Tear up your goddamned lawn and grow some food.

I haven't written in awhile because I'm fricken exhausted.  My partner has finally found a way out of her evil, evil job, and while that's completely amazing, it's stressful.

I suck at change.

A lot.

But a friend of mine convinced me to do some gardening with her this spring.  Basic stuff, some veggies to eat and can.

So.  This tiny, baby post to say:

GET THE FUCK OUT IN THE DIRT.

I have never felt so goddamned good in my life.  Barefoot, sore, sunburnt, growing food for myself and the people I love.  No one benefited from my hard work but my own people.  I didn't make anyone a little bit richer but myself.  The contact with the soil released some serious serotonin, as did the endorphins released from a bit of hard labor (even though my job is hard labor anyway...it's tempered by the sheer drudgery).  And yeah, I was exhausted, but you know?  It was one day of hard work.  One day.

ONE FUCKING DAY.

And then a little watering, a little weeding, and bam.  Food.  GOOD food.

What an amazingly easy way to reclaim just a little bit of your own damned power, a little bit of your own self-reliance.

I know this is a particularly crappy post, but I needed to say it.

At the end of my first year of college, the president of the college left to head up another school.  At her farewell banquet, flanked by the Texas state and American flags, after a feast of BBQ and fixins', she looked over her adoring students and said (and I'm paraphrasing, as this was...many...years ago....), "I consider all of you my daughters.  You are strong, compassionate, intelligent...and I have to tell you...I am so...disappointed...in you."  She went on to describe the cutthroat, backstabbing, hateful way she saw us all behaving, and ended by saying something to the effect of, "You are all better than this. Make me proud."  

Today, I was driving between works and I flipped the station and caught the beginning of a particular DJ who begins his show with a montage of funny clips.  Today, he played a man singing the Star Spangled Banner before a baseball game...except that a line or two in, the microphones seemed to be turned toward the crowd...and it was just...thousands of people singing.  

And all of a sudden, I was crying.   

I didn't mean to, I didn't even realize it was happening until I let out a full-on sob.  

I don't consider myself a patriot.  I've spent almost the entirety of this blog bitching about the systems of this country, and how they are so detrimental to so many of us.  But you know? I fucking love this country.  I love this country because it's the kind of place that has been so blessed to not have to deal with bombings every fucking day, that when they happen, the entire country puts its shit away and is just supportive.  Because we've been so lucky to not have war on our doorsteps, to not have had to rebuild entire cities.  

And, like my college president, although I love this country, I'm so....very....disappointed in us.

I'm disappointed that we are not, collectively, absolutely humbled by the people reaching out to Boston from places that suffer deadly bombings on a regular basis.  I'm disappointed that we, as such a young country, have the audacity to make decisions without listening to the lessons taught by those with older histories than us.  I'm disappointed that we continue to ignore the lessons taught by events in our own history, and continue to be surprised that they happen again...and again....and again....

We are an amazing country, founded on amazing principles.  We have tremendous resources, incredible innovation.  We are better than this.  And I so want to be proud of us.

There will be more here, as soon as I can get enough fucking sleep to form sentences, but let me say this:  If I hear one more goddamned person demonizing these suspects, I'm going to flip my shit.

One of them, the one that's, at least as of now, still alive, had a picture and below it, a caption about how he has no American friends, about how he "doesn't understand them."  Meaning us.

Everyone I know is "monstering" this kid, but what did he say??  Once afuckingain, he told us EXACTLY why this shit went down, and once afuckingain, we're going to ignore it.

No, what they did (if they, in fact, did it, which it does kind of look like is the case) was terrible.  There are no words in me to capture how....unthinkable, cruel, malicious...this bombing was.  The time, the place, the day...it's all so calculated and cold.

But if his quotation is accurate, that's how he experienced his time here.

At a certain point, we--all of us--need to look at our own behavior, our own assumptions.  We need to look at how we treat other people, we need to examine our motivations, our xenophobia, our exclusivity.  

Now I get to go to work, part two, for the day.  Hopefully this mess will be over when I'm done.
Peace.

Anything I could possibly say about what happened today will come across as trivial or cliche, but here I am.  So I suppose I should say something.

There are aspects of human nature that I will never, seemingly, understand.

There has been so much speculation since this afternoon, just as there is after every event like this.  Those that jump to the middle east, those that say in this hopeful, smug tone, "I pray that this was not an American.  I wouldn't be surprised if it was, but I hope it wasn't...", those that blame the anarchists, the North Koreans, &c, &c, &c...

I'm not an expert on other cultures, so I won't even attempt to explore, for example, suicide bombings or religiously motivated killings.  But because there is a distinct possibility that whoever did this was from here....

