Archive for May, 2008
The Paradox Of Progress
I’m sitting out on my porch with my laptop. Or is it notebook..? Marketing…it’s so passe.
The other night while sharing drinks with a friend we stumbled upon an important topic. The conversation began as benign as any other; between gulps of pale liquors we talked about our lives as they stand a year after graduating from college, for this particular night was the anniversary of my clumsy stroll in cap and gown down the aisles of adulthood. We exchanged vagueries and platitudinal congratulations at our decency and successes, but their was an anxiety haunting our words that was apparent. We both knew something wasn’t exactly right. The only question was who would voice this disquietude first…
And it would be him.
He took a big splash of beer and wiping his mouth he uttered the words that would launch our beautiful conversation. He said that he feels like he works only to work. He works to buy gasoline, so he can drive to work. He works to buy nicer clothes, so that he can dress for the job he wants, not the job he has. He felt everything he did simply perpetuated everything that he did, an eternal circle of labor and means to labor without meaning.
I agreed, without question. Sometimes as I drive, mostly at night when the city streets are peppered in halos and neon lights, I think, “How did it come to this..?” This concrete cage that we have shackled ourselves to without thought to what it does to our basic humanity–so much hidden beneath the pavement and stone, a world in which we once belonged that resonates with the racial memory passed down by our forefathers. In this system we work and toil only to support a lifestyle in which we feel both entitled to and are desperately dependent upon. We live in a vat of consumerism and material lust, feeding intravenously upon the ease of our own lifestyle. Assuring ourselves that we are progressing, hurtling through time and space and advancing every step of the way until finally one day we reach the apotheosis of a new age.
But this dream is built upon a lie.
I remember attending a class in my senior history seminar in which we were discussing historiography, the history of history. We were discussing various topics, bouncing through the entirety of western history with little regard to linearity or causality–an exercise in postmodern deconstruction if there ever was one. And somehow we found ourselves on the topic of the American Constitution as a historical object, an undeniable truth in the amorphous blob of our own nation’s history. One student commented on how the Constitution, that beautiful undeniable object, failed to address the issue of slavery, which had a causal effect that reverberated through time and eventually caused our Civil War. During the discussion someone made an offhand comment about how narrow-minded and bigoted the authors of the Constitution were, to which I immediately responded that they were truly revolutionary. The very idea of a republican government, where the people voted for leadership and representation, was remarkable, even if their conception of who was worthy to vote was not egalitarian.
“Victims of their time,” I said, “You cannot judge them on values we hold today, society has progressed a great deal since then.”
My professor smiled, that wry quiet smile of a man without a care in the world. He walked to his chalkboard and drew a straight line. Turning back to face us, he asked me if I had to place today’s society and that which existed during the revolutionary era on this continuum where would I place them. I was baffled and asked him for a bit of clarity to aid in my answer. With that same quiet smile, which hid so many truths I cannot begin to tell you, he told me that the word “progress” infers a direction, an end result that is one day, or at one time, achieved. So if we’re progressing, to where are we headed, and where do these different places in time fit upon the great line?
I stumbled a bit. I told him that I understood the point, but things have changed. We have more things. We are more equitable, more tolerant. He simply responded, “Are we?” I fell silent as he returned to the chalkboard and took the straight line and formed a circle. He said nothing more.
It stuck with me, and that night sharing beers with a good friend, bemoaning the cyclical hustle of our lives I found the great truth he was sharing that day. We aren’t progressing, because the very idea of progress within society is a paradox. We erect new pillars of civilization and with a final sigh of the collective voice we whisper, “Progress,” having achieved little in the advancement of the human spirit.
In the end of all things progress doesn’t exist. Processed foods, cell phones, and the internet are not progressions of the human condition, but components in a system of delusion, which make slaves out of us all. Working to deliver processed foods, working to sell and run cellular connections, working to run servers and dotcoms–working for what? The maintenance of the system, a vicious cycle of fruitless labors and material needs. Had society not “progressed” so far as to require a cheap work force to labor in the cotton fields, there wouldn’t have been a slave trade. Had society not “progressed” so far as to require people to sell computers, there wouldn’t be a headset and a cubicle for me to waste away in. An eternal circle of labor and means to labor without meaning.
