It's the sense of anxiety when everything has been going well for too long. It's the friend's story that comes to mind when you're reading about the “life lies” people start out telling in small ways which come to subsume their existence. It's the depressive episode and pending financial ruin you may casually scroll past on facebook as someone chooses to share something more than their latest vacation pictures. It's the edge between chaos and order.
I've spoken before about always needing to know that I can “lose my shit,” in a manner of speaking. The randomness that accompanies each moment is where my last vestige of icky “hope” ever resides. The sheer ignorance of not knowing who I'll meet today, what I'll discover online, or what flash of inspiration I might get after the random array of experiences mash and condense is as little of and the whole of why I bother to keep living. Well, that, and handful of Marvel movies and television series I'd like to complete.
In less dramatic and foreboding terms, that precarious place is what general “society” seeks to undermine. Terms like “the middle class” and “the state” are meant to instantiate the idea of immovable forces of stability or conservatism. I would guess that most of us get paid every week or two. The implicit assumption that you're going to persistently wake up on time, not crash your car, slog/enjoy whatever it is you're doing, and make decisions for your future self in every committed act of your current moment. To get that long-term job you have to commit to four or more years of school. If your caregivers had any “sense,” they made your transition into doing so a “natural” one.
There's been a random array of terms floating around my head. “Natural” is one. “Expectation” another. In our seemingly demonic capitalistic and hedonistic society, a return to the natural seems to get a lot of buzz. Let's get back to the old ways of doing government! You know, when they were “sane.” Let's return to the earth and chuck as many babies as we can to erase even the memory of bath water. I was asked what I expect to work on and get better at in doing at my job. They want to know how to keep me, but because they're wise enough to know we're always failing, how do we codify a target? Let's protect the authority of a mini-manager worker bee reinforced or undermined in each, hopefully mechanized and consistent, decision to make the state's will be done.
The horrifying and, hopefully solid attempt to tie that last 4 paragraphs together, truth of the matter seems to be that it's always an unknowable chance encounter. Did you arrive at a good place just because it feels that way, or is it the last good sensation you'll have for the discernible future? Many things are going right and wrong at once influencing your “now.” Maybe every feeling of things going well is because you've made yourself incapable of seeing how they're not. Maybe even after you ferret out the lies at the center of your being you're not strong enough. Maybe the new job isn't going to help, the new partner another flimsy and fallible shield, and the time invested never found the decency to even teach you anything.
Maybe there isn't anything to “figure out.” Do I ever really figure something out in writing? I sometimes gain a temporary resolve as I set sail on a thought process about things so specific as to be perfectly arbitrary to anyone else reading. I don't know that you can “learn” yourself to a “good” place. The monk, stoic, or enviable dispositionally biased example are always human. Every utterance you can take about as far as your own. Or, don't make idols. The “cool” cats have as many examples that would hurt the brand as anyone else.
“Radical” is another floating term. The radicals on either side of the political arena. Those willing to allow bat-shit into their moralisms. The “radical act” forever enshrined as the sheer ability to pick otherwise. Radical is localized. The rebels have always and will always exist. The counter-culture exists across literature and history. The revolutions are on a cycle mildly less predictable than the phases of the moon. “You can't say that!” Don't kick me off the ice barge, no matter that it's been set adrift. That's a nice description of the war going on for your mind. The faux-stability fighting against the faux-capacity to dramatically alter the course of events. Alter in a manner you'd prefer, that is. We can always quickly and easily destroy.
I'm looking forward to the weird places I might get into when I'm alone. I don't know what motivated this beyond falling asleep and waking up too early. I think a line I'm about to fall on either side of has made itself a little clearer. Or maybe I had something to do with it. I don't know, but I think I'd like to try walking a new precarious edge for a while, as if there's more than one.
No comments:
Post a Comment