I feel as though I've been corrupted.
There's a file in my operating system that's degraded and broken into
little pieces floating about the rest of my body causing problems.
There's a statement I've made often enough that I truly believed. I
write for me. At the same time, what started as a build up of
feelings and confusion I had no grasp of was, from the beginning, an
appeal to the outside world to help me better explain. As much as I
needed to get it out, the sentiments often lived or died by whether
or not they were challenged or reinforced. Talk about women in
abusive relationships? Easy enough for people to get on board. Make
sweeping generalizations about sex or the utility of school, people
feel the need to chime in against.
That is, they did. There
was a point in my life I could count on some
measure of feedback whether it was a “I didn't understand this at
all,” or “Hey, you know, you put that in an interesting way.”
There were 3 and 4 conversations going on across each other back when
you couldn't type as many words into comment boxes. People seemed to
feel things with a measure of intensity. They seemed to care, at the
very least, about putting their view out there even if in their
response a qualifier like, “I know this will get jumped on, but”
existed.
There's no denying the difficulties of having a
conversation at any level. Text removes all the extras conveyed in
person. Language is fairly ambiguous by default. Sensitive topics
cause people to respond to their feelings instead of the point
raised. People go into conversations with different agendas or may
not see the purpose to engage at all beyond a kind of bored
antagonism or devil's advocacy. I can't tell you the number of times
I've been met with, “but the implication!” of something I've said
that acts like a springboard into wild conjecture and anger.
Considering how often I attempt to connect or make the appeal, you'd
think I'm a glutton for repetition dying for a different outcome in
service to insanity.
I thought I wanted to write last night,
and then I second guessed myself and tried to sum it up in a status.
I was annoyed about the different snippets into the past I had read.
There were segments I barely knew what I was getting at. There were
fights. There were all of the enthusiastic, “This is what I'm gonna
do!” statements, and the day to day realities that cost obscene
amounts of money and time. One thing I will give myself credit for, I
do try to capture the moment, and I do feel the brunt of what I was
getting at remained as true then as it does now.
The problem
with not writing last night was a sort of anxiety I felt about saying
too many of the same things at too close an interval. The idea that,
“I write for me” would be worried about alienating a crowd that
rarely if ever still reads, let alone responds, seems to betray the
sentiment. I have more to say. I always have something to say. I
should be able to write about it every day if I want and not think
it's some undue burden for eyes I'm not forcing to be there.
There's
layers to this picture though. At a ground floor layer, writing is
like eating. I have to do it. I literally will start developing
chronic headaches, will actively chase people away from me, and
likely slip into what's perhaps been a persistent depressive state
reminiscent of growing up. The next level up is my persistent appeal
to try as often as it strikes me to get a conversation. It's not
“only” attention seeking. It's not meant to be exhausting. It may
function as both and it may never register as anything but in the
minds of some, but honestly, I'd rather just be in an ongoing
conversation. It's how I conceive of the best relationships. We can
crack jokes and relate our troubles and give the benefit of the doubt
that no line was meant to sound like screaming condescension, if we
so choose. The final level is a kind of insidious, kind of
experimental one. It's to track the changes in people I know have
read me, but refuse to acknowledge they've done so besides
indirectly. Even knowing this fact, you won't be able to help
yourself.
I have what feels like a giant list of reasons that
people wouldn't respond that range from innocent to a measure of what
I'd deem, “life threatening.” Every time I think to type it out I
wish to push for a greater point about the times and places we
inhabit and why instead. I've said a number of times that I can put
myself right back in the center of a past fight. I can catch a whiff
of elation at the awesome party moments. I can inhabit the deadness
of staring at all things as equal measures of pointless, guiding me
nowhere, but existing nonetheless as a description. I suppose a
positive view of aging is the idea that you can give this sensibility
to people by default. I don't actually believe that, but I think it's
a comforting cliché of de facto wisdom via time spent, and given the
small amount of “rewards” we might achieve in life, everyone
stands to feel gratified that they actually matter a little more, if
only eventually.
What constitutes a relationship seems to be
as much your own understanding of yourself and what you bring to the
table, as what exists between you and another person. I've argued for
both sides of how life plays out, calling it extremely personal, in
that you always retreat back into your own head, and wildly
impersonal, in that no one much gives a shit about you and you're at
the mercy of incalculable forces. It's two sides of the same coin,
but the only way it seems possible to tip the scale in life-affirming
ways is to be paying attention. It's to bring your attention not to
the circumstances you merely have to survive, but in your shared
understanding of a raised problem.