I often tell my friends that maybe here in the West we haven’t gotten it quite right. In 500 years New York City will be unrecognizable and may not even exist in a way that we can imagine–progress–but the same rice paddies that have existed for thousands of years in Vietnam will still be tended by small children in conical hats, the same as their fathers and their fathers before them.
There is something pure and wondrous about those rice fields in Vietnam. In some ways, I think they are more civilized and “human” than we could ever be. Just a man, his family, and the means to survive the day. Laboring with value and character.
But I should really rest, it’s getting late, and I have computers to sell… how else am I going to afford this website..?
Progress.
On The Prospect Of Change
I hate when people tell me I have “changed.”
Throughout my life that is the one comment that has always made my blood boil. The anger that it creates in me is unrivaled by any back-handed insult or petty exchange. The hurt that it causes throughout my whole body is more than emotional, it is physical and real. My entire being throbs and I want to discard the individual whose hollow mouth exhaled such an injustice into the world.
I find the comment willfully ignorant and selfish. Those who cast such charges against me betray their own deficiency in understanding the real me, the man behind it all, the small boy whose all grown up and still feels the way he felt about life and his place on earth. It makes me doubt that they ever knew me at all, and I believe that is why it hurts so much.
I am janus-faced. I am a multitude of people wrapped in a thin veil of flesh. I am the life of the party, a social butterfly that you would swear was never an awkward caterpillar. This me always had wings, never suffering from the unsure creep of its causal predecessor. I am a quiet loner, much happier by myself and kept busy only with the streams of consciousness flowing through my mind. This me likes thinking and analyzing various metaphysical ideas, and then analyzing my previous analysis–a never ending cycle of assumptions, assertions, and doubt. I am the best friend you ever had, a minute away if you needed anything. This me lives to make your life better, an ear always open and a hand never unwilling to help. I am distant and cold, living off the moment I exist within and not caring much for those who I cannot see or feel outside the bounds of their general wellbeing. This me loves you and needs to know you’re alright, but does not need anything more to be happy.
I’ve been struggling lately with friends from another life. A life in which every weekend was free and neither began nor ended, simply extended on indefinitely. This life was college–the least amount of responsibility and the most amount of freedom we will all ever experience. These friends from this past life have been hurt by the aspect of my personality that is absorbed heavily in the life I live now: eleven hour work days and split days off, ten to nine, friday and sunday off. The eternal weekend supplanted by the eternal hustle. This is my professional life.
They scoff and moan, insisting that I’ve changed. I have not, but my life has. I am no longer a minute away, no longer unshackled and free. I am confined and controlled. I have obligations and responsibilities that I would die to forget. I miss them all, but that isn’t enough. They don’t want to accept that I live an extremely different lifestyle than even they do in their own professional lives. Eight to five with weekends off sounds like a vacation to me.
I wish they could understand, but I believe they choose not to, instead opting for passive aggressive assaults on my character. “He’s changed.” How could I not in some degree? How can another year of life not somehow create in me new multitudes of men, all new and shaped from the unique experiences in which only I have endured. Yet at my core I am the same as I always was. I am still the person you love and grew to call “friend.” Is it so hard to see?
Change does not frighten me, because I know that it will only amend the already ambiguous cloud that is my personality. As a child I loved history, and girls, and the idea of love, and freedom, and pickles, and all the stupid little things that still make my day. All the things that will always make my day.
On the most fundamental level we don’t ever truly change from who we are; we just wear the different faces that the world paints upon us. I understand that and still love you all deeply, though you have changed in your own ways. But if you cannot accept the me that you once did, when only circumstance and prospect has changed, then I cannot stand next to you any longer.
It’s not a threat. It’s not an ultimatum. It’s just something that isn’t going to happen.
