Neo

     Modern man/woman is in a predicament unlike they’ve ever been in before. I refuse to call this the “travails of the information age” because before technological advances made information as readily available as watching the evening sunset, there was still the fact of the over-abundance of image in need of processing and this feat has been no small one by any means.

      What I mean by being in an altogether new predicament comes from my belief that not only are we being given information, but the competitive human spirit is tying the assimilation of that information into our economic well-being.  The onslaught of the computer age has left most people grateful, and yet perplexed, as to not only how to use its machines but what the meaning of these machines is.

      There is no easy answer to this quandary. Man has given himself a mechanical brain, a brain that disseminates information, if not in the same way, then in a way that mimics it. This predicament, some would say, is no predicament, but a joy, a way to make it so that our own brains do not need to work harder than it has to.

      Unfortunately, our brains are also our minds and our minds continually seek, but irrationally. It does not seek to know like a computer, but to feel, to experience.

      The artist is an example of both the victim and victor over the chronological mindset of computers and the almost virile power that this heightened mechanical process can inject into the previously virgin soul.

      We are supple beings. We meld into the latest thing as if we were born ready to fall into its arms even if when we were born it had not yet existed. The utilitarian power of computers is undeniable, but can we really ask ourselves to strive towards a purely rational mode of thought when perhaps the creators of this world, its leaders, mentors, sages were among some of the most psychedelic of minds?

      Can we ask the two worlds to merge in Peoria?

      But the worlds are merging. We are becoming softened to the realities and being given a chance to say either “yes” or “no” to them via the images of internet and t.v. We have given ourselves over to the wiser powers. Those of us who want money or prestige attempt to break into the inside circle of software-creating hives where they will be accepted by a fearless leader whose original vision came anywhere and everywhere but from a computer.

     In a way we accept the “trips” that others have taken at the expense of taking our own. Timothy Leary understood the nature of computers, saying in essence that it is the new high for the coming millennium.

      But there is something false in it. Just as a word cannot be what it connotes, we, too, cannot be where we “go.” In fact, we go nowhere except into our own minds.

     True, the computer we use is our tool, where images are given to us and we grasp or duck them. The accepted images cling to us like burrs to our socks. The dreaded ones pass on only to be accepted by somebody else. When we are thus so well fed then how can we turn away from our feeder, the giver, the mother?       

There is no straight line walked simply in this world unless it is away from something. That which we accept needs be taken deeply into the soul.

     A Buddhist, when he sits, often does so facing a blank wall. A modern man needs the pictures. The artist needs the rounding out of the pictures in a search for meaning or structure.

     The philosopher needs to turn off the screen.

     I use a computer to write. I have a screenplay writing program, a graphic-design program and I have been an avid user of e-mail. This is not about using the computer. I’ve watched children stare in amazement at educational programs. I do not want to rid the world of a scourge which is not a scourge.

      My aim is to perhaps make one person who needs to, consider the nature of their modern existence. Perhaps my first concern is only for myself. When my faculties of discernment become too thinned and I insist on placing more and more food on my plate as if to devour all of the food in the world in the shortest amount of time will make me healthy, happy, wise and strong, then I am fooling myself.

      The mis-education in our society is not that we learn too little, but that we learn too much. We don’t take the time to sift through what we’ve already got and allow the natural connections to unfold in a manner that we may see.

      I don’t blame our educational system per se, for we only want what everybody else wants, teachers included, that is, to give to children the necessary tools that they need to live productive and happy lives.

     But there are too many accidents. Too many deaths. Too much violence. Too little acceptance for difference. Too much hate stemming from too much pain. There is no one panacea for our societal ills. There is no one answer. We are ill-equipped to ask the proper questions whenever two or more are gathered. One mind believes in reality as such and the other believes in a different world. All that we can ask is that “we get along” as Rodney King so poetically and simply stated it.

