[1112] The River

There's a theme from Star Trek, Buffy, and Angel that is sticking out to me. The whole crew is under a spell, and maybe one character isn't affected or is the first to see that something is off. Because it's TV, that character devines a way to gain allies, break the spell, and explain the anomaly. No matter how many times it happens, whether the arc is resolved in a single episode or over several, no one ever seems to remember that this precise thing has happened before. They can't seem to build it into their wisdom banks and offer it as a first hypothesis about what's happening this time. They don't build systems or protocols that anticipate it happening again.

Exploring that narrative arc or the pitfalls in the people afterwards feels like it could be its own short-story. I think part of the reason it's sounding bells in my head is with each "random" or "lazy" response I get to my reflections about my nonprofit efforts. My blog auto-posts to reddit as I must be something of a curious and lightly masochistic beast. Invariably, there's someone who says one of the handful of same things over again. "You sound manic." (or other armchair diagnosis) "I didn't read all of that." "I don't know what to say, but here's a lot of words anyway."

It's instinctively dismissive, reductive, condescending - - the internet. But also, it's the same attitudes I encounter in social work. The people who beg for court intervention or involuntary confinement are the ones who adopt the same attitude about their perspective and behavior. They occupy a "safe" or familiar and protected universe where their actions and words make a certain kind of sense to them, and in fact their whole crew, and you're the only one who has a problem with them. The elixir, unfortunately, often came in a compellingly-worded appeal letter to the judge and sometimes years of involuntary therapy before we could put a child back in your custody. For some, the spell is absolute, and they fuck up large enough to stay incarcerated or lose their parental rights altogether.

As with everything, there's a spectrum. We're all under different spells and happy to reinforce them well past a healthy point. I've read the Vulture article on Joss Whedon which discusses the power of fandom. Joss is a person, complicated, "good" and "bad," and not everything he's done in 57 years is perfectly respectable, mature, or with a deep appreciation for his experiences that drive his behavior. If you're wearing a "Joss Whedon is my God" T-shirt, you're likely going to find every excuse one does for any god to dismiss or situate their divine behavior.

One thing that never works against the spell is to just call it out. That, by itself, doesn't understand the nature of spells. It's to create a wholly different world of meaning from whatever you might say about a truly universal or objective and "mathematical" conception of existence. If you talk normally, and the rest of the cast can only understand you through song, "You're all singing, and it's crazy," literally doesn't translate. It can't be interpreted anymore than white noise. Moreover, when you're talking about spells people adopt in the real world, they have a deeply invested interest in denying there's anything else to be said or learned. Every pissed off democrat decrying republican "hypocrisy" has no conception of the nature of the problem or the irony. Neither lens on the world can even imagine what a "crack" is.

Writing is me calling things out. It's received predictably and I don't expect that to ever change. I call things out that I need to better understand as "cracks" on my lens into the world or spells we're all under. I want to know what I can build into my anticipatory framework. If I think I see the same kind of meme too often, the same kind of show, hear the same punditry and propaganda, hear the same excuses, or silence, or not-so pleasantries I want to know if there's a way to navigate it so I don't suffer in ways I don't have to. I'm going to suffer, as anyone who's read one of my "manic-sounding" posts delights in pointing out, but the nature of it is intentional and incidental more than wanton or irreconcilable.

I don't know all the spells. I don't come from a place that presumes to intimately understand how compelling every narrative can be or the infinitely intricate ways it can be weaved together to preclude action or change. I just know there are spells. I know their nature. I know some of their patterns. I can't figure those patterns out "just thinking" in anxiety circles. There's no actual bell that rings once you've used a cliche enough times to constitute literally not thinking or maliciously antagonizing.

If I had to point to one culturally-compelling spell, it's denial. I think I'm the millionth person to speak to it, but there's an infinite list of things one could wish to deny in any given moment of their life. It's a sublingual instinct, "NO!" to keep yourself "safe" and "comfortable." If you experience revulsion or disgust, you've got a millions-of-years instinctual legacy to respect that or follow-up mechanisms for weaponizing it. We deny our capacity and potential more than anything.