An Average Day For Average Men
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I wake up late from a night out with friends, still drunk from another night at the mausoleum of our fortunes. I do not have time to shower, and I’m out of deodorant. A quick sniff test reveals the bland mix of dull cigarette smoke and the previous day’s must, and it must suffice. Changing into clothes whose fresh scent hide my own biological soup, I dart out of the door. There is simply not enough time.
But there is always time for cigarettes. Wheeling around corners and sending my maniac green machine forward, I make a quick stop at the gas station. I walk in and before I can utter a word, the woman behind the counter pulls a pack of Turkish Silver loose from its plastic prison. Everyday I walk in, and everyday she is here. It is beyond routine. Its pathetic. I slide seven dollars over the counter, for I know the price, and turn without saying another word or bothering with my change (37 cents to be exact…)
I feel as if I’ve just done something wrong.
I speed to work, lost in thought and the reverberating sound of horns emanating from their digital prison within my dashboard. The streetlight manifesto of my life.
Manning the phones is automatic. Control, alt, delete. Enter password. Throw the headset around my neck. Lock, stock, and ready to roll.
The phone rings. And so it begins.
They offered a free catered lunch at work, but I longed to be alone. To be everywhere but here, so I left without saying a word. Again, I felt as I had done something wrong. But my crime was only discourteous in nature.
I went to a fast food restaurant and as I waited in line I noticed that the manager was interviewing a middle-aged woman. She looked like someone’s mother: round and caring, with the chiseled lines of so many smiles and even more frowns. As I waited I tuned in intently to their conversation.
The manager sat across the small booth from her. A portly fellow. If it usually sat four, with him two was just cozy enough. He waved his arms about in grand fashion, gently tossing her application back and forth–the single sheet which in 8×11 summed up the working history of an entire human being. He was condescending and pedantic, using flowery language to ask the most debasing questions…
“What would you say the incentives are for you to take on this job?”
To fulfill my dream of wearing a cardboard hat and an ill-fitting shirt while serving people food that will slowly kill them…she seemed to say…
He told her that he would hire her, but “there is one caveat.” Such a beautiful word belongs no where near this conversation, but alas, he warned her that he could only pay her $6.75 an hour.
She nodded affirmatively as she had the whole time. A desperate woman and the man throwing her scraps, enjoying his pathetic position of power over her. It was sick. Human life only worth $6.75 an hour, and her gleefully sopping it up.
I wanted to take her by the hand and walk her out into the world and release her from this servitude. She was worth more. I swear she was worth more. But she will start this Sunday, black slacks and black shoes are required. She said she would have to buy some…
I returned to work and after the initial round of “where’d you go’s” I settled back into my pilot’s seat. Control, alt, delete. Enter password. Throw the headset around my neck. Lock, stock, and ready to roll.
And the phone rings. So it begins again.
My first call of the second half was from a sweet old lady. She was interested in a computer, for she would have much time at home in times not yet passed. She was dying. Although she did not let on the nature of her impending twilight, she was quiet and sad when speaking of it. She wished to discover the internet and email. She wanted to share pictures of her newborn grandchild with her friends who had braved the great binary highway years ago, leaving her behind to betas and 8-track cassettes. Her name was beautiful, like hepatica dying to grow in dark corners. Her pain was slow motion, like the same flower reaching for the lonely ray of light which cuts through the gloom. I set her up and hit release, sending her off into the world. Alone. And dying.
I was forced to work an hour of overtime in the morning, and was slated for one in the evening. But five minutes before the arduous extra hour was to begin I was released from my servitude and sent home to thank the gods of both occupation and relaxation for such a welcome reprieve.
I smelt bad. The fresh scent of clean clothes faded fast in the heightened intensity of my heat. I decided to swing by the store and pick up some freshness, because society told me that I was intolerable, although I was quite comfortable.
As I drove, I saw a bicyclist standing over a wrecked bike. His knees bloody and head hanging. Holding a broken wheel in one hand, he looked disgusted. I wondered how far he’d have to walk to get to wherever he called home.
