[898] Both Ways

I'm still thoughtful about a status I wrote this morning, copied under the blog, and after listening to part of an episode from Know Your Enemy discussing a prominent Jewish leftist who turned conservative while mixing in the intellectual circles of the 50s and 60s.

 

I try to emphasize in moments between frothing that I'm but one, infinitely small, window into the world, often befuddled, confused, and barely approximating the language that would “best” describe where I'm coming from. I approach sharing and vocal exercise with the idea that they are stomachs that need feeding or muscles that need stretching and conditioning. It's an analogy for everything worthwhile or terrible in life. You are what you do, or if you're stuck trying, what you're working on and shooting for.

 

As such, walking the line between “what I feel” and “how I think” can seem perfectly arbitrary or endlessly ambiguous to someone reading a blog in isolation or who is wholly unconcerned with giving me any credit. If I doubt that my tone or word choice was altogether awesome, I'm gonna bring it up. I'm gonna ask myself why and make another pass. A lot of that is just work I think you do as an individual to keep yourself honest. I want you to believe I'm doing my best, but I also need to be confident that it is, in fact, my best representation of the moment, if nothing else.

 

I want new ideas. It underlies why I bother to be an “everythingist” about life. I watch all the shows for a line or character I haven't met before or a point of connection with a stranger where something harder to recognize is never known. I want to have a perspective on different mediums of story-telling, like podcasts, and attempt to discern the “best” messages I've been missing or strategies for explaining something in a skillful way I lack.

 

In Know Your Enemy, the hosts are very giving of their praise and cutting in their criticism for different writers. I might choke at the idea of a “conservative intellectual,” but it means something that has practical and longstanding implications. They read the books. They describe the psychology, justifications, and emotional tenor of people compelled to functionally destroy what may otherwise be a salient opinion of fiscal responsibility or foreign policy but for all of the racism and ego. They point out how weird it is for a prominent public figure to brag about his A+ grades at 35 and to ignore his “self-made” conception of success started with a publishing company passed down from his father.

 

I really don't want to be that dumb. I try to incorporate the people that have shaped my perspective and drive. I try to shower praise and include your perspective into the larger project. It is very real for me how little I can do alone. That comes with it the burden of making sure people grasp and respect themselves and relative place in the picture so you can honestly discuss how to move forward. That comes with some actual vocalization and engagement with perspectives that are different from yours and approaching them with the patience and openness to ask more than tell.

 

For whatever I do in fact excel at, I have extreme deficits and perfectly visible blind-spots that almost everyone is keen to keep secret from me. Occasionally when they interject, I have a habit of pointing out a contradiction or confounding variable that becomes the pivot to a meta-discussion about the discussion and eventual derailing. One such instance is the offered argument that “I need to take responsibility for how I come across.” Superficially easy to say and agree with right? That alone is good advice when you're dealing with a world that is going to judge you and hold power over you. What happens when you breathlessly move on to your next argument that “you shouldn't care what people think?”

 

The details start to matter. Well, you should care about what the people close to you think, but not the ignorant masses lazily judging. You should at least vocalize you are taking responsibility for your “harsh” language, and then continue to do it anyway. When we feel personally attacked, we want the other person to take responsibility. When we feel we're “just being honest,” fuck the haters.

 

I don't believe you get anywhere if you don't start honest and believe the other person is too. Norman Podhoretz, the conservative on focus of this podcast episode, was friends with James Baldwin. He went on something of a racist tirade towards Baldwin who told him to write all of his grievances down and publish it, which he did, and it became a notable historical essay. I love this story, because I regard James Baldwin as an extreme truth teller first and foremost concerned with the truth. He didn't lash out and fight back, he said put that naked ass of your honest expression on paper to someone very comfortable displaying their naked ass, fast forward 50 years, we get a coherent throughline and useful perspective on how to discuss racist cultural issues.

 

I want a zeal for accountability. I'm fine with “crazy” people, so long as they are honest in their craziness, and we honestly account for their influence or what we're going to do about it. There are sincere racists that I want us all to be on the same page about how large we empower their influence. There are 74 million proud fascists which you shouldn't shy away from calling fascists. Your boss or owner is probably greedy and proud they sit above you, high on the perch of their small window. Lazy and loose talk will allow you to try and have it both ways, a false notion of your own righteousness married to perpetually justified ignorance of the many roles you're playing in destroying what we need to survive.

