I Am the Nonsense

Absurdity does not arrive politely. It does not knock, clear its throat, and ask whether now is a convenient time to become material. It shows up sideways. It hides in a toddler's answer, a work meeting, a song lyric, a sentence you did not expect to matter. You think you are only noticing it. You think you are standing outside the circus with a notebook, taking responsible adult observations. Then the notebook starts humming, the raccoon gets promoted, the essay title appears fully armed, and the phrase 'I am the nonsense' lands in your hands like evidence.

At that point, denial becomes difficult. The universe may still be talking, but it is no longer clear where its voice ends and yours begins.

On the surface, it is a joke. A person says they are surrounded by nonsense. They listen to the nonsense. They are trying to interpret the nonsense. Then, somewhere around the third strange coincidence, the fourth oddly timed sentence from a child, and the fifth moment where life seems to hand them exactly the metaphor they needed, they realize the distinction has collapsed. They are no longer merely encountering the nonsense. They are participating in it. They may even be generating part of it. At that point, the honest sentence is not, 'I am dealing with nonsense.' The honest sentence is, 'I am the nonsense.'

This is where Trailer Park Boys becomes, against all academic expectation, useful theology. Jim Lahey spends years talking about listening to the liquor as if the liquor is some external oracle. It whispers. It warns. It guides. It becomes weather, scripture, compass, and bad career counselor all at once. Then, after pushing the bit past reason and into revelation, he is asked what the liquor said. His answer is not a report. It is an identity statement: 'I am the liquor.' The joke works because it is ridiculous, but also because it is weirdly complete. He has stopped consulting the force. He has merged with it.

That is the same comic mechanism hiding inside 'I am the nonsense.' I talk about listening to the universe, and I do mean that in a real way, but not in the glossy notebook sense where the universe is a tasteful font on a candle. I mean the universe as an improv partner with poor boundaries. It sends a line from a child at the exact wrong time, which makes it the exact right time. It turns a traffic stop into a parenting essay. It turns a search bar into a confessional. It turns a baseball concourse into a writing seminar. It turns a work frustration into a field note, then into an operating principle, then into a sentence that is somehow more useful than the meeting where the problem happened.

Listening to the universe does not mean waiting around for mystical instructions. It means paying attention to the strange little signals ordinary life keeps dropping on the floor. Most people step over them. That is reasonable. People have groceries to put away. Emails to answer. Dishwasher spoons to rescue from whatever tiny spoon prison exists under the bottom rack. But some of us cannot leave the signal alone. We see the dropped phrase, the awkward pause, the toddler answer, the manager sentence, the weird coincidence, and instead of moving on, we pick it up. We hold it to the light. We ask what shape it has.

The danger, of course, is that eventually the universe starts to recognize you as someone who accepts deliveries. Once you keep taking the packages, the packages keep coming. A person can only collect so many moments before the line between observer and supplier becomes suspicious. At first you think, I am noticing the nonsense. Then you think, I am unusually available to, and for, nonsense. Then one day you are standing there with a raccoon metaphor, a half-formed essay title, and the phrase 'I am the nonsense' glowing in your hands, and you have to admit the call is coming from inside the house.

This is not a confession of foolishness. It is a confession of alignment. To say 'I am the nonsense' is not to say I am unserious. It is to say I have become fluent in the material life keeps handing me before it knows what it is. Some people need polished concepts before they can begin. Some people need data, a framework, a deck, a pre-read, and a meeting title with three nouns stacked on top of each other. I need a crooked sentence, a daily irritation, a child answering 'me' like she has just solved philosophy, or a villain from a Canadian trailer park declaring union with his chosen chaos. That is enough. That is not the finished structure. That is the spark.

There is a practical side to this, which is what saves it from becoming pure clown shoes. Nonsense, when ignored, remains nonsense. Nonsense, when indulged without discipline, becomes noise. But nonsense, when noticed and shaped, becomes material. The difference is not dignity. The difference is craft. I can hear a strange phrase and either laugh for four seconds or build a whole hallway out of it. I can watch ordinary life misbehave and either complain about it or translate it into something other people can use. That translation is the work.

This is why 'I am the nonsense' feels like more than a punchline. It is the house motto of a mind that has accepted its own operating system. The world is not going to become less strange. Work will still produce theater and call it alignment. Children will still answer questions with brutal efficiency. Search engines will still receive our most embarrassing midnight fears. Songs, ballgames, grocery bags, broken sinks, and half-heard phrases will still wander in carrying more meaning than they were assigned. The only real question is whether we pretend not to see it or admit that this is the raw material.

I am not above the absurdity. I am not outside the circus taking tasteful notes, or in the back row. I am in it. I may be holding the clipboard. I may be directing traffic badly. I may be the one who brought snacks. And once I admit that, the whole thing gets easier. The universe is no longer some distant authority sending me signs from a clean white room. It is more like a chaotic coworker sliding a sticky note across the desk and whispering, 'You can probably do something with this.'

So yes, listen to the universe. Listen to the liquor, if the bit requires a low-rent prophet in a robe. Listen to the twins. Listen to the meeting that went sideways. Listen to the search bar, the ballpark, the sink, the rash, the small domestic disaster, the sentence that makes no sense until it becomes the only sentence that does. But at some point, after enough listening, enough noticing, enough translating, the distance disappears. The universe is not merely talking to you. It is talking through the part of you that knows how to make nothing into something.

The nonsense is not an interruption to the work. It is the work walking in without an appointment.

And that is the real revelation. I am not here to escape the nonsense. I am here to receive it, sort it, sharpen it, laugh at it, and hand it back with a handle attached. I listened so long that I became the instrument. I followed the signs so closely that I became one of the signs. I spent enough time decoding the signal that somewhere along the way I became part of the broadcast.

I am the nonsense.

Not because I have lost the plot, or my mind, but because I finally recognized the plot was never neat and clean as promised in the first place.