     We need to unplug our worlds at times and ironically enough, after we do, we then need to plug back in and take a few more strides towards the ever flowing stream of technology, political kindness which some would perhaps call an oxymoron and the rosebud, never to be picked mind you, of an infant dream where morality is as the whirlpool and our greatest feat is not to dive, but to hold sacred without knowing fully or even expecting to in this life, its answer blurred yet glistening like a diamond in a stream.

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Published in: on September 26, 2022 at 10:10 pm  Leave a Comment  
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The Deal by Fargo Kantrowitz

The Deal

Ive had enough. Enough is enough. U got guys carrying guns in their larynx’s. you got people doing stupid things for people not you but them. Our representatives in congress on the Republican side are ALL working for corporations without admitting it. There is no other explanation for the tax bill.

You can’t win the argument on the street because nobody is watching the same program. But you’re ready to pick up a pitchfork and make it out into the streets anyway because supposedly there is an enemy there and you have to pitch in and join the fight. But you don’t admit that you didn’t see that internet show and realize that you don’t know why you are holding that pitchfork. You pitch the fork anyway. You wait. Why, you wonder. Why did I do it? But now it is too late, you are part of the plan. They will tell you what to do from here, in the meantime the elite, not the liberal elite, but the conservative elite, are going to eat. They are going to eat your children and you better smile and say yessir if you want your crust now. Without now then how could you have then, you imagine. But then comes and you watch the leg go down. Slurp. The deal you made with Donald Trump.

Jimmy ambled down the road. Not much going on with jimmy today. His official stance pertaining to his state of mind was left open. Of course, he was unconscious about so much but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t try. You had to pull from the pit the sustenance that you need. It all feels so empty, like there is nothing going on anywhere that matters. Hopeless, pointless it is. Pitiful. Over. So what then? What then? What then? What’s the point and what is the point of thinking about then? When there is no now from which to grow a then.

In another sphere above the fear that he was aware of was a huge blue sky with birds flying and breezes that held meaning. Beauty, he supposed. But enough about that. The thing that everybody wanted to know about Jimmy was whether he would become a success. He too thought of this and it ultimately disappointed him greatly until he stopped doing anything that would make him a success. He was too put on the spot.

He made it down the street but didn’t know to turn left or right so he just kept walking. What’s the point? There was no point. Might as well keep walking forever, he thought. His feet kept moving. His mother was dead. His family was gone. His love hopes abandoned. The blue world above him or meaningful beauty always lived there, but it was impossible to connect to. So he walked with a fake blue sky above him as he did. Fake clouds. Fake birds. No accompanying feeling, the one thing he wanted. Nothing that mattered could permeate his skull. His skull, not heart. The heart was just one big lament by this time. Something that didn’t matter that much at all. Life didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Nothing.

Ii

Of course some things mattered, like sunshine and the best next word. Why would Jimmy want to cry? Post modern writers were all fools. That world wasn’t real. Only the real world was real. You know, that one. But then, you don’t want to say that, that the world is near one pickle shy of an empty barrel. Done. Nothing matters anymore as they say in this era of Trump. Nothing matters anymore. Exactly what jimmy was saying and feeling. Who cares? Who cares? You? Do you?

Published in: on June 23, 2021 at 8:10 pm  Leave a Comment  
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From 101 of the least asked questions of all times

Why do intellectuals often think they’re smarter than circus clowns?

 

While circus clowns do not necessarily pride themselves on their intellectual prowess, they cannot be said to know less than intellectuals, whose assumption of superiority in itself would be an intellectual mistake.  This makes the score from the beginning of the debate 1-0: circus clowns.

 

Whereas a circus clown may not have read The Nichomachean Ethics, the intellectual has most likely never reduced a sad child to happy tears through the flapping of their size 26 boot. In each case a catharsis may be the possible result, yet whereas the circus clown does not judge results or knowledge according to intellect, but rather, to emotion, he can be said to know more depending upon his dedication to his craft, natural abilities and even age.

 

 

Why are NRA guys so into law and order yet cops hate their guts?