There too, you have layered
ways in which you need to speak about “problems.” I'm a fan of
saying I don't have real problems. That's more true than not. It
doesn't mean I won't call my car breaking down, dead end job, or
unhealthy eating habits problems, but it does mean I'm not fleeing
for my life, about to get deported, or were born into an era where I
would have had to say goodbye to my uncle guaranteed to die from his
recent cancer diagnosis now cured.
Keep the idea of describing
problems in layers in mind and follow me down another idea. I went
into “friendship” as fumbling and naively as I did “love.”
I'm Mulder. I want to believe. I want to believe that anyone who
meets me at an intellectual level will also meet me at honesty or
morality or work ethic levels. I want to believe they know how to get
their dispositions best oriented and their time best spent. I figured
if we were all laughing at the same horrible jokes the same way,
could rally around the same TV shows, could be pushed to do things
like climb or hike (in my case) against any real desire to do so
besides the company involved, that it signified a kind of “higher”
form of being that spoke to kind of the point of existing at all.
So,
then what should we ask of our “friends?” I thought, in sharing,
in trying to talk, in rooming together, in planning a way to
collaborate and save and create that I was doing something “good.”
It didn't feel wrong to ask friends to help me throw the coffee kiosk
together. I don't feel guilty calling someone to give me a ride when
my car dies. I had an open-door policy at the party house and it felt
weird if you knocked. Mind you, no one asked me to shed them of their
obligation to knock. The first words out of a friend picking me up
aren't usually, “Now, where's my gas money?”
Certain
things don't really concern us at those levels unless someone's
struggling pretty significantly financially or we try to be too
familiar with an acquaintance who has a claim for knocking. What
about bigger problems? Where does the friend cliff drop off? It's
surely not the majority of your old party crowd that would feel
obligated to drive you to and from chemo. Maybe you have a cause you
support that they'll throw you $20 for, but they're not going to mail
out a hundred invitations. We start venturing into how to describe
the “problem,” and at what layer people feel comfortable or not
contributing to alleviating it.
Say your problem is hard to
nail down. Well, then absolutely everyone else is going to be as
well. Say they have no regard for their own voice or opinion. Asking
for it a thousand times isn't going to make them any more willing to
potentially sound foolish. Say you've been painted into a corner of
being “impossible” or “difficult.” It's as good a way to be
losing before you begin as any.
My “problems” run the
whole range of big to small. I have a problem of living in what feels
like a dead-end environment. The marginal ways I think I wouldn't is
to get into conversations predicated on the things I think about a
few pages at a time. No one wants to chime in? Another problem. I
have “big” problems in that I want to create a generally large
enterprise that, either through conservation and saving, or cornering
some market, nets large amounts of money. That begets small day to
day problems detailed in past blogs to the problem of rediscovering
the underlying truth of what motivates it all after things feel
stagnant and oppressive. It all becomes great fun or a testament to
human resolve, if you can mange to feel like any humans are
involved.
The consequence of having “too much” to say is a
level of depersonalization. I have very cold, “rational,” reasons
I want the things I do, even if I can feel in real time the comfort
that comes with having “enough” to ride it out to the end. Every
new pain in a muscle or joint says lay down. Every broken
“friendship” over something stupid suggests choosing malicious
shortcuts. Every small attempt to assert the dignity of an evidently
stark-raving truth of how to respect the individual and time met with
censorship and excuses shovels more on the pile of hopelessness.
But
if you have a friend. If you have something behind the reflex that
likes likable things, then you have a reason. Then you have a plan
with a better likelihood of success. Every blog is a reflection of me
back to myself. There's only so much “new” I can put in from the
media I take in or comments I catch from people I'd otherwise never
speak to at length. That was why I started being more deliberate in
picking you. That's why you have the chance, nay, the opportunity, to
be at the ground floor of anything we may create together. And yet,
so far, that seems to only speak to that measure of my initial
naivety.
I think the story of why the conversation died is
pretty straightforward and alluded to in a few of my recent blogs.
“Kids,” with their protected environment and enthusiasm in
college just became “adults.” They reverted to “people”
who've been developing their capacity for excuses and throwaway
placations for centuries. It hurts to dream. It hurts enough to live
from paycheck to paycheck without thinking about all of the things
you'd rather be spending your time or money doing. I'm struggling to
cope with not having a bathroom yet! Well before we begin on my
musical or entrepreneurial aspirations. But I think people have
humbled themselves with regard to what life has provided. The growing
list of their responsibilities hijacked them like it hijacked their
parents, like society let itself be hijacked into the emotional out
of control roller coaster that begets fascism.
