BRONZE FROG

Category: Understanding the World

  • Liturgy of the Sink Demon

    Liturgy of the Sink Demon

    My childhood home has been haunted since before I can remember. Not the kind of haunted that causes strange noises in the attic, and only sometimes the kind of haunted where the lights flicker conspicuously during arguments. 

    No, the entities that live here are agents of imbalance, self-sustaining in their madness; like a pot you can’t take off the stove that’s always threatening to boil over. An imp that has grabbed hold of something precious and has taken off running in a direction you didn’t quite catch. Seeds of chaos in the pipes entombed by a family’s survival through nearly three decades of both miracles and miasma. Clinging disorder that shrouds itself in layers of psychic fog, an embodied torpor that uses the brain’s natural circuitry against itself. 

    The very best example of this is the demon that lives in the kitchen sink. 

    From my childhood and adolescence, I recall memories of dishes piled high, sometimes days-old, threatening to collapse under the weight of white ceramic bowls, peanut butter knives, and lids that don’t quite fit anything. Bloated grains of rice and remnants of salsa jars and paper labels from cans would combine into a heterogenous slime near the drain, threatening psychic damage to anybody who dared disturb it. Newly washed dishes often mingled with dry ones on the rack. Chaos would grow from that plumbing, again and again, no matter how many times my mother fought it back down to the shiny stainless steel surface. 

    The demon did a great job sustaining itself on a household already destined to suffer from chronic stress—stress made extra spicy with a good helping of neurodivergence and disability. It fed off of the shame and indignance felt by the kids after continual naggings from Mama Bear, and the frustration of Mama Bear that her cubs only ever seemed to nurse more chaos than they could dispel, not yet mature enough to recognize her efforts. I know all too well as an adult that helpless situations beget depression, and depression saps energy; energy that could be put towards real, sustainable progress against the forces of evil.

    When we did buy a dishwasher, the demon made sure it was one that siphoned water from the sink’s faucet for the entire three hour cycle, leaving no room for washing or rinsing in the meantime. Attempts to help always somehow further entrenched the problem. What are you supposed to do with horrors that feed in the space between your physical surroundings and your subconscious?

    I’m grown now. Fledged. I left the nest no less than five years ago; I’ve made multiple households and communed (consciously and unconsciously) with many demons of my own in the meantime. I’m housesitting for my parents right now, and while the sink is quieter than it used to be, and many stresses have been lifted from this dysfunctionally functional family, I can tell this spirit is still working on me and my loved ones. What is it, truly, that the dregs of this sink demon wants from us, even after all these years? 

    As already wisely noted by the outstanding poltergeist whisperers of our time, the answer to any demon problem is acknowledgement; simple acknowledgement. Yes, there is a demon in my sink. Yes, it is doing everything in its power to keep us all merely surviving under a mountain of undone-ness. Yes, it demands tribute, daily, in the form of small tokens of recognition. To manage, I’ll honour it every so often with a simple verbal nod, paired with a small but meaningful decision, such as putting my plate in the dishwasher rather than the sink’s basin, or emptying the drain catch when I don’t have to. Yes, if I ignore the demon’s creeping tendrils, it will become irate, offended that I have no respect for its wretched potential. 

    No, I cannot destroy the demon; yes, I know it will always be there. This being said, yes, a moment of true, conscious recognition of its demon nature—the bravery to look a real evil in the eye, followed by consistent (even if imperfect) observation and reverence—can soften the miry grip of any malignant spirit.

  • On the Impossible Task of Completion

    On the Impossible Task of Completion

    The Puzzle

    I have a vision of myself in my mind’s eye: I’m sitting in vastness, alone. I’m neither inside nor outside—above me is a slightly off-white overcast fog, and below me is a floor made of textured grey rubber that stretches endlessly in all directions. I’m surrounded by puzzle pieces; piles and piles of them. Some of these piles are sorted. Most sit in large, chaotic mounds that seem to grow bigger every time I turn my back. Between them, stray pieces are scattered with semi-intentional fervour. And here and there, in quiet little clusters, are the patches I’ve managed to piece together.

    The work of soul-making is (1) endless, (2) full of what many would call drudgery, and (3) brutally murky. Still, all of us have been given the same strange task: to gather the scattered parts of ourselves, try to understand them, and somehow make them belong to each other.

