Monday, November 30, 2009
Too Much of a Good Thing/ The Evolution of Insecurities
Why does society cater to incompetence? Is that what a society is? A system of support in which the strong take care of the weak in order to maintain our race? Its worked so far at least- tremendously well. The smart, able people have engineered products to compensate for idiots’ incompetence, reducing their impact, allowing them to function independently by either trashing and over utilizing their resources or by buying into the bureaucracy that provides the shortcuts necessary to bring lofty goals and complicated procedures down to the level of incompetent, unthinking people who can only thrive within the confines of structure, games and rules. And then becoming slaves to it. It’s worked. Despite the fact that we, as a society, structure, race, and people, have more problems and diseases and unhappiness as ever, there are also more people than ever, our systems are bigger, bureaucracies are more impenetrable and were able to get more things done faster than ever. Ah, sweet success. But what was our goal to begin with in creating this maze for ourselves? Were short sighted, maybe that’s the problem, creating quick fix solutions to problems that we’ve created by our own immediacy and laziness and then, just after we become fully dependent on our new creation, we realize that our new crutch is unsustainable, running out and has terrible backlashes.
Although this is often the kind of things I think about periodically, in the shower, putting away laundry, spacing out, this specific little impassioned rant was triggered by helping Keith clean his apartment to show to a potential renter. Keith’s not the subject matter here, Johnny is- the roommate whom three people are relocating in order to avoid. Our disbelief at the level of Johnny’s dependence lead me to ask what makes people this way. So here’s my attempt at an explanation.
People started by gathering. In families, tribes, near rivers- for transport, water, crops, connectivity, trade, then cities formed and grew and grew. Sticking up for yourself, your family was no longer enough. Now it was a society, you had to be a valuable member of society while still looking out for yourself- this survival tactic now based not on the maintenance of a closely-knit community where people felt confident and solid in their role, enough to lose a need for self- preservation and work instead for the maintenance of a way and a people one strongly believed in preserving. A then small-scale system in which you and everyone were necessary and vital components. But now in a city, a system, a society, moving as a unit of its own, unreliant on personal impact (every vote counts but not because we respect your opinion but because 1+1+1=3, times a few hundred thousand adds up, it all adds up, to maybe one point, which can win or lose an election), moving on its own, bolstered by and built upon a foundation of insecurities, inferiority and a desire to keep up with an impossible ideal. Now we’re lacking the reliance on one another that previously made up a society. Charity, then, made sense. Empathy and support because everything that happened to an individual effected the community. Here, an individual is no longer important in the bigger picture, just a number to add up to make a whole, a fraction of the bigger picture instead of being a microcosm for it.
In the good ol’ days, if your grand father and your father were barbers, you would be a barber too. Now, one has to find his own meaning instead of being born into it. You have a world of possibilities in front of you, hundreds of potential careers, lifestyles, relationships and if you choose wrong, it all comes back to point its fingers at you. What is masked as control over oneself is presented with such daunting possibilities and implications that it has the opposite effect and in turn, disempowers the individual. And if one day, for some reason, you’re a little discontent, its no longer just a bad day in the midst of a good life. It’s the result of thousands of personal choices that now, you must look back on, doubt and wish had been made differently in order to spare yourself from this impermanent unhappiness. So egos are considered, tried and fail. Within the privacy of your own home, out on the streets, a huge world is not comprehensible for us so we fragment it, create classes, races, stereotypes, groups, political parties and above all, watch out for numero uno! A safety in numbers (the dependence and personal responsibility one takes in a small scale community) morphs into the bystander effect where now, we’ve become so removed, that big world out there, its no longer our creation or even our land to walk on. It has a life of its own and is no longer ours, that a girl yelling for help on a street corner in New York has nothing to do with us, its not our problem, its just another struggle far off along with the thousands of problems and suffering brought to our attention and pinned on our backs as vague nagging responsibility, by a global community but not actually experienced, seen first hand, lived and felt.
In order to preserve ourselves, engage in our surroundings, we create false worlds based on distractions and creations- things we can process and tackle. The drama in tonight’s episode of Desperate Housewives is more manageable, more tangible, closer to home, than the warring sects in the Middle East, the governmental corruption in Somalia and Kenya and what that corruption is driving people to do. So our efforts to engage in hum-drum routines and trivial pleasures is really just an effort to regain a control over ourselves and our own lives that was lost when our worlds went from tribal familiarity and familial values to large-scale worldly knowledge, expectations and involvement- a task much too daunting for our small simple bodies to take on.