Did that feel
like a leap? It's layers though, right? For everything you're paying
attention to, there's an infinite amount otherwise you're not. If you
don't incorporate the “negative” aspects, the suffering, and the
inevitable death of all things into that, it's easy to flow on that
river out to sea, dead in ways you never saw coming, that left before
you got the chance to fix them. That's why when I'm fed and
comfortable watching my favorite show I get anxious. That's why when
I can count on both hands almost 3 times! how old I am, I'm
constantly reevaluating my time-schedule and peeking back into my old
blogs about just why exactly it is I'm not a millionaire this moment.
Even in documenting my capacity for change, there's plenty to miss.
The
pragmatist knows that if I never get another comment, I can still
probably mostly rely on a handful of people for larger order
problems. I know that the conversation is always going on in my head
if nowhere else. I know that no matter, if likely in spite and in
fact because of how jaded I can be, it's still immediately easy for
me to never play the game that uses words like you
don't like. You remember, I always get invited back to the after
party before I decide to start in on my target. I know that as long
as my very being, the one who basically always has something to say
and is stuck focusing on the things that don't make him nor anyone
else happy, I'm not going to have very many “friends.” And given
my enthusiasm to jump into things and live out the consequences one
layer of skin at a time, the experiment has at least provided another
thick callous.
I also know that I haven't lived up to that
vitally important aspect that I've called out in the past. I haven't
provided the environment to plug people into. I didn't get movie
moments at parties or girls to think I was cool by doing anything
less in the cultivation of my environment. With this in mind, I
always find the accusation that I “think I can control things”
odd. Of course I can. I controlled the environmental layer, so people
got drunk and naked. I push away from people who hand their feelings
over to me because I find it highly irresponsible and immoral to
pretend it's your place to exercise that amount of control over
people you profess to care about. I control my own proclivities to
name call and insult when I see after 3 words you're not pleased I
decided to chime in on something you shared. I control whether the
conversation exists in the only way I can walk away describing it as
“going well,” or one of a dozen ways it would register as
fruitless despite my efforts. If nothing else, I retain control
because I'm actually trying.
Here, I wonder what you're
actually trying. It's not to respond to me. The only “kind of”
goals I've seen documented are different trips to the tops of
mountains and rocks. I'm sure you're plugging away at your jobs or
something. But I don't really know anything about you. You know by
the dollar amount and day of the week when I might have something
less fatalistic and bitchy to say. Or, if you were wondering the
information is at least readily available. Is it useful even in a
small sense of solidarity? We all get fucked by surprise things.
We're all kind of struggling at least a little, right? But I still
like hearing when a friend is paying out the asshole for insurance to
keep on her meds. Maybe there's more to be mined there about “our”
societal next collective push on a referendum regarding healthcare.
Maybe more personal testimonies will push over the edge what needs
pushing.
Only once has someone told me how little they think
the “average” person reading me is feeling regarding the
circumstances of their life to change. They don't feel this moment is
precisely the one to start an important conversation. They don't
think the idea they had has any value. They don't think the problem
they're currently trying to surmount may ever be overcome. Then
again, I have to ask you, what are we doing being friends? What are
you afraid to ask of me, at what layer, may I be able to contribute?
Or, why don't you think it's important to describe why you think I
have nothing to offer? I'm certainly trying with regard to you.
I'm
a big believer that it's the small amount of radicals of any ilk that
are tending to control things. And I think that's a problem. My
voice, no matter how persistent, shouldn't be the be all end all, and
I know this, and I ask for it not to be. Radical tea-bagger
oligarchical ideologues steering an entire country into the ground
are making sure things get pretty goddamn shitty before you
pussy-hatted bitches decided to wake the fuck up and get into the
streets. There are profiles of the actually psychopathically monied
and motivated dismantling each piece of what's brought us to a
relative stability and civility today. Shouldn't we be talking about
those things every day? Shouldn't we be probing for creative
solutions, even conversationally, in how we understand the
perpetually shifting landscape?
Or, do we return to that being
too high-level of problem to ask of your “friends?” It's too much
to talk. It's too much to read. It's too much to care. It's too much
to challenge. It's too much to think. Black out, live and let live,
cross your fingers and pray all those someones out
there have a healthier and proactive response that will save us all.