When I first started writing, you would not have "persuaded" me that I would be doing it for 20 years. I didn't have the tools or the language to discuss the utility of writing. I was dismissive and judgmental to my own writing, let alone if I would have been presented to anyone else's. I was under spells of immaturity, hatred, desperation and loneliness. I was at the mercy of the cultural norms I grew up in. I had no concept that I could even have my own words or perspective and understanding of a situation. I could only suffer everything I didn't know or the rules I took for granted.

I knew I needed something "more," but I had no idea what that looked like. I think it's precisely here that people "find god" or "get spiritual," because the cracks amass, and you're alone, and you're incoherent, but you still crave the certainty and "perfection" of your perception that your doubts betrayed. I didn't become "autistically obsessed" with reading about religion or scientific refutations of religious arguments unless I was fighting against an all-encompassing, and wrong, series of notions about myself. Notions pertaining to the girl I liked too much and the assumptions about my inevitable future given my academic performance, looks, or demeanor.

What did I really need more of? Meaning. I needed things to make sense. I needed to see a consistent cause and effect relationship that helped me keep my mood and behavior oriented. I didn't understand the depth of the crazy-making contradictions of the sea of nonsense words I was swimming in. I didn't understand how we break ourselves along the rocks of generational trauma and unarticulated responsibilities. I had no idea what my role or "purpose" could or should be, let alone the notion that I'd have to dictate it, and do it persistently, alone, in evolving ways, or it didn't really exist. That's a fucking huge undertaking.

If I connect with anyone, ever, it's because piece by piece, over decades, I'm trying to puzzle together the nature of these stories we're telling ourselves and needlessly suffering. Are you really an "addict?" Is your "loving" relationship serving you? Are you "just saying" a series of empty or hateful epithets you can't even recognize as such? It's always yes and no, and it's always changing, and it only gets better when you can label the spell with your own words and trust that when you say them you mean them. You were the cause, and you expect a certain effect. If you're not getting the effect you desire, you have the power to recite a new spell, stop casting them altogether, or look for the intended effect to take place elsewhere.

If you fundamentally deny your potential and power of your words, so it follows the story of your actions. You don't understand the harm. You don't understand the conditioning it takes to carry out the meaningful work to maintain or improve. This is as real to me as it is the physical exhaustion I do or don't feel in attempting to work on projects on my land. Week 4 of hauling scrap, fence building, or rock dispersal feels dramatically different than days 1 or 2. It's easy to describe any task as fairly simple or straight-forward, until the weather isn't perfect, or the tool breaks, or you get sick, or literally any reason, or excuse, arrives for you to deny what it's going to take to get the job done.

Your posture matters. You need to demonstrate for yourself in a consistent way that walking "like that" is going to cause spine issues. Using the wrong tool is going to get you hurt. Making the same appeal to the same people in the same way and only finding yourself resentful and exhausted is a you problem. You're caught under the spell singing a very personal song only you can hear and the rest of the world thinks you look crazy. Can you even wake up from your own spell? Can you resist the urge, redirect the craving, to join someone else's? Yes and no. Can you exercise the process and language to identify and dispel versus deny regardless? Yes.

Welcome to the work. Each time you affirm and say "yes" you inch in a chosen direction more than you suffer one you didn't. Yes, I can. Yes, that may be true. Yes, there's a road to explore here. Yes, I grant that is your perspective and yes I hope we can both respect the limits and potential of perspectives.

"I am whatever you say I am. If I wasn't, then why would I say I am?"

[814] Sharp Objects

I think this'll be one of those blogs that I've tried to write for so long, and tested so many ways to start, it's going to feel several degrees of disjointed, but I'm tired of not writing and want to get the word vomit out.

