Basic Programming, by Megan Burns

Basic Programming by Megan Burns is a book length experiment in creating a code to change the way we practice attachment from specialized love to an unconditional understanding of how love manifests within us in opposition to the ways conditional love has been handed down as a standard to achieve. In four sections, the book mirrors moving up the chakra system from sexual desire to spiritual communion beyond the manifested world. From intimacy to intellectual understanding, the middle of the book uses the template of Wuthering Heights as a text to deconstruct toxic forms of attachment handed down within families. Attaching each chapter of Wuthering Heights to a Bob Dylan song, the book creates a palimpsest of how romantic love is handed down to us in art, music and literature. The final section of the book explores channeling the dead and the means of how attachment moves beyond linear space and time as we grieve and process love once the body is no longer part of the equation. Dealing with suicide, addiction, family trauma, toxic attachment, heart break and loss of self, BASIC PROGRAMMING is a code written to push against notions of the limits of love and the limits of healing: “suffering is worthless” it teaches us.