Nada, Nada, Nada

The path to truth runs through nothing.

The cool kids are back in town and throwing an insane party. By “cool,” don’t let Ray-Bans, Members Only jackets, pom-poms, and chewing gum snaps get in the way of the real cool. You know, the Rebels, the Defiants, the ones smoking out back with one hand in the pocket of worn, upturned-collar camouflage Army surplus coats, with dark eyes and downturned, disaffected mouths. The cool kids who wax poetic about those writers and art house auteurs who made films.

Ah, the cool guys who think they’re rocking the movement against the Man-child. Rage against the Establishment, except someone forgot to send a note that you’re the Establishment; a rebel ex-act-ly like one million of your brothers-in-arms rebels.

Lovely to think about but not at all hard because you see the group-think swamp. They all wade in, neck deep, and take pride in being standalone! Thumb in the nose of the mainstream! Scoff ironically at the Follower Counts and popularity contests, all while clinging to their idols like little life rafts that they believe they’ve discovered after some self-inflicted junior high school struggle session — stumbling upon Dylan and Cave and Houellebecq and David Foster Wallace. Finding these names through osmosis of the angst pipeline and suddenly you’re James Dean, face contorted, but this time around with a cause.

But then, the artists put on their makeup and fancy clothes (but remember, don’t look like you’re trying too hard!). They do it for each other. Just like the petty, perpetually 28-year-old young party girls who spin their hair into towering updos with a Newport and fawning faux praise hanging off their lips. These are the cool kids, talking about their coolness, their nonconforming ways, all in the same way. They all have the same cookie-cutter complaints and grievances about how unfair the whole business is, but never loud enough for anyone to call them out on it. We must keep the door of opportunism open, after all! They're rebellious enough to keep up that sorry-boy follower count and spicy enough to catch that dab-on-the-forehead bead of sweat, but never too far! Never too much uncompromising truth because there are bills to pay and fellowships to receive and hands to clap for a turn in the spotlight — the real heat! Make ‘em sweat! Angry boys with their MFAs, college chairs, teaching fellowships, grants, fame, followers, podcasts, and parties with literary types that exist only to talk in ascending circles about enlightening novels and translations and trouble (only the pre-approved kind).

But the thing is, if you’re coveting your hoarded maverick status, if you hold yourself out as the mainstream alternative, king dissenter, freethinker, and at the same time toot the horn of your pied-piper popularity, you aren’t the liberated, nonconformist defiant rebel you think you are. The ones doing this — who live off the praise of the trendy new outlets, the alternative Vibe Publications (lit pubs, tut-tut!), are indistinguishable from the machine they gnash their teeth about. “I was criticized for saying this thing, but I never really risked losing anything, so I will wear my crown of thorns” is a mighty big ego boost for the tender-footed boys who might be men but for the lack of living — but it’s not their fault; it’s never their fault!

Unsurprising. (This is, after all, the oldest profession, only with a slightly different clientele.)

These are not the heroes anyone is searching for. They are not even the heroes they imagine. This is the thin-skinned caution of sensitive literary types — or culture warriors, politicians, media personalities, and influencers (the ultimate grift) — who take to puffing up their carefully curated self-importance and courageous insolence because they don’t understand what it means to be nada.

That is liberation. That is the rebellion. That is where the mainstream passes away because there are no “cool” pretensions on which to feed. Goodbye to all that.

I’ve spent over 40 years chasing the ghost of something I will never be. I wished to be special to something and someone. It is the hopeless drift of the dreamer to wake up and find you are special to someone. Everything else falls away for this singular wish that becomes a need and the obsession of survival. To be someone’s someone. And the longer time passes when that is not true, the more tortuous the internal void. It grows, it metastasizes. It overtakes your eyes until that is all you can see: the points every day where this is not so, how I’ve failed at being the daughter I want to be, the sister, the wife, the mother. The writer, the friend, the colleague. Failures turn your heels and guide you every step, so your path isn’t your own but a never-ending chase of recognition, popularity, affirmation, and validation — as if these temporal, shallow appetites can offer anything fulfilling. But in a cotton-candy world, none of that matters.

The carnival ride isn’t about entertainment and exchanging shiny tokens for a 30-second ride around the rickety wheel. But each successive ride comes with a higher price. The ones who control the ride demand more tokens for more thrills, and the people demand more thrills and more tokens and more screams and laughter and thrills and tokens, and the rickety wheel goes around and around. And no one gets off.

Goodbye to all that.

It’s a fruitless pursuit. To be published by the New York Times or a story in The New Yorker. Win some prize that, just a moment before, people were dismissing as put together by pointless, pointy-headed committees. Or maybe be in the emerging, trendy places like The Free Press and County Highway; fawned over as the next best young thing, be on television, interviewed, followed on X, have a podcast, and go viral. You are the shiny thing. Here today, forgotten tonight. Token please!

I used to belong to a place that stands out as one of friendly conversation and free exchange of ideas. However, a few contributors believe they run it and don’t appreciate my honesty even as they claim to honor it. Honesty only goes so far when egos emerge. I mistakenly believed I had friends there; I didn’t matter to anyone, and time waits for no man, especially the insignificant, so I became the joke, “I don’t think of you at all!”

But in 2024, friendship is transactional. No one follows up when your life is threatened. No one offers an understanding eye or word of kindness when doing so has no external benefit. Those are things reserved for the special. I have no place among them.

The rickety wheel keeps turning. And I’m no one special to anyone. I wished so deeply to be special to someone that I forgot I was not.

But I received wise advice and I must return to it: My place is not having a place.

I don’t belong…anywhere; I accept the rolling stone. Bishop Robert Barron speaks plainly about the revelation that Bob Dylan’s prevailing song isn’t of scorn or bitterness but liberation. He is right.

How does it feel

How does it feel

To be on your own

With no direction home

Like a complete unknown

Like a rolling stone?

There must come a time when I find peace in the chaos. I cannot survive being enslaved to something I will never find.

There is no parental approval. There is no friend to exchange the silence. No professional work finds me at the top of the ladder. There aren’t throngs of people waiting for my words. But it also means I don’t have to chase them or entertain them, demand their tokens, or ride the rickety wheel. It probably means most of you will read this (if you’ve made it this far — train wrecks do have their morbid appeal, hurrah!) and shake your head in wonder at the wild-eyed ramblings of a silly-headed girl. So be it. Maybe one person will catch a shimmer in a word, and it will reflect something deep in their soul. I hope so. I stand apart from this — alone — and with nothing. With nothing is the only way to see where I am going in the search for truth. With nothing is the only way to refill my soul with goodness. With nothing is the only way to understand what is beautiful.

St. John of the Cross says nada, nada, nada, it’s nothing, nothing, nothing…I got nothing of wealth and pleasure and power and honor. Spiritual liberation is where one finds the heart of the rebel, the dissident, the nonconformist — unencumbered by distractions, emptied of worldly attachments, ego, and desires. When freed from our expectations, we are offered internal transcendence and communion with a deeper understanding of our place or the search for it.

In the final lines of his poem “The Dark Night of the Soul” St. John of the Cross writes,

I continued in oblivion lost,

My head was resting on my love;

Lost to all things and myself,

And, amid the lilies forgotten,

Threw all my cares away.

I’m burning the bridge even before I’ve completely crossed. Well, goodbye to all that.

When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.

Sincerely, Jenna

P.S. Next is Hemingway, the quiet necessity of men, and more nada.

Thank you for sticking with me.