 

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From daily life to catastrophes, I can't shake the thought that it's a product of over-thinking. Over-thinking is not critical thinking. Over-thinking is coming to a relative or often obvious conclusion, and then doing nothing. Over-thinking is a coy held-harmless description about agency and taking responsibility for the moment.

 

I haven't been particularly anxious this week of snow days and very little money making. I'm not worried about the bills, the car or shed debt, or myself as an ardent TV watcher. This morning the sinking stomach started. I'm reminded how good I felt being able to pick up scrap again. I'm going to see how my play to leverage a new job works to let me make something worthwhile out of my current one.

 

It's obvious I should be paid enough to live and reward what I do. Every day I don't build how I'm going to live the obvious truth and consequences of that is on me. The "cling to practical" model of how to cope in two-week stints is obviously a path to hell. I'm not anxious about advocating for myself. I'm anxious about how hopeless it feels to do so. I'm hearing the "professional" excuses. I'm anticipating the open questions and work of mitigating an attitude that has crippled how we are to conceive of and relate to ourselves.

 

I want so little and increasingly obvious things. It makes for a stark contrast when I evaluate how little the systems I'm plugged into are designed to provide for those wants. If I want to grow, the system wants me in debt. If I want to show up and work every day, the system gives me an endless sea of entertainment. If I want more responsibility, the system says we should hold several meetings to dissect this curious notion of "responsibility," and maybe you should consider "doing your job."

 

I'm to believe that "fixes" or "hope" lies in some "generational struggle." These systems are failing me every day. They're freezing Texans to death. They're starving children. They're addicting you to opiates. The excuses for why the world feels like shit are happening right now. Can you hear them? Can you recognize the familiar patterns and design?

 

Why don't we, obviously, hold ourselves accountable? Why don't we force power to pay up? Why don't we strike? Do you want dramatically more than me at the expense of everyone else and the future? Why are you quiet? Why are you pretending you are a "good person" who can sit and wait until "the world" will bother? Are you a coward, or cunt?

 

Listen to the array of excuses and pleading for sympathy that washes over you from the last question. Feel the guilt. Watch how you ignore the real enemy and focus on my tone and word choice. Then forget this moment when someone pats you on the head and dismisses your needs in a "polite," professional, political manner. Come back to your easy target when you can't sort your feelings out, but you'll be damned if you're not going to continue thinking and praying about it. And you don't need my negativity trying to provoke you.

 

There is no hero if you're not one. It's obvious, at least to me, that I'm not the problem or enemy. I speak. I fight. I create. I state my goals and work on them. I pay attention. Do I want allies? If I could recognize any, sure. I'm not alone, but our club is too small for the size of the problem. It's got its own obligations and personal problems too. But it stays honest and fights back. It remains open and informed. It wants to isolate and judge and believe you can be left alone to suffer your decisions. But it knows the consequences of abandoning the project. The cancerous cultural mass is consuming us all.

[897] Gomu Ningen

I'm on the verge of being caught up on One Piece. It's been a 2 or 3 year saga, serious periods of not watching at all, and nearly every episode sped to twice normal speed. It's not an accomplishment. It's not something to be proud of. It's not even a show for which I've watched the most episodes. It's just another show in a lengthy perspective-informing bender on what I'm to understand from my seat observing culture, even if Luffy is my spirit animal.

Regular watchers of anime will know this one falls into the same category of many others. There's an underlying thread of constantly improving, training, or getting stronger as the chaos of a world full of enemies ups the stakes every arc. A previously perceived unbeatable foe is actually the key to unlocking new abilities and an awareness of your own power. Enemies become friends. Characters you may not enjoy end up getting normalized for their look or play some integral part you wouldn't guess upon first meeting them. It's got jokes, it's got fan service, and like most things that I've spent a lot of time with as I near the end, I don't want it to end. At least with this series, it's likely got several more years, and I've never read the manga.