We’re stretching ourselves in order to move further and further away from animalistic, bodily-dependent simplicity and further and further towards matters of the mind. If we disconnect from our bodies (what do you mean my mood is affected by the processed food-like substance I just ate for lunch? Im a lawyer, I make 200 grand a year, Im a self actualized human being!), distance ourselves from the mortal world around us, falling leaves and springing buds, life cycles, water cycles, mortality, change, death and evolution, than maybe- at least consciously- we’re able to detach ourselves from the impermanence which everyone fears. Why? I don’t know, maybe because its one more threat to our control. Control-that’s the one thing here that sets us apart from any other animal. A mind so abstract that its mere engagement contradicts every cyclic, mortal force that plays on our lives. Opposable thumbs my ass. If we couldn’t open jars, we’d find a way around it. A way to justify our inability with a desperate, quivering ego-based superiority.
The ingenious of us have found that the number one way to market products is to strip perspective buyers of their last thread of control, instill a feeling of incompleteness and lacking, making them dependent on an outside source to regain that thread. If you tell girls enough that theyre bad at sex, they’ll rake for solutions and find an impermanent solution in the false promises of a Cosmopolitan magazine. And for 6.99 a pop, that’s not a bad price for a quick fix high. If you convince a homeowner that her cleaning methods don’t protect properly against a certain strain of bacteria she cant pronounce, she’ll spend her money on products manufactured not to improve the quality of her life but to turn her into a consumer- buying a fix here and a fix there until the dopamine is expended, regulators forced open and the high becomes the norm and the lacking becomes the painful, sweaty trembling crash. Addicted, dependent on products that support the maker‘s similar struggle to keep up, prioritizing immediate personal gain over sustainable betterment.
Dependence on something means that without it, you’re lacking. When people are taught that they’re incomplete or not good enough as is, they lose the confidence in themselves necessary to think for themselves, follow not what is forced down their throats but instead what they independently believe in. The loss of control over oneself strips people of the power to think critically, question authority and say- this is how I want to see the world and this is what Im going to do to see that through. So little power is given, or taken, over ones own life that people try in vain to bolster their failing egos by abusing the few aspects of control that they still feel they have. Teens desperately do everything they can to rebel against parents and every force bigger than them- drug problems, self mutilation, eating disorders- some of the few things in life they feel are in their hands- so who could pass up the chance to exploit that rare power?
Johnny, as described by his former roommates, is a fuck-up. To the extent that his mom flew in from the east coast to come check up on him, you know, clean his sheets, buy him toilet paper. If his own mom doesn’t have the faith in his abilities to manage his own life, who will? And then it all became clear. Maybe if his mom hadn’t flown a few thousand miles to help him with his life, he may have understood, after perhaps finding himself in the bathroom with no toilet paper a few times, that his power over his life extends an ability to find people who are willing to take care of him. And maybe then he would scrape the leftover lasagna off of his plate before balancing it on the tower of his unwashed dishes in the kitchen sink. Maybe then he would have the self-esteem to redirect the energy and money currently spent on constantly revamping his wardrobe (to once more get that dying high of false confidence instilled upon consumers by marketers who don’t mind adding to the whirlpool of dependence and disempowerment to get a slice of their pie) to the promotion of something he genuinely believes in, something that brings actual, sustained, real happiness.
I might be completely wrong, totally missing the mark about all of this, but if its true- if this kind of pathetic dependent incompetence is in fact just the manifestation of a desperate confused desire for empowerment, its hard to look at Johnny and feel anything but pity. But I can also see how after a year of living with the guy, being constantly bombarded by his pleas for attention and approval, and scraping crusted-on oatmeal off of abandoned bowls, pity might morph into pure resentment.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
walking home one night. sent to my email by text. I dont really know anything- these are just guesses in an attempt to understand what I do.
Or maybe there is nothing that is me. Nothing to me. Im not even let in on that. Im an observer to myself as much as I am to the rest of the world.