 

While it is true that the right to bear arms is in our constitution, it is also true that the founding fathers had not considered the fact that thirteen-year-old psychopaths in the future could find myriad ways to exercise their right at twenty to one hundred bullets per minute. Cops are well aware of this fact and therefore believe there should be limits on the types of guns to be sold and also stricter regulations concerning the sale. The NRA guys are also aware of this situation, an awareness which, for them, points right back to the constitution in the form of desire for self-protection and law and order. Unfortunately, the NRA guys cannot see banning any weapons at all for fear of blighting the holy words “right to bear arms.” Cops say that because of this cops die. Unfortunately, criminals also readily admit their love of this constitutional right as well. However, criminals will most likely never attack the NRA guy, (who is ready for him, but unfortunately lives far from the criminal, on his ranch in Texas) but will instead kill small children playing on their front porches from L.A. to New York City. Ultimately, the entire debate comes down to one other question: Do children really matter?

 

 

Why does the media believe that it is important for me to know that the President enjoyed a golf game yesterday?

 

 

The media will usually use the President’s golf game as a lead-in to what it wants to say about current events. However, this does not sufficiently explain why the camera or the writer’s pen or the photographer’s lens naturally finds the president swinging a four foot pole at a two inch ball relevant and a good place to start.

 

Two concepts may help to explain this. The “reeling-in”  and the “give the public a break” Ideas.

 

The former uses the golf game as backdrop because it does not expect the general public to pay attention to the intricate details of the story without first having a mental pacifier handed to them.

 

This “reeling in” leads the viewer by the hand to la la land where the under-lying message is coyly announced, for example, that the president is calm, cool, and collected, so “don’t worry when I tell you that he is on his way to prison for fraud, etc…”

 

This “give the public a break” technique is a sort of buffer between the story and what it really means, a public service to us from the media.

 

Combined, these two tricks of the trade lead to an intriguing story whereas there was previously only the possibility of a slightly different take on the never changing and endless stream of beaureaucratic red tape run amok that the journalist must call news or else lose his job.

Published in: on September 28, 2016 at 12:26 am  Leave a Comment  
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The Fargo Kantrowitz’z Literary Campsite – The Inner World – Joey Kantor

Welcome to the inner world. I used to think that I wanted to be an expert on the inner world, went to college for an esoteric inner world degree, wrote words, read books, did everything you’re supposed to do to come to know the inner world. But I can honestly say that I know absolutely nothing about the inner world. With this disclaimer, I will continue to be your guide.

You might ask me why I would want to write about something that I know nothing about. Well, there is really very little else that interests me. It is like fine music, you hear it, but you don’ t know why you love it. I always wanted to know what I was doing when I was dreaming, but it just didn’t work out. After all of the books and all the study, after all of the writing where I journeyed into the inner world, after all of it, I am no closer now to knowing what it is about than I was at the beginning of my trek and this is, well, actually a little embarrassing.

Yeah, embarrassing. Who do you know that spent $30,000 to learn about the inner world by studying mythology and depth psychology only to say these pitiful words about knowing? What is knowing? Sure this is a question that many philosophers have continually tackled and this could be advantageous to the rest of us if we could actually muck through their explanations. Who really has this question in the back of their mind?

Very few people. Not many people sit around wondering about the nature of knowing. When I tried to join the pros I always failed miserably. My questions were my questions and their answers never really did it for me. If I tried to memorize their answers then all I really had were memorized answers. They weren’t the answers to my own questions and my own questions were, I think, much more private, wordless, unconscious.

But like a good fisherman I tried to pull up out of the deep murk all of the answers that I could. I had the impression that the inner world was the same as the outer world. Big mistake. It is nothing like it at all. YOU, the all big YOU of YOU-dom (you know what you are and who), think these same thoughts all the time. You too find it hard to put any of it into words and if you’re like me you want your thought to be eloquent at least, perfect would be fine, like having the highest quality mental state which can only lead you to good things, easy answers, knowing the ineffable. Doesn’t happen. Once you learn something it is swallowed back up by unknowing until you don’t even know what the question was. After all is said and done the old pleasures and needs seem the most reliable. I should have had a family instead of dedicating myself to spiritual pursuits. No, I really should have.