I vibe with the thesis of normalizing a certain kind of struggle or exercise of power. I think I've felt what might have been my ultimate knock-out blows become warm-ups, both in periods of actual physical activity, but also psychologically, and as it pertains to coping skills. I don't know if you've heard, but I hate everything and am super negative, so the fact I've managed to keep anything together or going at all is nearly miraculous. (You wanna talk about comments that have stuck with me, I genuinely have yet to fully understand or digest being called “negative” as assertively as I heard it however many years ago, so, good one, Chelsea.)

Right now, as it pertains to my cartoonish conception of my ever-growing power, I think about the cold. Our heat has been out nearly all winter. Space heaters weren't cutting it. I've got make-shift insulation in the form of blankets draped from the ceiling. I could, in theory, help the situation marginally by filling in certain gaps and holes in the room addition. (Which, I'll remind you, is arguably more extended garage than proper room.) But as inconvenient and shitty as being cold can be, it hasn't risen psychologically to the point that it's required an immediate fix. We've made quasi-stabs at it, watched the Youtube videos, sourced the illegal-for-us-to-buy and expensive refrigerant, and found a guy who might even be able to help but for the sudden onslaught of snow preventing his travel.

I've been colder. I've spent nights out here without power, under a mountain of blankets, and without several layers of appropriately warm clothes. I've worked and carried heavy things through the pre-paved unmowed hellscape of my yard. It doesn't mean I don't want to be cozy and warm no matter what, but the drama and pain and degree of being annoyed is dampened. I don't regard the cold as something happening to me, more a problem on an infinite list of problems I haven't prioritized. That shift in perspective lends itself to all of my ongoing efforts on what I'd like to create.

Luffy doesn't stop. He's impulsive and kind of dumb. He never gets more amped or focused than when he's trying to save or defend his friends. He takes people at their word. He says the quiet part out loud and is almost certain to force an alteration of the plan. He's perpetually looking to learn and explore. He renames people to fit his understanding or memory. He's always hungry.

Me, human, takes enough time out of his days and nights to watch a ton of TV. I still make moves. I look for righteous fights. I maintain focus on how I need to feel during the ride more than what I expect from the future. I'm doing things like leveraging my ability and awareness in aggressive ways to attempt to make a wage that's kept up with inflation. I'm politely, but curtly, snapping back at dumb bitches telling us “we know what we signed up for” in response to someone talking about needing the money to survive and model habits our families require. I'm adopting the headache of insane and inane facebook messages in attempting to sell things.

Right now, on the ride, I'm warm, I'm full, my adopted outdoor cat just came home and jumped in my lap, and I've got the time and inclination to pause my show and reflect. Again, I recognize how many ways in which I've peaked. Again, I can describe the future as the series of doors left to open and peacefully acknowledge and accept the heaters that need fixed. They can be fixed, and I intend to fix them. What else do you need if you're living the truth of your intention and ability?

One of the reasons I enjoy anime is how nakedly *them* they are. The weird ones are comfortable in their weirdness, and then they don't register as weird anymore. If you looked at a random still from a scene of One Piece, your first impression might be that it's one of the goofiest things you've ever seen. How much snot needs to come out of a character's nose? Why is that guy's head in a hippo? It's a test of whether you can pull the substance from what your eyes may be telling you. How good of a story is it in its ability to wrap you up and immediately cut through the garishness while also letting you appreciate the creativity?

As with every show I've wanted or not wanted to end, it will. I'm often suspicious of people who stay too psychologically attached to one show or idea. I've gotten to be a super-fan about Firefly and certain video games, and the reasons for doing so were often about deficits in my real life. I wanted a kind of family or dramatic saga that my often boring or depressed and resentful environment was not offering. Over time, I've watched that depression and resentment grow, and the chasm between me and my “negativity” in what Allie and I have put together out here and whatever you want to make of how others are navigating their subversion, isolation, or poverty is on full display. Anyone feel like we've been diligently hammering away at the issues we railed about in college? Don't you feel the energy and hope in your intentioned and sustainable community?

I don't have a crew, and I'm not the captain. I'd love one, but I'd want everyone on it to be like the Straw Hats; their own powerhouse with their own stories and reasons and vital roles to play. Still, the dumbest, most naive, and childish part of me is trying to create something large enough to carry a crew through the unforgiving seas of fascism and almost certain death. That death is played with constantly in anime. The bullets are sliced or kicked. The Earth shatters in every direction after a fierce blow before a few deep breaths, and the hero stands back up. Certainly the stakes don't feel that high in our day-to-day lives.