Im always on the outside, a shell, so theres no core of me to give (nothing to compromise or maintain). If you pour out my contents, Ill find something new. That change, defines me. That constant reshaping, revising, evolving. Im a host to whatever I let fill me and Im not the same now as I was yesterday.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
I went to church with Seth one night and I think it backfired
I have no protective tanker and Seth knows that. But what he doesnt know is that he doesnt have to look down on me, swimming in the water along side him and throw me a vest and pull me up into safety and sweet salvation. Not only does he not have to, I refuse it because- as easy as that would make things- I dont want anything to be muted for me. I want to feel every rise and fall and Im saturated and my skin is pruned but thats how I like it.
I dont need the horizon line to be off in the distance so I always will have something unattainable to grasp at. Im there, I set the horizon for myself and its not just a pretty view. Beauty for me, is not just beautiful because its bizarre, other wordly and unattainable. The reason why its beautiful is because when the sun sets, it comes down right on me and crushes me into the ground and I burst into orange light and pink rays and purple shadows and when it rises in the morning, it pushes me up with it, balancing and Im part of the sky. I can see clearly the whole sky looking up and the whole world looking down and it pushes me through the clouds for that moment. Im part of it all, not just watching from the shore. And I can feel every part of it and I wouldnt give that up for anything. I would never give that up for security and stability.
A forest cant always flourish and be lush and healthy. Every once in a while, theres a forest fire. And that forest fire has to happen. And then theres rotting wood and ash and that feeds the things that eat that stuff and strengthens the soil so it will be fertile for the next generation of trees and plants.
In Boulder, the hundred year flood is due. The local newspaper has mapped out flood plains and given advice on what to do when the flood happens, Y2K, 20/12. What if the flood happens, and we get out of the way and let it happen and then carry on? I used to be afraid of earthquakes, growing up in LA. The thing that cured me of my fear was when it occured to me that, without infrastructure (building freeway onramps, stacking people on top of each other in high rise apartements so there are four layers of beds and cabinets on a shoddy short-sighted foundation, just to tempt something to come and knock it all down), earthquakes would be no problem at all. Nobody would ever die from an earthquake! again!
All of this, all of these "natural disasters" are no big deal. Its fine. And people die and friends are lost and opportunities are passed by and its all okay.
Religion (providing that unsinkable tanker for people to hop onto when really, theyve just got to swim) is halting and limiting our evolution just as vaccinations are promoting an unnatural health, a fake immune system that can fight off the little guys just by forcing them to evolve into huge killers. And hell, its the same with the economy. Now, I know nothing about the economy but I do know that theres a boom and bust situation here, and its got to be the same thing.
Its time to let go
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Boulder's Cafes
Baxter's favorite Boulder cafe is the Cup. Danny likes the Tea Box. Helen goes to Espressoria. My former English teacher can always be found with a laptop and a stack of papers in a manila envelope at the Bookend Cafe. Seth and Daniel call me to come join them at the Trident.
The Trident is probably my favorite too. You can always expect to see the same people at the Trident. Some go there for the indy hipster atmosphere, some to study. Some for the chess boards and backgammon- one of whom is the terrifying Israeli-Romanian Alex, who makes persistent eye contact and speaks in a thick undistinquishable accent. He looks like the kind of person who you would see at one in the morning, drunk, brass knuckles in pocket, looking for a fight to pick or a girl to rob. Im telling you, he's scary looking. Bald, stocky, dismissively flaunting muscle tees, gold chains and rings. But he wouldn't hurt anyone. If he's ever wandering dark allys late at night, he's just looking for someone to discuss developmental phychology with and to beat in backgammon. And oh my god he will. He knows more strategy that I thought was possible in a game made of cork triangles and stone discs.
Samuel's another psychologist I met at the Trident. He hangs around, petting and adjusting his flowing sandy 80's rocker hair, pouting his lips, making skittish eye contact with girls, hoping they'll be impressed by his highlit copy of the DSM-IV and the pot of tea on his table that maybe makes him look sensitive and in touch with... you know, horoscopes, yoga, feelings, all that crap. But no. He just wants someone to watch him from across the room, to partake in his impossible, tempestuous, star-crossed romance. He's a 28 year old man but is in all ways a 16 year old girl. I know this because one day, I went over and talked to him. He was reading The Sun Also Rises, one of my favorite books, and I noticed the little skittish eyes he had been making at me. I was brain-numbed from studying and felt like bursting his little self-indulged bubble of unilateral romantic tension, so I leaned over my table and invited him for a game of boggle. He killed at boggle so naturally I was impressed. But those were the only points he earned in my book. Literally, everything he said was a turn off, from his humble recounting of elicit, dramatic sexual escapades, to his shitty poetry and the invitation for a day of meditation and rock-climbing with him. No way would I go out of city limits with someone who lives so much in their head, could convince themselves of whatever truths favored them, and who didnt mind being suggestive with a 17 year old girl.