I think the word “progressive” is presumptuous. Progress describes the pieces of a story or process that start and eventually end with something that's taken for granted as worthwhile. “Progressives” imagine a series of social policies that are meant to speak towards equal opportunity or the staying of disenfranchising history. Progress is thought simultaneously with “gain.” The people involved picked up perspectives or relationships. “The real treasure was what we learned along the way.” Progress, as conceived of as the “positive” or “affirmative” carries an undue nobility or incivility for things that don't feel as though they are aiding you on your quest. The realities of those things often get ignored instead of incorporated or wrestled and contained.

A few things have reminded me of how to continue thinking sideways instead of up. At work, positions open often enough for a mildly different job with about the same pay. The State doesn't cultivate and harvest leaders or visionaries. The State walks you right up the line you can tolerate, and then offers to walk you down it until the scenery of something new keeps you chugging along another 6 months or year. As you “progress” through your career, they tell you to be excited at the opportunity to learn different aspects and “take something away” from your time there. Is it a very personal lesson regarding your emotional turmoil or an indomitable will instead of enough money? Always.

I think about myself in charge of my modest, but successful, entrepreneurial entity. When I have my dozen employees and niche blogs want to “hear my story.” I did an AMA on reddit once while I was working the coffee shop. I spent several hours tearing through the idea that anyone can just do something like that without people giving them money and trusting and relying on them in spite of a system designed for you to fail. Whatever I create in the future, no manual for how you can do it too should include, “get lucky on Craigslist and find x, y, or z” or “sell your body, save, and get real lonely and tolerant of rural living surprises.” I think it was Robert Rodriquez who said on Bill Maher he did a drug study to fund his first movie, so the sentiment would always reduce to “be infinitely creative, and stay healthy.”

Would I have “progressed” in my, very lazily conceived, goal of “retiring by 30?” I didn't even imagine a life past the age of 30 because I was sure I would pretty much have gotten whatever I was aiming for. At 31, technically, it's taken me like 9 years to get the kind of smoke and rumbles of the ability to keep playing the experimental business game. I've had the land for almost 3, a livable house for less than 6 months, the shed 2 years ago, and I've already got the paycheck en route to confidently say I'm no more than a month and a half from getting out of debt that matters. You know, when I type what my life has looked like out like this, it's occurring to me the severity of my compulsion to get what I think I want. I've spent blips of time securing my future. There's a version of this paragraph where 34 or 37 step in for 31 and anyone who reads is going to find me an impossible cunt in my casual reference to what I have, as though what I have right now isn't appreciable enough.

I remember thinking as a kid that I would be “properly successful” when I could afford a big screen TV. I idolized TV, and it was the “cool parents” or rich person in movies who always had one. I obviously had no idea the degree in which TV technology would progress, and could have a dozen of those TVs for the price of what one 65” big black box would have cost back then. Once I got my first big TV, I felt great. I found it for free, and got it repaired for like $100 bucks. I still enjoy it, and my other one I got at Wal-Mart. I like all of my toys and electronics on down the line. The wants didn't stop. The desire multiplier is always in play.

Can you “progress” in such accumulation? Many books and philosophies on that have soundly landed on “no.” Owning isn't appreciating. One of my TVs is quite heavy. It feels like less of a gift when you can't get it moved in, or even across the room, by yourself. A giant organization or a ton of money in and of itself aren't going to do it for me. I have too much stuff already that I've found for free that waits to be put into circulation. I've had considerably more money and did precisely nothing with it until I found the land. I will always find it wildly instructive to consider what I did with my in-class Star-bucks, give them away, when I had accumulated too much and had nothing left to buy. It's not enough to have the money, you have to know how to use it. It's not enough to have the idea, you have to see evidence of you working it. It's the process, not progress. It's the journey, not the destination.

There's probably no greater testament to my underlying obsessive tendencies than when I play video games. A “challenge” section in Spider-Man I'll replay a hundred times for several hours trying to crack how to get ranked at the top. I have to come in first in racing games, marathon races with a slip-up at the end are no exception. There's a zone of “do it, do it, do it” that provokes severe headaches that get ignored, reactive explosions of swearing or hitting things, and just a general “nothing outside of this matters” feeling. It's possible. It's just a bunch of code that wants to be appeased, and there's only so many ways you can continue to fuck up or time you can inhabit the incorrect mental space before you get there.