But I can’t sit around and cry over spilt milk. I was taught that the inner world is important and I went down a winding and windy path only to discover, well, nothing. I don’t know anything more now than I knew at any other time of my life. This may be untrue if my mental stability is a sign of having conquered question after question. Knowing became for me a way to be strong and if strong now then I can take comfort in knowing that all of my attempts were not in vain. I am here because I ventured towards the inner world. Just because I cannot see anything of the inside world doesn’t mean that it is not there. It can only be seen through the outer world. Go figure.

If I am to know then I can only know through the reflection of what is in front of my very eyes, for the inner world is invisible, dodgy and unknowable. I think the inner world is what people are talking about when they talk about “God.” God is unknowable. Too vast. Too grand. Too fill in the blank. A flower. A feeling of love. An example of love. You can call God just about anything, choose any nice picture or feeling and you’ve got it. The inner world is the same way.

I could not begin to talk to you about it right now. I guess I could tell you about feelings. They are supposed to be the telltale signs of the inner world. You feel love and the inner world is “blooming,” a metaphor for a state of being using the image of a flower. There it is again. The inner world being described by the outer world.

Why does the outer world always have all the fun? Why can’t we just call the inner world “things” what they are? I suppose that is what poetry tries to do. Finagle words around feelings in the hope that you will show something that will prove that higher thought, an actual wonderful inner world,exists, that there is something under the feeling, the image, the thought, the poetry, and that something is either “you” or “God” or simply the inner world.

Fantasy. It is a need for fantasy I guess. I want to live with invisible toads in something something gardens. I want to mess stuff up, let errors reign so that the invisible world can be exposed as faulty. That’s okay just as long as it is exposed. There is something to that I think. Letting the real inner world poke through. You tend to think that this is the real thing. Just maybe you will find a reason to live. Not that I don’t want to live, but meaning is so important to everybody. Beauty in one’s own soul may just be a proof of meaning as a human being.

I get lost just surmising what the invisible world inside actually consists of. Perpetually the phony. Never have the full on conviction like the others that things are this way or that. Always have to use asterisks to explain everything, have to say, well, I don’t really know, but this seems like the way that it is. I know I want to try and pinpoint these things, but once you bust through and start to use poetry to do it then you are sort of lost. It’s sort of like giving up. But the poetic voice does seem like the truer voice when you are writing about this subject.

How can you know about the inner world unless it tells you about itself? This is assuming that there is a self to the inner world. If so, is it your self? My self? Is the inner world all of the swirling emotions and thoughts surrounding your very core which is just a swirling mass of unknowability? Probably. Sounds right. If so then what do I continue to write for? Seems inane to keep going. But if this were to be a book I would have to continue on and on. My publisher would demand it. So what would I say? The inner world is shown through metaphors from the outer world. Enough. Done. The inner world is a mass of thoughts and feeling which represent the moments of the real ineffable you. Or maybe God. Hmm. Back to being unknowable. So I will continue onward with the trek and find new things to write about. Poetry. Always falling back on poetry.

What is this thing poetry? Most people would say it’s purty words. Others would say it is hyper intellectualism. I guess it can be both of those things. It is definitely an exercise for the mind which is supposed to have importance to the soul. (I guess we’ll get to the soul later. I guess we’ll have to). Obviously we are not very pleased with things if we don’t have some way of registering understanding. Words do that for us.

When you discuss invisible things you of course must find words to express those invisible things so you say things like “the monkey face of the aqua worlds twirl grasses in the welknit of the mind…”you know, crazy things. Why? Because you don’t know! You don’t know what you are doing. You don’t really know of what you consist. The thrubbing and pounding of feeling but not knowing can be way too much for mortal man. The only way to throw off the coil is to face it and come to know it, but when you look, you guessed it, it’s not there. That’s what I mean about the inner world being dodgy. It dodges forever your attempts to throw a good beam of light on to it. Instead it releases little messages to you in code and your brain has to decode those little messages and sometimes it is “aqua worlds twirl grasses in the welknit of the mind.” No really. I really mean it. Then you must decipher that code with another line. Perhaps it can be done. All I know is that you don’t really have much of a choice. You’ve got to do something to come to an understanding of the whirlpool which is your “soul.”

