What I've Learned from Corporate America and the Polyphonic Spree

This is a bit of a trap. This going to work everyday and letting the concerns of the corporate host I thought I could siphon from affect me psychosomatically. How dare my insomnia's source be the contents of spreadsheets and the goings-on in conference rooms. Of course, if I could satisfy myself with bread and circuses I might not feel outrage at the exploitation, might not feel woodenly hollow at how I spend eight-plus hours each day, might not have this desire to envelope my brain cells in smoke. And the anxiety associated with pretending to care. And I used to balance this nonsense with bachanal, you know? Used to fling myself out into madness because I knew I had the metabolism to still wake up earlier than everyone. Through drug-nausea and nihilism and dread and fatal joy and blatant disregard for gods and masters I could always get my hands to stop trembling and pull things off. And gradually I learned that I could live with nothing but a floor to sleep on and good friends to share drinks with and incendiary books to read and the occasional frenetic typing. Now knowing that I bought into an expectation cultivated to support a lifestyle I resent. The reasonable success and latent career-path potential poising people just like me to have comforts and eat healthy and marry rationally and purchase real estate and attend church in my brand-new car. But I'm fantasizing about hitch-hiking, poring over pictures of Antarctica, writing agreeably, considering homelessness . . . quoted from my journal circa ecstasy ingestion: "who would want to be successful in their bullshit anyway?"

And so last night, on a half whim and free VIP passes, I ran downtown to see the Polyphonic Spree. Twenty-some odd robed maniacs belting out orchestral odes to life in general. A feeling in my chest like humanity is worth all this. Like even if we destroy this place and cut each other's throats there are at least still finite moments where we are beautiful. That even subliminally enslaved, every cell is a masterpiece and every gesticulation a refutation to the truism that there is no meaning. And so Generation Edge is justified in its apathy. Let these bastards destroy it, we never wanted a part of it anyway.

In two months I'm going home. All the way. And I'm going to watch the sunrise over the dawn of man and laugh hysterically that I have ever been worried.

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I'm seeing my second round of seasons here in Boise. I had thought it would take longer than this to become terminally restless, to fall asleep thinking of foreign lands, to feel as though me energies had been sapped. I don't write on this thing much because there is so little occurring in my life. I just finished writing a short-story, the first-draft anyway, and will post it here in the next week or so. I am getting better at that, and I suppose that's of prime importance. I'm reading 50 to a hundred pages a day, on top of homework, work,exercise, existentialist angst etc. I'm jealous of my friends dispersed across continents. I miss getting drunk in the street and yelling at the top of my lungs. I miss glancing with suspicion into my rearview. I miss exceeding expectations. I miss having a reason to stay up late. I miss making love and the infantile, ecstatic sleep that follows. I miss being surrounded by my jerry-rigged family.

When will babylon fall already? When will some whirlwind of disaster precipitate into collapse in all aspects. Peak oil disrupting our teetering financial crisis emboldening fascists already in power obliterating all of our jobs with no agricultural replacement due to catastrophic environmental destruction. And oh yeah, Atlanta is running out of water Whatever will get me out of work I guess. A woman named Naomi Wolf has just written a book called "The End of America" in which she outlines the 10 steps all historical states have taken towards fascism. We have made inroads on all of them: Invoking a terrifying ex/internal enemy, creating a gulag, development of a thug caste, etc etc.

But make no mistake. I'm actually pretty happy. I'm just impatient.

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"I tend to underestimate my average"

And every night, no matter how tired, I walk outside and have a smoke and listen on headphones to some MC bleed out his struggle and biography and look at the sad stars circumspect over my doleful neighborhood. Hope that I can somehow get riled up about life in general. The myriad lights of entanglement reflecting off the slippery backs of leaves and the tenacity of aluminum siding. For several dark and crystalline moments become this solitary impermanent thing and always, always always realize some fragmented -oid about the hole in my chest or the simmering frustration underneath my clothes or the geometric latticework of words on paper. And in all honesty my day is subtle agony, the pins and needles in my legs from straining to pay attention to details, maintain the facade of assimilation or resist the urge to push something off my desk that'll spasm in blown circuitry and end it forever. And just as humbly, the downtime often seems absurd. The dirty square footage of mine a cell monastic and penitentiary, obscene red walls screaming. . .

And subtle encouragements vector in on me from all sides. Like I've either drastically dismissed my abilities or there is some conspiratorial effort within the system to keep me buoyed up. Always followed by the sense that I did not try hard enough, that if I'd really done my best everything I've ever wanted would materialize in my hand like ectoplasm and I, myself, would shatter into stain-glass and be embedded into everything. This Pavlovian urge that I must earn every single inch I'm given, or else be complicit in th e plundering that has proceeded since Cro-magnon first duped Neandertal.

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I believe in you

Further discussions on this whole god thing. The terms which I have accepted as my category (athiest, infidel, whathaveyou)are inherently oppositional, and of course this is a problem. They immediately conjure adversarial emotions, contradiction, elusive semantics and semiotics. So what I DO believe, as opposed to what I DON'T:
That the universe as a 'biological' (and thus inherently a phsyic-al system)has eventually generated us (mankind, and whatever else has achieved what we might call a 'consciousness' that is able to ask existential questions) as a means to understand itself. This statement almost personifies, but I don't believe that there are any intentions at work. Out of the infinite possibilities this place happens to have the particular set of rules that allow our existence and development. I believe that there is not afterlife and instead our 'spiritual value' is not how well we've adhered to abstract (and yet, for the most part, rational) rules, but how well this thing called 'us' has impacted all of existence. By this I don't mean that our individual goals should be 'importance' in the terms of how many people know about us or how much measurable 'success' we have had; rather you might almost think of it as how well you are remembered. We all have distinct influences on our surroundings, our spiritual welfare is how well this has been received by those it has touched and how that influence plays out after you are gone. I believe that any attempt to dehumanize a person or people (by disrespecting the things that make them human, and robbing them of autonomy, and abusing cooperative advantage, and...well, engaging in the things we know to be 'bad') is a travesty (notice how this works with the afterlife=influence mechanism). I believe that the Universe is a daunting and beautiful and mysterious thing, and it brings me to tears to really understand any little aspect of it. I believe that we have a great deal more work to do before we begin to really understand. I believe that language is immeasurably powerful, and that it defines our life. I believe that art is one of the ways in which we can have a meaningful relationship with the universe, and that so are a lot of other things. I believe that genuine human experience is the most valuable thing we do in life; and that we may all define this differently but it always has more to do with accepting than rejecting. I believe that there are no cultural constants or truths or universals. In the end, I believe in people and love people and want to have people in my life. People. It's the most complex phenomenon we might hope to study, and we are literally swimming in it, humanity.

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