"I guess it would be illegal for anything to happen between us, huh."
It must have given him chills saying that. The situation was perfectly unattainable and I'm sure the word "illegal" complemented my eyes and made him squirm and smirk.
"Yes sir it would. Anyway, I have to study so Im leaving bye."
And then there was Spencer, the English major who's impressive ability to whip out of his bag whatever author or poet was mentioned, increased my visitation of the Trident in hopes of bumping into him, until I realized he was a one-act show. I like my guys multi-faceted. Also he straight-up sucked at boggle. Beautiful, though. He looked like a Greek God. A chisled statue of bold features, dark hair and black eyes. I never found out where he was from. But his personality was a bit too much like the stoic, severe statue of his demeanor so I branched out from the Trident to see what else Boulder had to offer.
Now Im at the Laughing Goat. Same cozy space with makeshift furniture but with less Naropa graduates reminiscing over charity drives, meditation workshops, astrology and the power of Soy. Here, people are concious of their volume, showing an initiative other than impressing the table next to theirs', bolstering their failing egos based on disillusioned self-righteous supremacy.
Okay, there's one problem with the Laughing Goat. The only thing in their glass case that wouldn't exacerbate my annoyingly persistant sore throat was a wedge of quiche smaller than my fist. (I have fairly small hands too.)
This quiche is made of egg-flavored rubber. I should have just gotten an italian soda. It's hard to go wrong with an italian soda.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Danny and Isa and the Functionality of Reliable Disfunctionability. Part I
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
A coffee and Ayn Rand
You say there are two things, maybe three, in the world and by all means, I believe you.
So why does a jet stream cast a shadow on a cloud and split it in half and make me look at everything differently knowing that everything that makes life beautiful and fun, is an illusion, not there, made up by us :put to terms by us. And beauty is not in the yarn, the carbon atoms, but in the tangles we build above it, the mass we define as another human standing before us.
Who would look outside if we couldn’t see the O2 combined with the H suspended, as a cloud ? Who would so willingly learn that love is the meaning of life if that mutating mass before us wasn’t defined by us with features and chemical happenstances tweaked to resemble individuality, purpose and intention. (and does it match mine ? Is he what I’m looking for ?)
So it’s established: nothing’s wrong that the hat you make of twists and knots is more interesting than the yarn stretched, linear. Yarn and further, the fibers. Solitary in color- how many colors are there really? Three primary and white. Would you call white a color? Maybe there are only three things in the world, maybe four. Would you call white a color?
That hat- it keeps you warm if you need it to- now it has a purpose- does that give validity to or does that degrade the fibers?
Now the only problem is up on the tip top shelf of a bookshelf. Sturdy as it is, can only be built so high until the top begins to sway and make the foundation, sturdy as it is, creek and give and pop. This bookshelf, the shelves built on each other, every one a little further from the foundation, the network of tangles and the way we connect dots, simple dots, not even round or aware of one another, into shapes and conclusions, stacked higher and higher, making pictures of the pictures of the pictures of the dots that weren’t put on the page with any initiative, any picture in mind. And every level, is an extra distraction and every level is a little further from the foundation, resembling less and less the dots we started out with.
So my question is, does making the hat, a scramble, something perceivable, definable in our eyes- we can file it off, now that’s it categorized, write it off- deem the fibers, the foundation, invalid? And can I be genuine if I say that I cannot fall in love with just a mutating mass of carbon but this thing with eyes and insides as opposed to outsides, that's something that I can love. Am I defining it, so filing it away, so writing it off? Or am I finding a way to take astigmatism, give it glasses and tell it to walk like me? (If we all agree, there's no one to tell us we're wrong.) Or have I found a way, it doesn't matter how, to fall in love with a mutating mass of carbon and derive warmth (however much twisting and knoting) from a linear stretch of fiber?
