Chaos, Zombies, and a Lawn Mower—Just an Ordinary Tuesday

Peter Jackson’s Braindead (1992) is like Alice in Wonderland gone terribly wrong—as if Alice had stumbled into a zombie apocalypse and decided to become a butcher while working through her mother issues.

The movie begins when a Sumatran rat-monkey bites Lionel’s overprotective mother. What follows is a surreal fireworks show of blood and black humor.

By the time her ear drops into the vanilla pudding being delicately spooned by a family guest, we know we’ve left mainstream cinema far behind.

Soon, the undead are eating each other and reproducing with heads flopping backward. Lionel sneaks a zombie baby into the park in a stroller like any exhausted dad, but the baby escapes, bites other children, and causes a scene that makes you either laugh or feel sick—or both.

Eventually, Lionel buries the zombies, but they dig themselves out, and the chaos escalates epically. The entire mansion becomes a meat grinder, and even the lawn mower finds a new calling.

Lionel wades knee-deep in blood—and who knows what else—while confronting not only the flying limbs and oozing floors, but also his own fears and childhood trauma.

Finally, he faces his mother in her grotesque, oversized mutant form. And amidst it all, something strangely profound happens: Lionel doesn’t just destroy what his mother has become—he breaks the tie that has kept him suppressed his whole life.

Years later, Peter Jackson would direct The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But with Braindead, he gave an outrageous showcase of how sheer imagination can replace bottomless budgets and digital effects.

And perhaps—knowingly or not—he also offered a hint: sometimes clarity and liberation require total breakdown and chaos.

When the Porridge Explodes and the Banana Turns Black

The kitchen is quiet after nightfall, but it’s far from peaceful. The noise has died down, but the chaos hasn’t gone to sleep.

Just another ordinary Tuesday.

No zombies, but there’s a sock under the table. Someone had a meltdown a while ago—maybe you, maybe a child— it doesn’t really matter. It’s still in the air, and in the silence, peace has vanished somewhere beneath porridge splatters and LEGO bricks scattered under the couch.

The dishwasher is open like someone tried to escape through it. A toppled laundry basket stands in the hallway like a monument to the new definition of harmony. The diaper bag smells like life forgot to breathe. That same half-eaten banana continues its slow two-week transformation in color.

In some way, this scene touches us all. The kitchen could be any room. The porridge could be anything that fuels the inner storm.

In my case, personal growth once revolved—sometimes rather neurotically—around retreats and exotic teaching trips.

Until parenthood entered. And it left nothing hidden.

It brought a whole new kind of chaos—mainly internal. The kind you rarely see on retreat schedules—even though maybe you should. Most of the time, anything disruptive is smoothed away—even though, to borrow from Leonard Cohen, the cracks are where the light gets in.

Because right there—in the unrest, the mess, the overwhelming emotions—a delicate, subtle space can open. A space where something essential cracks—but nothing true actually breaks.

Just when you think your life has turned into a zombie comedy and the lawn mower is missing, something quiet might begin.

It may not bring instant peace or a life-altering insight. But it brings what comes before them: a moment you no longer want to escape.

A moment you no longer resist.

Everything might still be a mess—but because it is, you can be with it. And that might be the beginning.

A Substitute Without a Script

If life is sometimes a zombie comedy, at other times it’s like your first — and last—day teaching a metalwork class without knowing what any of the machines do.

There was no one around to guide me. The students asked about machines that were taller and heavier than I was—and I didn’t know their names, let alone what each blade was for.

The hour was long, but I survived—and miraculously, all the students still had their limbs.

It’s fair to expect a teacher to know their blades and which buttons not to press. But life doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t test what we know—it reveals what we’re desperately trying to control, even when we can’t.

The conditions of life aren’t here to please us. They challenge, frustrate, stretch us—and often that’s exactly why they awaken us.

Even on retreats—even when the candles are in straight rows and the nervous system hums with delight. There’s always a crack somewhere—a toxic detox therapist, mosquitoes, a mattress that’s too soft, or a vague inner restlessness that no amount of breathwork can seem to silence.

As Jung put it: awareness requires pain, and darkness calls for light. Peace is often found only through chaos—when the carefully built house of cards begins to collapse. Sometimes what follows is what’s called the dark night of the soul—not a mistake, but a doorway.

In those moments, the zombies rise from the grave and the lawn mower overheats. Someone cries, screams, cries and screams, or breaks something. A child, life, something.

And when we stop trying to manage the experience, a quiet realization can begin—of what we cannot lose.

Maybe, in the end, we’re all just stand-in metalwork teachers — temporarily responsible for something we never fully understand, though we like to think we do. Just visiting, here to remind ourselves of what’s truly real.

In a life that doesn’t happen to you.

It happens for you.

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