There are so many pat answers: "too many guns, too many knives, too many True Believers...." All of which allow us to dissociate ourselves from the so-called 'monsters' who committed these acts, to deny the capability within ourselves, to go about our lives, no matter how they might have contributed to the creation of a mentality that would allow someone to place a bomb on a crowded street.

This is not to say that there aren't too many guns, knives, and true believers; the real question we need to address is why so many are drawn to those options to solve their problems,  what those problems are, and how we, as a global community, can begin to address and (at least attempt) to eradicate them.

Monsters and crazies do not arise from the aether.  They are of us and among us.

The motivations that lie beneath this (and, I could argue, all) acts of terror are far more complicated and insidious. The factors that make these actions possible build up like stones at the bottom of a well--at some point, they will inevitably break the placid surface, disrupting the illusion of order that allows us to continue on our oblivious, merry way.

I can imagine that these bombings, like most bombings in the past, were not perpetrated by individuals; that they were, instead, a coordinated movement facilitated by a larger group, because how could one single individual do this? Isn't it a far more probable scenario that a type of groupthink was at play here?  Where people of a somewhat common view came together and became blind to the individual harm that they might cause in an attempt to right some greater wrong, whether real or imagined?

And then I think of Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kacinzsky, and I know how individuals can snap, broken by the same perceived injustices.

No, here, in America, by Americans, bombs are detonated out of anguish.  Out of a desperate attempt to be visible.  Out of a deep desire to be heard.  What other feeling could validate these kinds of actions but the pain of losing ones sense of self?  The pain of invisibility?  The gut-wrenching powerlessness?

And with every attempt to place it on a Them or a They (read, someone so completely unlike us), we drive one more person to the same kind of action.  It keeps happening because we keep ignoring why it happens, and it will continue so long as we continue to do so.

Addressing the real underlying causes of these attacks is going to be painful as all hell.

We don't have the luxury of avoiding that task any more.


All of my heart goes out to the victims of these kinds of attacks, and all of my intellect will continue to try to find a way to prevent them from ever happening again.

blinders

While it is true that we must all begin with our own experiences and perceptions to form our opinions, it is also true that at a certain point, our dependence upon these markers end up functioning as blinders.  

This is not easy to fix, and, sadly, those of us who are committed to NOT getting caught by our own blinders are sometimes even more at risk of doing so, if only because of our insistence that we are constantly keeping an eye out for them.  

Some of the hallmarks of being caught in thought tunnels that I've noticed: predictable, repeated responses to external stimuli.  A tendency to immediately discard information which superficially appears to be suffering from intellectual tunnel vision. An over-reliance upon personal experience to back up opinions, statements, or actions.  

Sound kind of like everyone you know? Yeah, me too.  

When I say that things are fucked up, this is what I'm talking about.  Anecdotal evidence  will always play a role in our worldview, but it should never comprise the entirety of it.  Ditto books you've read or people you know. Even if you actively seek out information counter to your own opinion, the likelihood that you're really considering the opposite point of view is pretty slim.  Not because you're an asshole, merely because you're human.

When I first went back to college, I took a philosophy class which discussed absolutism and relativism in social scenarios, as well as from an aesthetic perspective.  I was about ten years older than everyone else in this introductory level class, and I swore, then and there, that I would never take another philosophy class.  No one listened.  All of these eighteen year old kids spoke with this level of conviction about what the knew was true, and I couldn't imagine how they knew any of it.  In this fairly large class, almost every single student was a self-proclaimed relativist, and I realized that it was probably in large part because they were kids in the early 2000s, in the aftermath of the PC movement, where we were all taught by the restriction of language that it was completely unacceptable to say anydamnedthing for fear of impinging on someone else's point of view.   

Oh, for fuck's sake, really?  

I wrote a piece in that class called "Absolute Relativism", which I started out with a quote from Men in Black: 

Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.

My paper was about how relativists are absolutists in disguise, and hypocrites to boot. The basic premise of relativism is that all manner of knowledge and morality are relative to culture, society, and historical context.  Of course, the assumption that there are, under no circumstances, absolute truths is...you know.  An absolute truth. 

My professor didn't like it so much.

No matter how much you say you don't impose your beliefs on others, I promise: you do.  

I've been stuck for years because I know that, no matter how strongly I hold a belief, those that oppose me hold their opinions equally as strong.  So what can be done with that?  How can we coexist with other people who are equally validated in beliefs that are completely opposite our own?  

Annoying damned questions and no answers.  

An argument for an intellectual class (pt the first)

This is a piece I've been thinking about for a really, really, really, exceptionally long time, but never actually sit down to write.  Partially, it feels like such an elitist thing to argue for, and I'm so very not comfortable with coming across that way.  So any time I try to write it, I spend a few pages defending my non-elite status, and by that point I'm too damned tired and frustrated to write a coherent piece.