    Now and then, as you sort, beholding edge upon edge, something clicks. A few pieces fall into place and form a shape that makes sense, if only for a moment. Those moments of grasping even a small fraction of the final image can feel like small miracles—tiny confirmations that your effort matters. And sometimes, more rarely, you glance up and realize that two distant islands of pieces you’ve been working on separately for years actually belong to the same part of the picture. Their edges align, and suddenly, you can see something broader, more coherent than you could before. A glimpse of the larger shape your life might be making.

    Puzzle pieces pile up faster than you can work through them. Beyond the sheer number, there are the small indignities of handling them—some pieces are waterlogged from the occasional storm, some are frayed at the edges from being turned over too many times. A few have gone missing entirely, carried off by the dog, misplaced in old memories, or buried under something you’re not ready to face. Sometimes, just grasping the scale of it all—how much there is to sort through, how little you actually know—feels so overwhelming you have to check out for a while. Still, the hope is that if we understand the pieces we’re working with, if we sit with them long enough, we can fit them into something whole. That each one has a rightful place in the larger picture of who we are.

    This has been the shape of most of my 26 years: patiently sorting, gently fitting, watching connections form and trusting that if I just keep going, eventually the full picture will reveal itself. That I’ll understand what I’ve been building. That I’ll finally know who and what I am, and that peace will follow.

    The Shadow and the Struggle

    Not all of us go looking for trouble, but all of us find it in one way or another. Your puzzle pieces aren’t just bits of personal insight—they’re everything you understand about the world and yourself. The way they’re laid out, the way they connect (or don’t), quietly shapes the choices you make and the paths you follow. Sometimes it’s conscious. Often it isn’t. And because of that, you can spend years living out patterns set in motion by something long forgotten. Pieces get buried even deeper. But then, something cracks. Something hurts just enough to make you pay attention. And suddenly you look down and realize you’re holding a piece you’ve never quite seen before. You wonder how long it’s been there, waiting.

    Shadow work is the process of turning toward the parts of yourself that have been buried—often out of fear, pain, or shame—and gently bringing them into the light. In other words: going digging for those puzzle pieces that allow you to fully comprehend parts of your puzzle’s picture that you unconsciously fear seeing, yet feel mysteriously incomplete without. The trouble is, most of those shadow pieces (is this Yu-Gi-Oh??) are buried in the same towering mounds as everything else—habits, old defenses, stories you inherited without even realizing it. They’re often hiding in the piles that are the most daunting to sort through, and you’re largely diving into the process without even knowing what you’re looking for.

    There’s something deeply exciting about watching these little islands of understanding come together—whether the pieces are joyful or painful, euphoric or hard to hold. There is a real sense of progress, and I truly do believe that my practice has given way to real, positive change and healing that would not have otherwise been possible.

    It’s tempting, however, to draw sweeping conclusions about the whole picture based on what you’ve managed to assemble so far. Our brains are wired for narrative, and when a few pieces start to click, the mind rushes in to fill the gaps. It spins stories between and atop fragments, weaving a sense of clarity that can feel real, even when it isn’t. All narratives, no matter how grounded they seem, are always incomplete. They’re shaped by ego, for better or for worse. They can distort as easily as they clarify. And in getting caught up in the imagined whole, we often miss what’s right in front of us—or twist it into something it was never meant to be. Maybe the hardest part of all, though, is that even as these little breakthroughs come, they’re quickly absorbed into the background. Another fleeting rush of purpose, swallowed by the hedonic treadmill. The moment fades, and the search for new “insights in a haystack” begins again.

    Putting It All Together

    I sat with my pieces a few times today, legs crossed on the rubber floor, drifting hazily between the real world and my cardboard mounds. I surveyed the piles and the scattered patches. Everything felt very still. I glanced at a small story of pieces forming in front of me: this one telling of the unease I was starting to feel with my seemingly never-ending puzzle journey. I thought about all the ups and downs since I started, and the truly staggering progress I’ve made with the raw materials I have been given. All the beauty and the pain I’ve been able to touch because of this practice. Then I looked again at my unsorted piles. They were larger than ever. And I realized—even if new pieces stopped arriving tomorrow—with the time I have left on this planet, it is certain that I’ll die before I can see my puzzle to completion.

    So… what do you do when this realization knocks? Not just as an abstract idea, but as an intuitive truth? How do you live with a puzzle that must, by design, be left unfinished?

