One of my favorite professors of all time has passed away in a house fire that devastated a neighborhood in southeast Boise. In a matter of five weeks, she changed the way I think about language and thus altered the course of my career and personal philosophy. Her enthusiasm was contagious, her warmth to her students unprecedented, and her teaching abilities nonpareil. Thanks, Professor Ryder, for your dedication and your encouragement, you have had a profound impact on me and many, many other students. I just wish I could have had one more class with you.
There is some evidence in Evolutionary Psychology that indicates that success breeds success (The Success Cycle) and failure breeds failure (the Maladaptive Cycle). That when we win, we relish the next fight irrespective of talent and capacity. And that when we lose, we tend towards depression and perhaps self-loathing. If true (and the genetic support for this is still murky to me, it has a whiff of group selection) this process led to difference amplification and thus accelerated the developments in men of RHP (Fighting Capacity). What is interesting are the results of repeated failure. We get sad and hopeless and forlorn. Or we get angry. Which do you think is the best strategy to extricate ourselves from the Maladaptive Cycle?
Writing: If I had not had my meagre measure of pain, I could not express it. And if I had lived hermetic and alone I could not name a character or depict expression. And if I had never been in love I could not explain warmth. And if I had never lost it I could not explain the cold. And if I had not screamed my share of rebel yells, you'd have no reason to turn your ear to my calls for philosophical riots or ignoring the rules. And if I had not seen trouble I could not commune with the downtrodden. And if I had not slept joyously after bacchanal and bleary-eyed passion, I could never pound a happy thing into this keyboard. I am a lowercase 'a' artist, these days more than ever, and the only lesson I could ever give to another on it: Be willing to suffer, be reckless at times, be withdrawn at others. Be embarrassed and proud. Be everything, all at once and sleep only to keep from falling down.
Had a saturday of dormant coincidence finding purchase in farewells and the pearlescent pre-dawn after them. Woke up smiling like you'd think I never do if you read this thing. Knowing: You cannot have your name on a dozen rosters and not be noticed by someone, or everyone. And every word you say is inscribed on some ledger, even if the subconscious. I've found a social niche in Boise, or rather a half-dozen of them to poke my head and speak my irreverence in. More and more people to miss with every pined-for weekend. Suddenly, my monklike existence has been dosed by grace like I have been toiling in some medieval cell inscribing bibles by hand, the wind and rain swirling through my window . . . and then one day summer breaks and I notice how many green things have grown at the foot of the monastery's door.
(video: Cornell West on Real Time, quote: Franz Kafka)
Reading Anarchist political thought and finding nothing there that truly transcends anything. Thus far it leans towards socialism. "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" like a spit in the face to the whole manner in which we've survived through this epic. Granted that was written at a time when less was known about the human mind; but we see in all tendrils of evolutionary psychology and game theory and economics and yes even history that this strategy fails. It creates an artificial environment that breeds an undue quantity of cheaters. It is bound to cast itself into vicious tumult that only a fascist can briefly put right. It channels only the most idealistic, and thus the eventually weakest, tendency of human nature. Yes we could feel empathy for some small tribe that churns out a product. But could those we trade with ever be trusted? Casting your lot with those you know, even if admittedly outside your genetic bonfire, is possible and happens frequently. But sweating out everything for far-off strangers on a planet teeming with those you don't know, people you may have no issue with but yet are subject to different cultural pressures than you . . .how can it honestly be thought that people en masse will toil for the livelihood of people they cannot influence? I have more to say on this, but more reading to do first.
Giddy like xmas eve of '93 for grad school. And it's one year, and one year does not feel like the long yawn it once did. I met with a former professor of mine for sage advice; I will not leave any advantage to rivals or the wind. He's convinced me that I will be successful, that I will end up some place. That he reads applications himself and would vote my work into his institution. Nothing firm there to pin the label "success" on, but I've never worked this hard for something that belonged purely to me. And to know the trench I dig is deep and straight, it makes the shovel move faster.
I like the rabble. I like noise and dirt and spiders and waking up so groggy that one's entire life seems punctuated by a fever-dream that you cannot remember. I like to argue and fight and point my finger at god and government for the weirdness they have wreaked, and I like to scream out that they hold no rule over my life. I'll compromise my free will to science, but no god and no master will take it from me. I like to stagger into work on no sleep with the stink of misdeeds still leeching from my pores. I like to rip a hole in the middle of my yuppie day and bleed from it and ache from it for no other reason but that my body will endure. I like to craft rites of passage via bricolage and name my impulses like dogs in heat. I like working long into the night, save one in five when I run the streets and burn through brain cells and am liable to convert your son or daughter to my cult. It's all completely untenable, and that's the point: so is being alive.
( video: Ira Glass on story-telling, quote: Henry Miller "Lime Twigs and Treachery. btw: well over 200 posts now!)
Your children are the problem. It pains me to say that, and it hurts down to my very genes and spine to persecute perhaps the only purpose true in our swirl. Energy, war, terrorism, angst, exploitation . . . these fruits all see their source in too many fucking people. And perhaps we may just escape this terra damnata, but even in that we'll choose who goes and who stays. We'll excise some gleaming class of beings with no more right to liberty than the sons of oil profiteers and hotel heiresses. And who does not meet those thresholds in this long pause will squabble and legislate and recycle their soup tins and petition the gov't to kick down scraps . . .but no one will ever say: "dose the water supply with birth control", or "implant an IVD with every vaccination".
The burned landscape stands charred lodgepole pine as a warning and a relief. From this things can be recovered. And to create, the old must sometimes be destroyed. And the burn is a year or two old, the upstart forest clambering over itself for the new sunlight with deformed little trees and the splayed hands of ferns. I'm city-born and city-bred, but the shadows and rock and water so fierce you can almost hear it screaming your name . . .in it the most profound thought can be examined: no thought at all.
I had an irreal workshop with a new friend last week. He's read a solid fraction of the things I've written over the last year and thinks that this is the best. Following close-critique of the story we meandered into something a bit more philosophical. And I had to wonder how much calculation and generation I have going on subconsciously, he saw things that are clearly there and are tendrils or tributaries of what I want to say; but I have never clearly thought all those thoughts.