So, is it worship or degredation to create purple, vermillion and shiny gold all from three colors, maybe four? so that everyone can find there own way to fall in love.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
If I do end up posting this, it will definitely be a little scary for me.The "you" is pretty ambiguous- in the beginning it's refering to a specific situation and person and then it gets more and more generalized until the specific person doesn't matter anymore...
I was at the Trident today, with Bax and ran into (insert potentially embarassing name here). Bax thinks he's a total dork. He kind of it but I like it when someone embodies something fully, no matter what it is.But I don't like it when someone embodies something in order to avoid all else.Either my love for people is not reciprocated or I expect different things than what is often given. I'm not sure which is worse.
I should leave. I really should. I don't know what's keeping me here. It's him. I don't know if I like him, or am fascinated by him or enjoy his presence. Or am I experimenting and curious and learning? I like and am attracted to elements inferred.
I love. I really do love. And the only way I know that is because I also hate. Simultaneously and always. Right now. A ravishing emotional and primal response. of love and lust and hatred and destruction. It is so strong at times I cannot distinguish between the two.God- fuck. Im dillusional. I really am. I create my reality. I live conceptually and I have reality checks and watch my world crumble and crash down in on itself. The foundation not strong enough for the bricks and the house I build above it.
Im essentially a cave in the side of a rock face by the sea. Water flows in and out of me. But never stays. I want so bad to be happy with, to base myself on- be content with, the knowlege (the faith?) that the tide will rise again and the water will again flow in and fill me and at times suffocate me and leave me again, drying and still.
You are oblivious to me right now, sitting before me, but still kill me- more than kill me, so much more. Fill me! and leave and come again and I do not know when I will see you next. And you filling washes me clean and puts myself into terms so I can look at, understand- or not- but love myself- maybe. For this. For hosting this teeming life that you shove in me and take away as yours. I am scared by everyone of you- everyone like you. And for you, it is just another surgery. You don't know the power you have over me- the life you can give me and take away as I sit- lie- euthenized underneath you. Vulnerable, open.My strength is in that openness. I host life. And am nothing myself and in that, I create an eternity that defies- creates a devastating paradox with- my very being. But I claim as well, maybe again just host, the diastole and systole of life and of love and hate.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wonderful. I feel like this is almost godly to connect with you like this. I have some knowlege to tell you where to look and you can see the future and report it to me. Awesome.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
In Boulder, water just falls from the sky. Sometimes its still sunny even. In LA when it rains, it encompasses you and its on the news and everyone feels it. You start breaking out the canned food and making hot chocolate. And if you have to go anywhere, you will get soaked and your hair will be wet for the rest of the day. The sky completely covers so the clouds are layers deep, impenetrable, and take over the city. The city is dark and everything drips. Everything and everybody experiences complete catharsis and look at each other on the street differently- where did this come from? can you believe this? Everyone slips into an altered state and come together over this shared freak disaster.
Boulder is an eddie. A whirlpool. No one can see out and everyone just looks in and forgets, as theyre spinning with the same recycled water, that there even is anything outside -a river, rocks and falls. And LA is a waterfall. Most people see it and try frantically to swim upstream to avoid it. And after theyre hesitantly sucked through it and spit out spinning, they dread the next one. But if you learn to, you can stay at the bottom and the constant bubbling impact actually softens the water and you can stay there, letting it float you and feeling the force of the fall, knowing youre part of it.
In LA, when you walk, you can feel every step hit your foot and resonate through your body. As if every step can make you of break you. Walking in Boulder, you can forget that youre walking, never completely feeling your feet hit the ground, always trying to snap yourself out of it (like youre watching yourself from a distance), knowing the ground cant feel you either.
Everything in LA hits you as hard as the rain does. The rain in Boulder, you can walk to the bus stop, store to store, and not quite get wet. Im sure some people like that but I dont have any part of me that Id like to keep dry. And when youre cold in LA, you shiver! In Boulder, its there but no one really cares.
I like being encompassed and saturated. If I hug someone- I mean actually hug someone- theres no part of me I dont want to be effected by them. And if I jump into a lake, theres no part of me that I dont want to feel the hard surface as I enter the water. Theres nothing in me I want to perserve or keep safe or hold onto. And Im okay if one day, I dont recognize myself in the mirror or after meeting someone, I forget who I was before. Never plan around me because I have no initiative- Ill come and find my place.