    I’ve come up with three options. One: quietly tuck it away—put the whole thought back in its box and let this particular emerging patch of puzzle pieces fall to the wayside. Keep living under the belief that you’re working toward completeness, and that if you just keep going, if you just try hard enough, you’ll get there, and you’ll find peace. Two: give up on the process entirely. Let the pieces pile up as they will. Stop sitting upstairs in your brain like a nerd, wasting your energy trying to make meaning out of chaos. And then there’s the third option: keep assembling what you can, here and there, in fragments—and try not to care too much that you’ll never get to see the finished picture.

    I think I’m aiming for that third one. Most days.

    Whatever I manage to put together in this life, I suppose that’s as complete as it gets. Maybe, if I squint, that’s not a tragedy. We’re here not to finish our puzzles, but to piece together what we can of them. To leave behind small pockets of clarity; pretty little constellations of meaning. If I go out surrounded by unfinished edges, I hope at least some of it feels beautiful. Not complete, never meant to be, but real. Touched, and known. Maybe that’s all any of us can hope for in the end. Not a finished picture, but a life spent slowly learning how to sit with the pieces—and, ideally, an unshakable understanding that the work you have done is nothing more (and nothing less) than simply, enough.

  • The TV Show I Can’t Turn Off

    The TV Show I Can’t Turn Off

    Today’s been a ride. A lurching, inconsistent, weirdly-edited ride. I have had many days over the last few months that have been like this. Certainly more than average from my recent memory. And I keep returning to the thought:

    “Sometimes the TV show just sucks.” 

    There were years where I’d just zone out during the bad episodes—when the writing felt phoned in, when I didn’t care about the characters, when the pacing was off or the whole thing veered into absurd prisonous melodrama. I’d mentally leave the room, distract myself with psychic busywork, and concern myself (sometimes pathologically) with story beats that were more compelling than what was happening in front of me. Slowly though, I realized: tuning out the dreadful parts doesn’t actually make the show better. It just flattens everything. Even the good scenes lose their meaning when you’ve been numbing yourself through the rest of the season.

    Mindfulness teaches us to be present; to feel the emotions your TV show evokes in you without judgement or pretense. This idea has changed my life, but what an immense burden it can feel like; a spiritual contractual obligation to sit through every single episode, knowing that no matter how horrible it feels, the alternative is worse. You have no remote. No skip button that doesn’t splinter off little pieces of your soul. The best you can do is sit there with your eyes propped open, clockwork orange-style, watching the chaos unfold. 

    Because, ultimately, this is the only show you get. There’s no second channel. No spinoffs. Just this. Your life. The TV show, or oblivion.

    We have understandably evolved to believe that we are controlling the plot somehow. If the show is enthralling enough, the stakes high enough, the boundary between you and the POV of the camera dissolves. Some people, slightly more abstracted, will tout the “life is just a video game” mantra – which allows for a certain level of emotional detachment from the destabilizing forces around you. But sometimes, in moments of stillness, you look around and realize that not only are you not this main character you so identify with—there is no controller in your hands. There never was. You’re not in charge. You’re just watching. Or spacing out. Or wishing it were different. You can also certainly yell at the TV if you want. A lot of people do. 

    If I have one thing for the complaints department, I wish that realizing you’re not steering makes the stakes feel lower. If anything, it just makes them weirder. “Oh great, I still have to feel everything, even if I can’t do anything about it?”

    And yet—it’s not like nothing changes in life, or that things don’t get better. I don’t feel stuck in some cosmic rerun, doomed to repeat the same storylines. In fact, the main character of my show is really quite good at growing. She’s getting good at learning how to work with herself, reshape her environment, and sit quietly and peacefully. She spends an enormous amount of energy peeling layers back, tending to old wounds, tracing patterns back to their origins, learning sophistication in her feelings and practicing (and simply being) whole. That process makes for pretty compelling television, in its own funny way. The version of me watching all this unfold in a Google Doc is at least somewhat bemused by this fourth-wall-breaking emotional arc in particular.

    I’ve changed more in the past few years than I thought possible. I know myself now in ways I hadn’t since I was a kid. There’s momentum, evolution, movement.

    But still—here I am. Sitting at my desk. Irritated with my texting apps. Raw from the fact that being emotionally open with the world has made me vulnerable to all sorts of bizarre new pain I didn’t want. Stuck on the treadmill, grateful to be moving, but also, sometimes, tired of running.