So here we are where I promised you earlier. We’re at the notion of the soul. I could try to remember all of the people who had written about the meaning of the notion of the soul, but being a desperate member of the human race in need of understanding Now, I will not google those things. Instead I will tell you what I think.

The soul is the quicksand in which you drown when you are confused. The soul can be darkened like a burnt piece of toast. The soul can be drowned in all sorts of bad metaphorical liquids, the soul can be burnt up, can be on fire. I’m just guessing here really. But it seems like the soul can do just about anything. The soul is the center of the middle of all that is mysterious. It is where God has coffee with the invisible inner world which is you (but because can be considered a place where God has coffee is possibly a part of God Himheritself.)

Have you noticed that it’s really difficult to talk about the concept of “God?” Have you noticed that yet? Especially as somebody writing to an audience like I am right now. I know how people feel about “God.” But I hate having to do that dance. “God” is simply a part of the equation when it comes to soul and the inner world. Hesheitother is just there like an answer beyond an answer. It is the million trillion mile perspective. The notion that inner world is so inner that ever trying to get to the bottom of the notion with our peanut minds is absolutely ridiculous.

Maybe this is why I have such trouble with this whole inner world thing. I am faced with the idea that at the very end of the line itself is “God” Hesheitorother (according to the beliefs which might make you mad at me if I put it in too awkward a fashion). I don’t know. Even agnostics deal with this. Atheists don’t, but then again, why would they have to be atheists if they could not at least conceive of the notion? It must really drive them crazy, plus all the crap that has entered the world through saints and martyrs and prophets, the loons anyway. You get one good prophet for every twenty loons it seems so you wonder whether any of it is worth it. Atheists have a good point. Let’s just call the whole thing off. But if I am to go into this notion of the inner world I can’t do that. “God” may just be looking over his paper at me right now and I have to say the right thing.

So what to say about God? He lives in the soul. There I said it. If Hesheitorother actually lives then Hesheitorother is housed in the soul. That is the importance of the soul. The house is bigger than the self and the sky where “God” lives is bigger than the house and God can make himself really small and join you in your soul where your inner world lives, I mean self, where you live. You, soul, and the big ol’ Sky.

But of course all of this is invisible so you don’t know who you are in relation to the soul or God and after awhile, well, you guessed it, you try to figure it out poetically or you read book after book or you keep your nose in your holy book in hopes that it will keep you alive through osmosis. Invisible is invisible. “God” doesn’t send emails. Your soul house is a nice little idea and you, once again, are a swirl of emotions and thoughts that will only really let you know what they consist of if you beg them nicely by placing them into words, rather, allow them to be placed into words that sound like, you know, the grasses of the welknit thing.

Isn’t it funny how knowing becomes unknowing in a blink of an eye? We can say that we know something, but the next minute we realize we have no idea what we’re talking about. We might go around for awhile proclaiming that we learned something about ourselves, but then it doesn’t even matter. We’ve moved on. What was the question again?

After awhile, especially if you are losing on the regular playing fields of regular everyday life, it seems to be a nuisance. You wonder why you have to be cursed in thinking the way that you do. Nobody else seems to be that way. Of course, other people also seem to be able to handle the outside world, but you can’t. Your inside world is too vast, too important to you. So you begin to fail. You lose. You can’t join the fray and after awhile you realize that you are sleeping on the ground with a stone for your pillow. That was once claimed as likely to happen for playing this game. But is it really worth it?