Not that I'm saying this first real attempt will be coherent.  But it's an attempt, at least.

There's also the fact that it's such a complicated topic, it should be (and nearly was already) a chapter in a much, much larger piece that, hopefully, I'll write someday.

So here goes:

The case for an intellectual class is really just a plea to value the members of society who are not specialists--those who can fit into virtually any situation, understand what's going on, what the problems are, and what fixing those problems might take, long and short term.  These folks may have bizarre resumes, reflecting a variety of jobs for which they are entirely overqualified and technically underqualified for.  This variety might make them seem flighty.  They might not have graduated from college, or they might have a crazy assortment of degrees that add up to no clear educational direction.

They are, in short, easily dismissible.

Part of this is because our society has become massively specialized--the only valuable skills are those that are easily qualified.  We teach schoolchildren to take tests, not to think critically. Colleges are in the slow, yet inevitable, process of turning into nothing more than glorified vocational training, while outside of pure academia, more and more students (and workers) are choosing actual vocational schools that promise to teach to a career or specific type of job.  The world has evolved to a point where specific, specialized skills are all that matter: you are an RN, a CNA, an HVACR repair person, an administrator, an MBA, &c, &c, &c....

Now, I'm not going to sit here and try to argue that I don't want they guy who comes to repair the AC in the middle of August to know what he's doing.  Trust.  I do.  Very much.  Want him to know.  But when the majority of people are skilled at one particular thing, and are, perhaps more importantly, trained for the job as it currently exists, something scary and bad happens.  You a) have a job market that is flooded with people who have been completely indoctrinated to look at things in a particular way and b) you lose a vital component of that job market that is able to walk into virtually any situation and create success there.

All of this adds up to a kind of terrifying scenario, where the only education that is valuable is that which is necessary for employment, where all intellectual and academic inquiry is judged only for its marketable traits. Thus begins a cycle: the society reflects these values in its educational system, the employees it chooses to retain, the people it views as unemployable, and in doing so, reinforces the fundamental belief that the only valuable skills are those which fit neatly into a job description.  It's a nice, tight little spiral, and the beauty of it is that once the value of those who can--and will--really think outside of the proverbial box has disappeared, there will be no way out of that particular thought tunnel* for a long, long time.

The intellectual class constantly evaluates, for better or worse.  It is the voice pushing us along, or cautioning us against moving too fast (a topic for another day, don't worry).  It expresses that which it would be easier not to hear, and helps us to sort through the mess that arises when we finally listen.  We need these people.  It's time to dig out the resumes that didn't make any sense, to ask the disgruntled guy in accounting why he's so pissed off all the time, to have a serious conversation with that bitch in purchasing and find out what's got her so frustrated.  I can guarantee, they've been watching, waiting for someone to ask them.

You might be surprised at the answers they have.  You might be blown away by the problems they see.  There is no shame in finding solutions in unexpected places. The shame comes from being too afraid to look.

(Love you, mom.)



*See also: Fleck's denkkollektiv (thought collective); Kuhn's paradigm and paradigm shift; Timothy Leary's reality tunnel, and, of course, Robert Anton Wilson's thought tunnel.  Among others.

This is not what I was going to write today.

My compatriot wrote a lovely piece today that echoed, precisely (and far more eloquently) what my previous post was getting at, so first, a big ol' thank you for that, love.  The picture of the horse made me cry, though.

I called my mom today because she knows about energy medicine, because I realized 'where it hurt'.  (This is a real thing, I swear....the next time you're in a situation and you're angry, frustrated, excited, sad, overjoyed, take a moment, close your eyes, and pay attention to how your body feels.  It knows what the hell's up.  Once you learn to listen to this amazing machine we lug around and bitch about all the damned time, it'll tell you stuff before your brain [who likes to overcomplicate and overanalyze] even knows there's a problem.)  It hurts from my throat to my belly button.  My throat, well, it's obvious...for all I'm not saying, I'm literally swallowing thousands of words a day.  It doesn't feel good. The rest?  Because swallowing all those words robs us of our personhood.  It forces our energy into stagnation, forces us to spend our resources to NOT create.  Forces us to deny who and what we are, to assert that our experience is not real, that our perception is wrong, our feelings, invalid.

Energy spent on the suppression of creativity is not simply wrong; it is a crime against ourselves.

Too many of us are in this position of having to deny our existence to be able to survive.  How beautifully, tragically, paradoxical is that?  In order to ensure that we can meet our most basic needs, we have to ignore the most basic part of our human nature?

