It is quiet outside. A helicopter flies by. A car passes and is gone, leaving a wake of hissing air, like a paintbrush passing lazily through a cup of water. The houses are dark. Everyone is asleep in their colony barracks. Good workers synced up with the good rhythm.
Helicopters and planes make me feel small. They pass sometimes noisily, sometimes silently, glinting metal in the daytime, winking with white and red lights at night. They remind me there is a teeming world out there that I haven't yet seemed to join.
See, images of the cosmos make me feel like I belong. Like I am part of something wonderful. But planes and helicopters are alienating. We are putting up sheets of glass and metal to separate ourselves. To make ourselves feel more alone.
But they are inventions of human ingenuity. They are fantastic achievements. They allow us to do great things. I suppose it is the era. I've been in school all my life, my mind crammed with information and directions all the way. Always directions. I had to eventually split off and ignore all the directions and simply explore for myself. But it always comes to the tests. You're right or wrong. Be creative on your own time, whenever that is. But they said to get through college and you'll be fantastic. You'll get a house and a car and be independent. Follow the instructions and you'll be okay.
But I don't feel independent. I work all week and I'm too tired for anything when I get home. I feel agoraphobic on the weekends and I'm tired of the media that is supposed to keep me company in my solitude. I want to take flights to other parts of the world but it is so expensive. I want to see the world but the news says it is falling apart. I want to take a train to Washington to protest with others in pain but the ticket is expensive and I have to work. I want to drive across the country but gas is like chains. Funny, it seems as though the rise and fall of this empire coincided with the ebb and flow of cheap oil. When will we learn?
A recent repair to my car cost me 700 dollars. An entire two weeks of constantly doing something that is meaningless to me. Now my car works so I can continue to write meaningless fabrications to sell more junk that I don't care about. We are taunted with media that says life is short, that one should grip life's passions firmly and enjoy. But maybe only do this in the comfort of your home with the media. Buy some more when you tire of the old. But don't do it in the real world because it is scary.
I feel I am paid too little, but then scold myself for caring about money. I hate money. As an economic mechanism it rewards the mercenaries and the hacks, and punishes the creative and the honest through deprivation (only generally speaking of course).
I ordered a sandwich today and the two employees whispered to each other and I watched them. They saw that I was watching and became reserved and fearful. I wondered if it was about me, or about my observation and awareness, or both. I also wondered if it was just a series of misunderstandings and unnecessary calculations that were keeping us suspended from each other. I wanted to tell them that all of this was unnecessary and that I know what it is to have a meaningless job, and that we are all human and the fact that I am a customer does not make me superior in that instant. And yes, we are all uncertain of what happens next, and that though we are all so sensitive to every little word and body movement and that yes we all have to be so careful and delicate to each other that everything in fact will be okay and that we are all friends whatever the case.
The talking heads tell us that everyone starts with a crappy job and that if you work hard enough you'll be fantastic, but it seems when I search for jobs all I can find are crappy jobs or even unpaid ones. And the numbers tell us that this perception is true. That we as a people are being sold out. We are surrounded daily by lies and cynical attitudes and this is not how a democratic society works. There are people who are living with private jets and multimillion dollar yachts yet we can barely pay the bills and the poor are dying and this is not what they talked about in school.
There is much to be sore about with today's human reality. But there is much more to be glad about with the greater physical reality itself. Life is beautiful and even this disintegrating organism we are trapped inside now will clear the way for something new and exciting. Sometimes I feel I am helplessly tossed between these peaks and valleys wherein I am a completely different person for each with different thoughts and fixations. An idea itself is a multifaced prism that can only be viewed from one angle at a time, though you can choose which angle to view (or simply oscillate from view to view while surging on biochemical waves as in my case).
Dogs are creatures that offer unconditional love and I am reminded of this as I open my door to find one of them sitting on the floor, a smile seemingly spreading across his face as it is revealed by the widening wedge of light. Living creatures of many species can delight in each others' existence. We are pleased with nature's ingenious bio machines. And those little bio machines love us don't they? We give them food and scratches and pats and affection. We are like demi gods.
I strike away at my guitar strings and find the melodies to come much easier and with less contrivance. It is meditation and expression. It is a way out of this labyrinth of constricting abstractions my poisoned mind lashes me with day to day.
Yes, our higher thoughts have become so entwined and overcomplex that they seem to be stifling our emotive engines; they become suffocating as we grow more agitated. Thank goodness there is a way out. Thank goodness we can reset ourselves and grow again.
There is now another me that is forming on its own. It remains hidden and much of it lies in various electronic pockets on the internet and in various corners of my mind that I keep hidden from the squares. My public self is radically different from this self that is still forming, which seems to be peeking out here and there, such as from the growing hair. In fact the difference between the two selves is so stark that psychologists would probably call it a pathology, but I think it is just a new normality. It is a necessity. To survive in this dying system we must be these strange, fabricated creatures that they tried to form in school and at work and in the media but there are these new selves that are ballooning out that cannot be stopped. Such is the nature of repression. It will always come out somewhere else.
I am not entirely pleased with what I have written. Much of it could have been more organized. It could have been more detailed. But it was all supposed to come out this way. It had to unwind quickly as it came to mind or I would lose it or deform it. That is the point of letting go anyways. That is the point of ah...this life this life this life.