Perhaps it is if you are the type of person who might go a little batty if living any other way. Sometimes we have to deal with who we are. Our attention is where it is because that is where it is. Because it is where it is doesn’t mean that we are bad or unworthy or losers, no, but it does mean that it is where it is at and you might just be a candidate for the role of starer into the void your entire life. That’s okay, but you’ve got to be aware that maybe it won’t be all peaches and cream for you. You’ll keep going for as long as you need to and one day you might wake up and realize that you have grown a long beard, have no money, no family and everybody else does and they’re all long long gone. Boo hoo. Navel gazers or star gazers. They don’t know which one you are and you don’t either. You are just who you are and you’d better accept it because at some point you are going to need to pull out of it and go back. Just like the Boddhisatvas in the Buddhist philosophy. Do it and then go home. Give yourself a break and be an all around good guy or gal. That’s your mission. It’s unfortunate in a way because you miss out on a whole lot of things, but some people just don’t have a choice. Often society will reward these people. Maybe it will be you. Most likely not, but maybe. Maybe you too can have love. Stranger things have happened.

Published in: on March 9, 2013 at 6:35 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Session (cont.)

So how’s the philosophy thing going?
Not good.
Why?
Well, you just run out of it too much. You’ve always got the internet to go to in order to remember what it was, but then you get a little confused about what mattered and then you realize that there is too much anyway and to fuse it all into some sort of meaning would take a supercomputer. You could give a little bit of your own synthesis to the populace, but where would that really get you? It’s just a small thing really, to be a writer today, everybody reads, but meaning doesn’t seem to have a place to rest and sit still.
Are you bored with thought?
Yes.
Why?
Because.
Hmm?
You want me to answer whether I am bored with thought by giving you a thought that I would be bored giving you. Do you see? It is never ending. It’s perpetual swirls in the air that dissipate soon after.
So you strive after creating swirls that will last forever?
And how do you do that? How can your thought last forever? Will you have changed anything? Everybody gravitates to what they can touch, anything they can stomach or sexualize or raise them over another for longevity and survival sake.
But don’t you still have spirit?
Yes, I do. I have spirit, yes I do, I have spirit, howbout you!
Hmm?
High school cheer at football games. What’s so big about spirit? At a certain age you’ve failed enough that you are not locked down into anything in the world that really matters, the baser animal needs, you just have spirit and thought. The rest is dirty looks and people’s intuition steering them away from you because you have a tinge of death about you, once again, because you never locked anything down. After awhile you don’t even want to play anymore. You just want to quit.
How do you quit life? You don’t mean killing yourself?
No. I don’t believe in that. I would walk the earth first.
Then what?
I don’t know. Sometimes just quitting the whole thought game seems like the best thing to do. You’ve got the Buddhists who believe that this is the only way to go and they’re pretty sure about it, but if you yourself do it you feel like you are losing all of the mental work you have put in up to that point. A part of you believes that you should just go on thinking these thoughts that are getting less and less exciting for a prize that seems less and less real. I don’t know. I don’t want to quit and being a Buddhist would probably be a good thing for me, at least in a little way, not all the way. I’m not going to get a robe or anything. Thought betrays you after awhile because while you’re thinking something there is another part of you that says that you blew it in the past and now you’re just playing the game. You’re not successful at 46 in the standard way and you take that as failure as everyone else takes it for failure and you feel like you’re just trying because if you didn’t at least try you would look like a human corpse. Nobody wants to be a human corpse. Can you sense the energy running out of my very words? What’s underneath this lack of energy? Doesn’t seem like much. Who knows. Maybe there’s a whole new world there and I’m just holding on to the old one. The intellectual world when I’m supposed to give myself over to the spiritual world and see where that takes me. So, I’m always half going forward and half stopping. I’m on the fence as to what is important in life. All I can think of doing is calling it quits. Go day to day as I age and the philosophy fits me more and more.
Sounds bleak, like you’re giving up.
Giving up, what? Thought? Why not? Look where it’s gotten me. And caring too. I don’t have much energy anymore for either of these. I’ve had enemies and they’ve trained me that everything I attempt will be countered for the sheer joy of sadistic manipulation of another. They like this when a person has high ideals like I had. On the other end of the spectrum you have that endless ladder that you must climb to make it among these animals whose favor you seek. Who knows what sort of word or phrase you will use which will turn those with power to give you credibility against you forever? Who cares what other people think? I do and I want to stop forever.
Walk the earth?
Yeah, walk the earth. Stop caring, but still exist. Maybe I will be able to write one or two words that matter, maybe not, doesn’t really matter because they’ll just be taken up into the other Billion billion words being put out there on the internet that don’t matter either. I thought I would make a living off using my mind, but now, after failure at that, I don’t have the energy. I simply don’t have the energy or care to do it.
So what are you going to do?
I don’t know.

