ fall. But I know very well that, deep down, it wasn’t it because Inscregram is nothing. Inscregram is only the cracked rose-colored glasses. Through which I used to see, but suddenly I saw the crack, and I saw several — I think I saw them all. And with it I saw all the suggestions of promises that were never fulfilled, one after the other, ad nauseam ad infinitum.
Therefore, here’s my situation. It’s 2024, and I’m this way, I don’t believe in anything: in networks, in ads, in speeches, in most books, in the little squares on Inscregram, I can’t even believe the scrolling of my finger, and look, that part is real — but it hasn’t seemed like it, and I’ve been starting to doubt that it really happens: is it us who roll it, or does the thing roll itself? I don’t believe in workshops, packages, classes and masterclasses, courses, 3-day free trials, 7-day free trials, bio links, controversy just to gather comments (“Let’s talk about something I don’t believe in?” “Yessss, because I love talking about nothing!”), or in the launches (do you know what a launch is on Inscregram?), or in the songs that play in the squares, or comments, or in leaving or reading comments, I don’t believe when they tell me that Facebook doesn’t exist anymore or when they say it still does. I don’t believe in hashtags, do they work? Paid traffic? I’ve tried them, you have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to use them, my head wanted to turn backwards. Congratulations to the geniuses who can use them. But I also don’t believe in Inscregram geniuses, or marketing geniuses. (How many synonyms can we come up with for ‘jerking around’?) Selling, messing around, giving suggestions, promising advice that doesn’t even work in the life of the seller. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. My belief system flipped.
And here’s the other end of this polarity: can you believe that I’ve never believed in myself so much? Yes, this person who sleeps with me in bed. In what she thinks, in what she knows, in what she sees, in her spirituality — and in Art with a capital A. There are, yes, a few situations where I feel a clear, lucid air: when I meditate, when I listen to crystal bowls, in front of the sea, looking into a few eyes, in certain hugs, when I feel the wind, hear birds, notice the sunlight on my window where I drink coffee every blessed morning on this planet where a weed grows and that I suddenly realized. But I don’t know if I really believe in the black, unsweetened coffee that I drink (as Brazil exports the best ones). It’s dresses in marketing, it tells lies on the packaging. But I believe in the food that I cook, for the most part; I believe in the earth from which it is taken and that it comes pure from Gaia. Not jerked around. It doesn’t come inscrewed up.
Finally, now I believe in what I see: I believe in lies. I explain: I do not believe in the content that gives form to lies. I finally believe in the act itself. And it does act, among us. That lies really exist and are absolutely conspicuous as they hide in plain daylight light, hanging on bodies, clothes, makeup, ties, hair, heels, hanging in houses, objects, cars — even where they shouldn’t: in acts, gestures, laughter, in “not knowing” and in good intentions; even in the hands, the beautiful hands, they try to drip the lie from themselves, they shake to see if it falls to the bottom of the earth to be washed by the dark forces of the depths of the earth, the only forces that could bring down the lie: the forces of instinct in the fire of Gaia. And, finally, even with the word itself, the divine word is used and abused by lies — the words... the easiest to be stained, so easy — how quick it is to tell a lie, to invert a truth — and this discovery was a pain and it flipped my beliefs.
The worst part is that I discovered that I had seen this all along, since I was little — there was a third eye that saw everything and perceived everything, even beyond what it could handle — and the pain of seeing the mess was so great that I didn’t want to believe in the lie. In its existence. Yes, analyze me: “oh, she couldn’t handle the frustration of seeing the real.” Absolutely! Totally! That’s how I ended up believing that the lie was the truth, so it would hurt less. (That I was the one who wasn’t seeing it right, and in saying: “don’t believe what you SEE, girl!”, I damaged myself.) And soon after that, I retreated to a world of imagination, at least to live in a kingdom that seemed the same as the lie — but that it wasn’t at all. There I gave the lie a better name — if I’m going to live in a lie, I prefer the world of imagination — and I went on to live my life, and let the “truth” reign outside, also with a good name. All solved. That’s how I managed to survive to where I am today. I managed to survive sustained by the “lie” of books, of the word that tell, of history and memory, of some colors and lines and shapes that I had in my head. I convinced myself that I was the one who wasn’t seeing things correctly. That one day everything would align, make sense, and that it would even be even more beautiful.
But... that’s not what happened. It didn’t get any more beautiful.
The other day a phrase came to me: “instinct is so gagged that it can do nothing [against lies]”. Instinct, the great incorruptible, has been so dishonored. I still believe in it... I can’t stop believing because it doesn’t leave me, day and night, instinct keeps a vigil under my foot, on each side of my hips, at the top of my spine it sits like a king, it also warms something in my throat, and never suggests my tongue: it just gives me the word straightaway without any prior promises... and every day it lets me swallow delicious things.
But what can instinct do, muzzled by minds thinking and talking non-stop and not-knowing? Now, how I see it, and how it hurts. Minds and their lies. Isn’t it so disappointing?
And at this exact moment when I see this, AI appears. The factory of invention. It seems, to me, to be the apex of the factory of inverting, of inversion, which began at the beginning of the emergence of the mind. So, AI = are you or are you not? Were you or were you not? Will you or will you not? (Who knows, maybe it really will be AI that, because it is a lie, now, in truth, will save us: oh it will become clear, now it will become clear!?)
That’s right, my head... you who are made of imagination and fear, now in all of my disbelief, in this new non-believer-self that I am, you pacify me, my head, telling me that there is still a place of fire, that boils to remain translucid, and that I believe it is in the center of this truly earth that has been watching us for millennia. From the middle of the fire, the earth looks at us with an eye of instinct, which is the only place where lies do not reach — in the gaze — at the entrance to the soul — from there, it observes us, the center of the earth observes us, and sees us as we are, probably with utter complete compassion — which I do not have since I am a deceived one and a disbeliever. From the middle of the fire at the center of the earth, I believe the earth sees us in our own billions of layers of invention and lies. What a shame to be seen like this by the earth, but that is what we are now, and what pain, what sadness, how I want to cry for we have inverted even imagination, this sacred place, which we have used to invent... not good dreams, not functioning utopias, not paradises, but... lies. Small, medium and large — regardless of their size, always inscrewed up.
What would have Jules Verne known? What would have he seen when he looked back into the earth’s eye of instinct, right there in the center of the earth?
...
(To write this, I had to believe in writing — for that, thank you, beautiful. I also thank Inscregram for exaggerating so much that I could see.)
Maceió, June 26th 2024.
Woman-Wine. Collage. May/24