And I drove on.
I grabbed a stick of deodorant and was checked out by a cheeky female with a robotic voice. A human sound to such an inhuman device. I looked around and noticed the lines forming at these automated checkout contraptions while check-out lanes with clerks remained empty. I thought, “To what lengths we go to simply be alone…”
I snatched my receipt and left. Lighting my last cigarette, having killed the entire pack throughout the day, I realized how fast I am killing myself. I thought about stopping for another pack, but the thought offended me and my sense of biological existence.
I drove passed the same biker, still staring at his wreckage with the same look of disgust, so far from home…
And I drove on, with everything numb.
Just an average day for an average man. Routine, solitude, and sharing in the misery of others.
Damn, I wish I had a cigarette.
Down At Mephisto’s Cafe
The other night I went out to get some drinks with a couple friends. We went to our usual spot, a dirty dive off Lake Austin Boulevard. The scene is simple as these scenes typically are. Long faces and longer moods. From time to time I would think that this is a place where people come to die, drowning their sorrows in a mug or in a plume of illegal smoke and finding solace only in the companies of others’ misery. Its our place, but in so many ways we are the pulse of such a dead locale, our youth and happiness evening out the air of indignity and malaise.
Yet on this particular night, I was caught in the great sepulture. It began when I went to the bathroom, having broken the Seventh Seal I needed greatly to relieve myself. In times passed I had read the inane scribbles upon the wall, here and there picking up pieces of poetic greatness from scribes whose name will never be known. But on this day I found myself reading an august dirge dedicated to a man I will never know, a man I could never possibly know–for he was long dead. The author’s words sang out the memories of a dear friend. His elegy upon the bathroom wall was the only fitting eulogy for such a loyal fellow patron.
The whole thing saddened me. A man reduced to lavatory remembrance. A life nothing more than Sharpe upon old walls, which shield the masses from the obscene scene of our biological soliloquies. I wanted to touch the great message, but common sense forbade such a personal moment in these halls, so I departed–a bit less human.
I turned the corner and approached the bar. Only another pitcher could calm these feelings of pity and sadness. I sat on the edge staring blankly as the bartend served others. I looked down the row, long faces and longer moods. A somber cold piercing the tired men, lining up for another gulp of Mephisto’s brew. I forced myself to look away, to find anything but the mass of walking dead in front of me, and my eyes found a photograph pinned up on the wall behind the bar. A man, shirtless, enjoying a bright afternoon out to sea on a boat. His gay smile almost made me forget how exhausted his body looked. His skin hung loosely off his bones and betrayed the golden glow of a working man, for on this day he was a proletariat at play. I noticed writing above the photograph and I squinted my eyes tightly to bring them into focus…
“John Vosacote August 17th, 1947 - September 12th, 2007″
This man was dead. And possibly all that remained of him was this dank photograph, tucked sweetly above the beer taps and mugs. I thought of my dead friend in the bathroom and wondered if it was this man’s panegyric that I had read.
I noticed that there was writing below the picture and again I pulled my lids sharply together to make out the sacred glyphs…
“Gone fishin’.”
In those two words I learned so much about the man, this dead John Vosacote. Maybe he loved the sea. Maybe he loved to fish. Maybe he simply died that day out on the blue waters, under bluer skies…
I stared at his photograph and saw in him the life which evaporates from us all, radiating out from the creases of a smile that’s long ceased. I remembered the sad words from earlier, and the sad words I had read in the past in more decent settings. We all live so fiercely and with little regard for the aftermath, but in the wake of our departure there is suffering, even if it can only be expressed with Sharpe pens and frameless photos. I sat there, on a bar stool that so many had sat on before, and I realized that if you live the right way and do right by people, there will always be a place for you. The entire experience reaffirmed my belief that memory is the most eternal thing we possess.
Yes, if you live a good life, there will always be a place for you…you will always have a “home…”
I only hope mine isn’t on the bathroom wall of Deep Eddy Cabaret.
But hey, beggars can’t be choosers.