Published in: on June 3, 2012 at 12:51 am  Leave a Comment  
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Session (birth,sex,money,God)

Session 3

You are only interested in writing if you can plug into your mind as if you’re dreaming.
That’s true.
Why would you want to write if it wasn’t fun?
I wouldn’t.
But you do?
I have to.
Why do you have to?
Because I’m a writer.
Then what do you write about?
I don’t know. Stuff. I don’t know.
You don’t know. You just make it up.
Like I said, I’m a writer.
Right. Writers write.
Right.
But you don’t enjoy it?
Well…
Sometimes you enjoy it.
Yes.
When?
When it flows.
When it flows as if it were a dream. So you like to write daydreams.
Yeah, I guess so. I like to write daydreams.
But doesn’t being a daydreamer make you a shlep in the world?
Yes, unless you are published then you are a god.
I see. Tell me.
Yes, Plato…
No, let me just ask you a question. If you could do something other than write what would it be?
I don’t know. A baseball player I guess.
Then why don’t you become a baseball player?
Bad knee. Too old. Suck at the game.
What else.
An astronaut.
What else.
I was going to say fireman but you would know that I’m just goofing around.
Probably.
Let me see. What would I want to do if I wasn’t a writer which isn’t all fun and games. They asked Eliot if living the life of a poet was worth the hassle and he simply said “no.”
So you don’t want to be a writer.
No.
What would you want to be.
Something that would allow me to make a lot of money easily and move to a beach and just smoke pot.
The dream world again.
Yes.
So you want to be a writer.
It seems more significant than painting or photography. But you can’t make money at it, just like those others. You have to sell yourself out. You have to go into advertising, basically, sell shit for other people. Be a part of the problem.
So you see the way that society is as part of the problem.
Yeah, pretty much. This is what the old family and friends don’t understand. Why I don’t even attempt to enter that world, but for me entering that world is like selling out and I don’t have a lot of energy in that direction. So I say I want to write, although it is often pure pain as you write and also take into account the fact that some 19 year old Brown sophomore will be judging you and deciding your work’s fate. Perhaps that graduate hasn’t yet had the experience necessary to judge it properly. So we get an aging down of everything we read. Everything must be written to fit this fucking mold of the reader being a fucking baby.
You’re angry.
You’re damned right I’m angry.
So what do you do?
I don’t know. I deal with my anger, but my writing will never change the facts of the world.
Which are?
Well, let me think.
No, let me ask you another question.
Okay. Shoot.
How old are you?
Forty-six.
You have no loved one in your life.
No.
Why not?
I’m a writer.
Would you like one?
Yes.
I also dribble when I pee so sometimes I stink.
Oh.
You could go to the doctor.
Can’t afford it. I’m a writer.
Don’t you send your stuff out?
Rarely. Can’t afford the postage and printing costs.
So are you a writer?
Yes. I’ve written a lot.
Sounds like you might be afraid of rejection.
Not afraid. Disgusted.
And this makes you come down on yourself like you’re just a sore loser.
How did you know that?
Just a guess. That’s what you pay me for.
Ten bucks an hour on a sliding scale.
You pay me. I get paid. Trust me.
Now I’m part of the problem.
So it goes back and forth. You’re part of the problem sometimes and they’re part of the problem sometimes.
Yeah.
Which makes you ambivalent.
I never understood that word.
You don’t care.
Right. I don’t care. Like I said, I just want to go to the beach and smoke pot.
Then why don’t you?
Can’t afford it.
Just go and see what happens. You’ll find a job. Just go and smoke pot. But then you would have to quit writing and that seems important to you even though you act like it isn’t.
It may be. It may not be. I think I chose the profession as a teenager so it doesn’t really matter. A vocation of the mind isn’t really a good idea. Best to do something really technical or where you use your hands. Make sure that everybody understands it and most importantly make sure that the service is wanted. Dream professions are highly competitive. You have to be superman. I’m not superman any more.

