The value of a simple wreck

I woke up, showered, went downstairs to begin my work day, and then heard some form of the end of the world. There is major construction happening four doors away from my home all summer, but this was different and closer. I could hear banging in the front of my house, all the way from somewhere in the back. And it didn’t sound like street construction.

So I went outside to investigate, because clearly something unusual was happening. I encountered four men with 5’ sledgehammers surrounding a monster truck tire that was piled high with indistinguishable metal objects, and they were just wailing on it. All of it. And they were happy. I said “oh, wow, you’re destroying stuff!” and they all stopped and looked at me, terrified that they were upsetting the neighbor. “I could hear that in the front of my house!,” I said, joyfully. “Nicely done!” They softened, smiled, waved. They’ve been destroying stuff all day since.

In our current state of apocalypse, there is tremendous spiritual & therapeutic value to just absolutely wrecking shit. I went to a yoga class the other week where the instructor told everyone to scream as loudly as possible, and since yoga studios aren’t exactly planned with acoustics in mind, the results were deafening, bloodcurdling, and irrepressibly alive. You’re reading text from someone who threw a Divvy in the lake last year and loved it.

Obviously, all of this is happening in safe-enough containers. You need to be careful around sledgehammers or fire. You need to be mindful of others’ boundaries when screaming. But once you set the container, go for it, yo. Just become a feral animal for once. Get out the crowbar from your garage that you used precisely once and turn some junk into dust. Imagine you’re going at late capitalism, patriarchy, anything that’s oppressed you, a universe that’s bent on destroying us.