The different crews are after a mythical treasure left by the last Pirate King. I suspect a future episode in which Luffy becomes the Pirate King and/or when he finds One Piece will not be the most memorable. They're something of forgone conclusions like in Game of Thrones when Jon Snow sits on the throne. It's the drops from the peaks that make your stomach wrench. It's when you're actually invested and are mitigating the consequences of loss in real time, keeping death close. You felt the dramatic deaths in Game of Thrones, and you feel them in One Piece, even if most are incredibly hard to kill.

One of the familiar criticisms of an anime like One Piece are the amount of filler-episodes and extended intro reminder redundancies. Boss battles can run for 20+ episodes, story arcs over the course of a 100. Part of what makes watching so many episodes so quick is that of 23:50 minutes, only 9 is new information. You're going to keep watching, just like you're going to continue to live every boring or miserable day of your life. Tension needs to build, right? Every episode of a series can't be a perfect 10 with surprising revelations and an end that leaves you silently struck.

I appreciate the kind of sleepiness of snow days and a binge, but equally enjoy being busy, sweaty, and putting together large creative pieces on how to go about this life game. It's a practice-turned-quasi compulsion. I can't rot. I can't slowly die a martyr for some stated ideal or conception of myself. I dare myself to contradict the forces that try to fuck with the example I wish to set, practical-filler-training-malevolent days be damned. I find the next wall or corner to be backed against, and fight through the idea I should settle down or die there. After all, I'm pretty much powerful or comfortable enough, and we all know how the battle is going to end.

[896] Magic Carpet Ride

Settled in for the snow-day-ish, let's begin.

I was a touch unsettled at the prospect of lunging into debt, attempting to get my truck fixed, for projects we're attempting to prepare for spring. I, again, forgot that I should be receiving a tax return, a stimulus check is coming, and I hadn't calculated a paycheck. I should still be “even” within $100 or so dollars over the next month, as opposed to being shackled to my job for a minimum of two.

I'm exploring how to get different certifications when it comes to doing I.T. work. I told my supervisor I plan to leverage not only the good work and efficiency I'm building into their visit system, but my proclivity to learn new things and change on a dime to see if my company will find the wisdom to pay me what I'm worth. She supports the plan. At the same time, I'm finding a kind of pace and resolve for how I engage in my job duties that I find eerily similar to the “comfort” or “familiarity” I found at DCS that had me clinging on for 2 years.

I compare that feeling to the endless fervent desperation to get things done and be “on” that I've managed to, more or less, subsume to what I'm considering a patient wisdom or beaten-into-me humility. Is there “something” you could be doing every day in service to your goals? Depending on how broad or specific your goal, sure. Is it worth it? Can it be assessed in the context of other goals and obligations? These questions are where it starts to get complicated.

My goals have certainly changed over the years, I believe on the whole for the better. Where I might have one day just wanted to be “generally rich,” I have a deeper appreciation for maintaining a contented-enough head-space from which to work in. I like when things feel personal and meaningful on my own terms. I've stated enough that I could pay the bills with a McDonald's-esc job, but I have yet to apply to fast-food in spite of my many points of disillusion about social work. Practically, I'm married to some form of devil for the discernible future, and this one pays a touch more.

I think actually living through all of the sacrifices and negotiations to get to where I am now has taught me considerably about how to prioritize things. I've trained myself to appreciate the good fortune I have when my car gets stuck a mere 5 minute walk from my house and I can pair music with my stride. I recall the images and expenses before I could look at my camera feeds and see projects completed or in-waiting. It makes me think about how difficult the transition from talking out of your ass about hopes and dreams and wrestling with the reality can be if you haven't experienced the work or are simply unwilling to do it.

The disconnect between generations I think embodies the space where discussions about work and what constitutes it takes place. The privileges afforded to generations previous are now weaponized resentments for what they feel is slipping away. My generation had to cope with their entire sense of being in the world systematically attacked. Add the baggage of our country's racial history and sexual inequalities. Add the financial crashes and useless exploitatively expensive degrees. We're broken as fuck and rarely want to admit how beyond meme-i-fying our medication regimens and prompting our celebrities to talk about their own mental health issues.