coffee

Tell me about superman.
He flies around and wears a cape.
No, your version of superman.
He knows things. He doesn’t feel pain. He doesn’t rebel against the world and cripple himself.
You do that?
All the time.
Why?
Mad.
Anger again.
Yeah, I guess.
What happened to you?
I always look for similes and I can never find any. They told me in literature school that you should look for similes for your writing to be good. I’ve never been able to and it’s always flustered me as a writer. So I just started writing what I wanted to write. No similes or just bad ones and I accept it. I’m a bad writer.
Define a bad writer.
A bad writer is someone who doesn’t put in a lot of description or similes but just writes like he’s thinking a lot. That’s me. Nothing ever happens either. There’s no plot. Just interiority. Lots of interiority.
You’re an introvert?
Totally.
Do you like being an introvert?
Hate it.
Why?
Imagine that every thought that you think has to be thought over and over again, but not in a few seconds but over several years. It takes you years to learn something an extrovert takes for granted from the beginning. Being an introvert is like a curse.
So being an introvert is what happened to you?
No.
What happened to you?
That’s hard to say.
Why?
It seems everything has happened to me and it’s all just added up. You sort of go with it because that’s the way it is.
Name one thing.
Can’t think of any I want to go into.
Why not?
The stories are too long. I’m a writer, remember?
Pain?
I guess.
Then what.
Goes black.
What?
My will to think.
What do you do?
Lie down.
And think?
Of course.
Is this good?
I figure it’s good for my story writing possibilities.
Do you really want to cash in on your pain?
Figure maybe it will help me escape the pain to have money.
So you make a living by lying down and thinking about your pain?
No I make a living by writing about it. I figure I’m just trying to figure it out. But I don’t send anything out so I don’t make any money at all. I guess I’m just keeping hope alive that’s all.
When does it end?
When I come up for air?
What’s going to make you do that?
I don’t know. Move away.
Where would you go.
Boston.
Why Boston?
Because there are literary people there and then maybe I won’t feel so alone.
Why does everybody have to be literary?
They don’t, but otherwise they’re sexual and monetary.
Aren’t you sexual and monetary?
No, because I’m literary. We lose the sexual part without the monetary after awhile and of course we never have the monetary. It’s failure upon failure as a human being, but what are you going to do? Stay in shape and you’ll still be part of the pack for a little while anyway.
What do you mean?
What I mean is that we are animals in a pack. We have as much desire to bolster the weak in this pack as do animals in theirs. We are all going to get old so we’re all doomed to be tossed out of the pack. We may not be killed but we will be abandoned. That’s why we have families, because we know that our own offspring, at least, cannot throw us over a cliff. This is not true for people not our direct family. It’s a ruthless system really that if true and there is a God would mean that this God is a very ruthless God.
But isn’t God just the way that it is. What is is God?
I guess so. It’s seeming to be that way all the time, but you’ve got to admit that your admiration for this God has to go down the more you realize this plan.
So what do you do?
I grow old just like the rest of them. I try to put myself into a situation that will allow me freedom to move around, preferentially in nature, since that is the only way that you will be allowed to remain in the pack. People want only strength. They will do their best to destroy you if you attempt to foist philosophy or contemplation their way as strength. No, strength is in the arm and the loins and that’s it. Completely.
And in youth.
Yes, in youth. You can contemplate in youth because it adds to your aura of strength. Beauty is strength. Beauty is health. Health is strength.

Published in: on April 5, 2012 at 5:50 pm  Leave a Comment  
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