A similar sensation, though more dreadful, takes place when it comes to doing other work I don't particularly enjoy. At least the video game, I picked it. Paperwork or asshole parent and perpetrator interviews? I have to get paid. A degree of civility and trampling over what my body conceives of as the best time to sleep? There’s a persistent force working against my intention and what I'd like to try and control for. I excel at getting things done or achieving not because I want to. I have to. The alternative is a black abyss of spiraling self-loathing and other not-so broad abstractions of accepted shit into your life.

I have a coworker who has anxiety attacks. She's traced it back to when she had to ensure her sick step-father got his medication several times a day. If he didn't take them at the right times, he could get much sicker or die. So the same sense of “I have to pay attention, I have to get this right” is embedded in her. It was traumatizing to be her age and thinking about being responsible for maybe getting someone killed by not doing what she needed to.

Her story got me thinking about my relationship to school and trying to get approval. My mom was less of a bitch when I got good grades or would read a book. It only occurred to me much later in life how many parents get off on the idea of their smart kids, especially if they don't have to spend countless hours going over the work with them or paying for extra help. Being exceptional at school or a kind of perfect working choir boy kept me safe. So much so, I remember a dinner once where I was trying to tell my mom about a book I read, and she was either tired or had a bad day at work, and was so dismissive of my story, I'm talking about it 20 years later. The only thing she seemed to consistently like about me, being smart and engaged, she dismissed.

Joss Whedon posted an article talking about 5 lies we tell ourselves about trauma. It's a pretty on-the-nose kind of thing about downplaying and making unfair comparisons. It's the fake aspiration that things will get better without change or acceptance. The line that I've thought most about is the idea of control. The people who wrote the article became unbearable in the amount of things they felt the need to control for. Control became “safety and security.” They were told by a therapist that in reality, they only control about 3% of their daily lives, midnight stomps through the house on patrol be damned.

3%? It's hard to say how the therapist arrived at this number, but I got to thinking. I don't control whether or not I get sick. I don't control the bugs that get into the house. I don't control the consistency of the water in my well or the size of the outside water bin I need trucked in. I don't control when the power goes out or whether a signal gets through to my phone. I definitely don't control any of the people I talk to or the various circumstances under which they are or aren't hurting their children. I don't control how much I get paid, and I even barely control what I eat given the practical reality of pain or exhaustion in not doing so, and being situated next to things that are convenient and taste good, which I also had no control over.

What do you control? How you talk about your circumstances. Sentences are control, even if I can't control if or how they'll hit. You can control how you'll react to your reaction, or if you're really good and paying attention, you'll have allowed yourself to not react until necessary. You control your orientation. You control how to understand your actions in a sea of lateral and superficially unequal circumstances. I can be down about not reaching my poorly understood goals, or I can feel a sense of awe that I find myself doing what I'd otherwise need and prefer to be doing, any time I'm doing it, and it's still happening in spite of the unending amount of words I routinely use to ridicule my experience of the world or air my frustrations. I control whether or not I restart the failed challenge in the video game.

I don't hear a lot about what people feel like they can do. I hear endlessly about “how things are” or how difficult or next to impossible they can be to achieve. I hear about “the pace of the State.” I hear about monsters on “the other side” that need to be de-platformed, vanquished, or otherwise shamed into obscurity. But I don't meet people who feel like they can do anything about it. I feel people who are given a set of instructions or directives and can read and follow, but it's not control. I think I understand religious people a little better now. Belief is control. God will sort it out. He wills, as theirs can't be found.

I can control scanning and sorting books. I can control the next sentence. I can control my legs to take me to my car to go get food. I can't ride a bike with no handlebars, but I can practice. I can make it about the process until it manifests as more resembling the skill I want to have or thing I want to see. I can understand my simplest forms of trauma for the power and resolve they lend themselves to, and I can continue to pick to keep my eye on the larger holistic goals that provoke anxiety and guessing and risk and hope-adjacent or the reason to bother getting up again.