If it hasn't been stated, we can make sure it is now, but if you
don't have the words to describe how we relate to each other, I'll
reduce it to something simpler, something “negotiated” and
conditional. Every positive memory and emotion I've ever felt towards
you can be corrupted. It's absolutely not the direction I want to go,
but I'm compelled by my otherwise empty and selfish environment. I'm
whispering to myself and a handful of chat boxes.
It's funny
that after typing that I had an immense momentary calm. I always come
back to that “cold” baseline. Once I get the excuse to go into
robot mode, it gets easy. It doesn't hurt there, I'm not angry, I'm
not empty, I'm not hopeful, I'm just “do.” I like to just do.
There's a significant point and measure of irony in the description
of being driven there by my environment and circumstances. I have to
acknowledge the new conditions under which I'm to regard friends, but
I didn't create them. To achieve the calm, my “choice” was to
observe what I conceived as the best alternative. It's why I will
always and forever be fascinated with what you're observing in your
own lives. It's why I comfortably say I don't think you're thinking
when you've nothing to say. It's why, as long as I try, as long as I
see and introduce those sights, I'll retain a kind of control you've
dispossessed yourself of.
It's how I can see any number of
futures for myself, but a primarily shitty one “in general” as
the consequences of impersonal forces describe what's happening to us
across problem layers. At the level of the individual, what's that?
Phone zombie? Polarized and distracted ignorant wage slave? The
environment? Dying, flooded, getting literally exponentially worse in
mass-casualty categories. The law? Still in “white-lash” mode,
doubling down and dismantling what got us this far. Interpersonally?
I find people arguing against their own interests and discover
piecemeal my college cohort barely interact or regard each other as
people; my ego thinking I was the only one :,-(. The stats on where
wealth is going? Horrible. The future of the jobs that still exist?
Nonexistent. The numbers to care for the sick and dying? Inadequate.
The funds to at least attempt keeping things from falling apart?
Drying up and stolen. Consequences for the worst actors? Not even the
memory of what those look like. One metric after another begets more
and more shit. It's not your job in this moment to provide reasons
for optimism. It's your job to acknowledge and consider fixes at
different layers. The work of your job should take place in the form
of a polite discussion between you and your friends.
I suppose
I take a fair amount of comfort in what I've heard described a few
times recently as “having a chip on my shoulder.” There's people
who never achieve enough, destroy enough, fuck enough, or whatever
else. No amount of awards appease them. No praise will ever live up
to the ideas they conjured about themselves. If there's a “different”
qualifier about me, that's one I jive with. I shouldn't be
guilt-tripping myself for having too much to say. I'm responding to
the world that isn't saying enough of what I think needs to be said.
I'm playing games people aren't. I've expectations that I've only
scratched the surface of meeting. Consider, I actually did want to be
“retired” by 30 when I was 15. I won't have a pension, but then I
consider neither do the people who worked for 40 years and then got
fucked by Wall Street and their “representatives.” If my car
could stop breaking down, owning my own house to one day die in, and
the land it sits on, at 29, are still feasible. It's leagues away
from not knowing who my roommates will be every year, or living back
with my parents, or renting from extortionists, or donning a 30-year
obligation to show up to a job I hate for the mortgage.
If my
shifting, invisible, fake as shit interpersonal layer is gone and my
work setting is “independent” employment, I seek to fix the
problem of my personal environment and set it up for the potential to
grow or save my ass when things get pinched even harder. We're all
“entrepreneurs” now. I like to believe my acceptance and
understanding of the world at 15 speaks to my position and behavior
now. And I think at 45, you know, after the consequences of the “tax
reform” bill, partisan gerrymandering, or the 2 or 3 degrees rise
in the planet's temperature, that my designs on off-grid sustainable
living will prove to have been worthy of concern over the details
today. I hope all of my worst predictions for how I've seen my
“friends” respond to their lives, problems, and our conversations
won't spill over. I really do hope that. Points for paying attention
if you know what I think about “hope.”
I feel like I ask
for so little. The catch is that I'm asking for attention. I'm asking
for detail. I'm asking for something you have to work to even
discover you have and is at the mercy of your disposition and various
stresses in life. I worked 3 jobs and would come home in the 5 hours
I could sleep between them to write about how more fucked than anyone
cared to think working a job like Kroger really was. I'm writing this
at midnight after I drove my car from the mechanic basically straight
back to work until close. I'm not even reading nearly as much as I
used to, but I snuck in several hours of lectures, interviews, and
podcasts on my forced days off. I've habituated the burden of keeping
up on things I profess to care about. Maybe you have too, I just
never hear about it.