Say you're not generally as good as me at finding a process to ride through your insatiable desire to comment or bitch about things. Your struggle becomes tantamount to poverty. It's a poverty of spirit if nothing else. You can't be blamed, and much like things aren't going to change if you simply never get the money to afford your basic necessities, debated as they may be, there is no environment, self-help book, or series of interpersonal interactions that's going to magically show you the way to cope or “progress” through your feelings. You might know there's work to be done, but can't define it, never get the tools, and never be able to afford to keep things working over time. Your emotional break-even point is to drag yourself through the day and stave off the worst consequences while you still manage to meaningfully suffer. It's a suffering in service to a broader negligence and disregard for your being, and ironically resentful that you want the bare minimum.

My funds tend to stay “even.” My money is in my land and the potential of the tools I acquire. I rarely have the cash or am not buying things on credit. I liken this to how Amazon runs its accounting, never showing a profit, hiding its money in numbers games. Of course, I'm not making money like that, but I think an underlying logic holds true to both. My money is attempting to service a long-term vision. I don't go into debt for debt's sake, it's overwhelmingly an investment on what I can continue to do or do in a bigger way. My truck, for all of its headaches, has enabled more, considerably so, than it has cost.

I trace back what I'm doing to various pivotal points in how my perspective is being shaped. I don't get the tiny house without a place to put it, way to transport it, or credit card to buy it when I don't have the cash. All fairly large, for me, bets and long-term stories that combine into the “easy” and “quick” decision today. That house/shed is going to save me untold hours in the future attempting to build something like it, let alone the cost of materials for which I have an intimate understanding. An intimate understanding, again, born of a willingness to do the work on my room extension and other projects.

The experience chasm only grows. I'm not 22, extra insistent and incorrigible about spending every waking minute in pursuit of my latest idea, cost be damned. That time taught me a lot, not least, it isn't sustainable. Sustainable healthy practice takes a level of commitment and work that is considerably more than we culturally have a notion of. Individuals certainly take on projects or educational pursuits and remind us of the dedication it takes to get certified or promoted, but on the whole most of our future talk is reduced to a kind of bar banter. We shy away from the work knowing it's hard and we've loaded on years of baggage before the idea of voluntarily adopting ever more.

It's hard to find it simply within yourself to pursue anything. You know what your bottom really looks like, and it's a fraction of what you've put together so far. Most of us could be some level of quasi-vagrant if any movie-esc apocalypse scenario played out. We wouldn't like it, and some of us would be overly dramatic, but we'd do it. When you compare that potential reality to the fed, warm, superficially communal and riddled with distractions environment you currently occupy, why fight for more? It becomes an intellectual exercise and boundary pushing that, evolutionarily speaking, is meaningless without an outward compelling force. Why divine reason-enough for manifesting yourself beyond familiar bubbles?

I think the question by itself is an overwhelmingly compelling argument for complacency, whether people understand it as such or not. “Complacency” is a word that doesn't pack a connotative punch given what I believe can be understood about the drama and degree of consequences. It's disguised as a genuine sense of comfort, or worse, “conservative.” It suggests a state of being that is, by default, not doing enough accounting for the constant state of change that we're all experiencing. We don't seek to remind ourselves of this or we'll almost immediately remember that we're going to die and our decisions matter.

I worry about success. I think people are going to drive themselves even further away. I consider what I'm pursuing now a dream-like opportunity that has been clawed away from a reality perfectly ambivalent of my existence. No series of “opportunists” are jumping to be a part of what should be our creation. Why? The excuses are infinite and personal, comfortable and complacent, familiar and in keeping with a baggage story they haven't chronicled in almost 900 blogs.

It can be complicated joining forces or negotiating goals and budgets, but it's absolutely necessary. The level of “risk” it takes to build what it will take to survive is only mitigated by a shared burden and vision. If we can only martial those forces in service to insurrection and war, we're absolutely fucked. Whether we want to make the decision to face that head on, now, together, or be forced into a permanent isolation that kills us slowly, and then all at once, is one presented in every moment. We have individual countries or examples of who we know we'd rather be more like. Adopting our share of the work is to wrench the culture from the hands of the violent and negligent. Are you living in the world you feel comfortable dying in?