So how do we carry on in this situation?  How do we go to a place, every day, that demands or requires our silence, without running the risk of losing the ability to express anything at all?  How do we shut down only temporarily?  Or better, how do we find a way to ensure that we can turn all of those feelings, all of that expression, back on when it's safe?

I'm still working on it, but this whole writing thing is part of it.  (It's no wonder, in a way, why the whole blog thing has taken off, if you consider how many of us are just biting our tongues all day.)  Create a place where it's ok to say the things you're not allowed to say, and say them.  Scream them.  Write them down. Carve them into a tree limb and set the damned thing on fire.  So long as you are creating something.

Remind yourself that you are.

I type "resentment breeds" into Google and it automatically fills in the following options:

resentment breeds contempt
dependency breeds resentment

Contempt, resentment, dependency... and I just follow it all with a sigh.

It's really hard not to get overwhelmed, to get trapped in circular thinking that constantly just brings me back to negativity and anger. 

That is, when I can muster enough energy to be angry.

Sadness can get to anyone - it's not like you're not perfectly normal when this stuff makes you want to give up and sink to the bottom. But there's a difference between accepting what's happening as being something temporary or able to be changed, and accepting that it will never change and it's useless to try anything else.

Be angry when things aren't "right" - whatever that may mean. But don't just be angry. Do something about it.

My problem right now is anger mixed with fear. The anger is the stand up and shout feeling, and the fear sticks out an arm, grabs anger's coattails, and pulls it back down into its chair. 

Because what if someone noticed?
What if someone heard?
What would we do if that little bit we have, that's not even enough to get by on right now, was taken away?

Powerless sucks. It feels like dependency and it breeds resentment. I want to depend on myself to stay alive and make it through another day/week/month/year. But when every small move is dependent on someone else - their whim, their mood, their decision to not mention something to you until the last minute or to hold onto a grudge - it's hard not to want to give up and give in.

Screw that.

Google also said "familiarity breeds resentment"  
.....so I'm going to try something new.

So the entire month of March was, apparently, building up to a complete nervous breakdown.

I started a second job, didn't want to, but not paying my own rent for the fourth month in a row seemed like a bad idea.  It's yet another production job, where I (and pretty much, I alone) make all of the products for a li'l store.  That in itself is fine; I like making delicious goodies.  In my heart, I think that feeding people is one of the best and purest ways to show love.  In my oh-so-few-and-far-between Buddhist-y moments, I think about all the people I made happy with those little goodies, and it's almost worth it.

But most of this work is kind of tedious.  Monotonous.  Dare I say....boring?  Yeah, it's fucking boring.  Sometimes I get to create my own shit, and those days are glorious.  I glide around the kitchen with a dumbass smile on my face, listening to the food talk to me.  And it's great.

But mostly, yeah.  Boring.  And sadly, when I do boring shit, my mind goes a mile a minute.

And then reality sets in, and I think about all those people I made happy, how much money my boss made, and how I still (goddamnit) can't pay the rent and have enough to live on for the rest of the week.  Buddhist-y moment: gone.  Joy taken in making people happy: gone.  Anger at the inpenetrability of the wage system: skyfuckinghigh.

This, of course, is a terrible way to live.  Anger breeds more anger which breeds rage, and when you feel stuck and are raging, the only place to put all of that energy is into yourself.  These are not the kinds of jobs where you have the opportunity to air your grievances to a manager, boss, or HR person, because they'll just go out and find another little pseudo-foodie who they can pay a dollar less than they were paying you to do essentially the same work.  Your successes, (like pulling a thousand pieces out of your ass for a catering they decided to tell you about with less than a day's notice, even though they knew about it for a month), merely enable a cycle of more of the same.  Your failures get stockpiled for future reference.  It's a lose-lose.

I know, I know, this is pretty much the same old story anywhere you go.  I don't know anyone who doesn't hate their job.  Or....you know....jobs.

But I realized that the problem with this system is that all of the exhaustion, all of the rage...it keeps me from the things I'm meant to do.  It keeps all of us.  Too tired to pour our energy into our true passions.  Complacent.

Now, I don't think there's some great conspiracy to keep us all down.  It just kinda works out that way. Unchecked, the 'way things are' have a way of turning into a bigger, uglier version of themselves.  And we--all of us, now--get so caught up in the day to day that we forget to keep track of how the day to day is making tiny little shifts into the fucked up system of tomorrow.

So I'm challenging myself to not lose my shit to the day to day.  I might be exhausted. I might feel completely stuck. My voice, in these dipshit little jobs, might be completely unheard.  And you know, I may not be able to pay the rent.  But that doesn't mean that I'll also succumb to the bullshit.  It doesn't mean that I have to be silent in the rest of my life, and in fact, if I am, it means I've given up.

And that ain't happening.