goodlife
Thursday, January 08, 2004
Trying to be a good student (again) and floundering (still) and entirely at a loss. All I can really do, I guess, is go through the motions with a sort of "dignified-defeatist" type attitude. I can quietly take my beatings and gracefully nod to my failures and so on and so forth and eventually it'll all fade away. Or I will. I'm not characteristically graceful, is the thing... and I'm trying to fade away, but it's not as easy as one tends to like to think it ought to be. Who the hell am I? What am I doing? Where am I going? What do I want? And, for that matter, who the hell are you, and what can I do yah for on this fine morning/evening/afternoon? How am I supposed to do my physics homework or write my silly religions paper without answering those sorts of troubling, pressing, obvious questions first? I know that learning about the science of things, and learning about God, and learning about grammar, and all of that jazz will help me get myself sorted out to some extent... because all of those things are in me and will probably be a part of what I continue to do with my life... but doesn't it seem a bit like we're tackling the bear ass-backwards? No matter how much you tell me that this stuff is good to know (I believe you, I really do) and that I'll regret it if I don't pay attention now (I already regret it, I promise), no matter how much you push that "we really are relevant!" point, I'm still not gonna be able to keep with it. You really don't care too much for calculating the force of the wind on the bridge at the exact moment that the bridge is collapsing beneath your feet; at that point you just want some fucking solid ground. Anyway...I'm lost. Anyone else? Email me. Let's chat.
Saturday, January 03, 2004
Rory: You'll wear a sandwich board with me? Yours doesn't have to be "political" in the sense that mine will be. A pumpkin one would be excellent.
Kelly: Yes, I believe I will wear a sandwich board with you.
Rory: Wouldn't it be so cool if a sizable number of us did this?
Kelly: Yes.
Rory: Spread the word!
Kelly: Mkay...
Rory: And it can be whatever people want it to say, which is good.
Kelly: I agree.
Rory: There doesn't have to be an agenda. It's just a "be yourself" agenda. "Be your own agenda"; "Just stop being their agenda without knowing it". See, we're wearing sandwich boards all the time and we just aren't aware. Our arms carrying heavy books and our faces tired and unhappy are sandwich boards. Those are the sandwich boards they want us to carry and that's the message they want us to show. "This is life". But that's not a happy message and it's not an accurate message.
Kelly: That is partly true, but do you really think they acknowledge it as an unhappy sandwich board?
Rory: Depends on who "they" are... and what form the "acknowledgement" comes in. I don't think every teacher and administrator intends to break and destroy children. That would be silly.
Kelly: I don't really think any teacher or administrator does. I think they're slaves just as we are, to the system. They're doing it the way it's been done for ages.
Rory: But I think many of them are aware that they are teaching children that it is most important to obey orders and follow rules... and that life isn't happy. And I think many of them believe that... because that's how they were taught. And that's the life they live...
Kelly: ...and it's hard to keep up an archaic system in a newer world. I think that could be true, yes. But...not most of them. I think most of them think teaching their subject is the most important thing and that orders are a by-product of all this.
Rory: I don't think much of it is a conscious process. It's "just the way it is". Except it's a silly way for it to be and it could easily be different. But no one can see that for some reason. You suggest it and they act like you told them to stop obeying gravity, to stop falling when you are no longer supported by something solid.
Kelly: Yeah, it's true, it's not conscious. I agree with you.
Rory: It's sort of disturbing how significant that sort of "order" is. People actually believe that there are only two alternatives... obedience and chaos. Nothing in my life has led me to believe that to be true. What I've seen is this: intelligent people arguing and proposing contrary, subversive, outrageous ideas... has a POSITIVE effect on society. That's what history shows us. When there has been a break down of "order" and a revolution of "thought" and "expression" and "reason" and "faith" it has IMMENSLY BENEFITTED society. That's how I see social change... the American Revolution, civil rights, the outset of Christianity, things like that.
Kelly: I think I agree with most of that.
And out of muffled desperation comes an idea. It is, quite possibly, a horrible idea. I will do it anyway.
Think... sandwich boards. Think of the things that one could write on a sandwich board. Think of how large and attention grabbing sandwich boards are when worn in environments to which sandwich boards (and people in sandwich boards) are not native. Think that there are no rules against sandwich boards. Think that they can be made very easily out of old pizza boxes and things. Think. Think. Think. We could take this places. Think with me. Email me. If you were a sandwich board, what would you say? If I were a sandwich board, what would you have me say? Would you wear me? It is time this began, I think. Think with me. Let's be the change we want to see in the world. Let's stop being taught to swim by drowning men. Let's stop being taught to fear the dark by light-bulb-sales-people. Let's run quickly and make mistakes but for God's sake let's do something.
Thursday, January 01, 2004
This relates to nothing, but I love it:
“So I feel less guilty about my smoke and I know all of a sudden all of us will go to heaven straight up from where we are, like golden phantoms of Angels in Gold Strap we go hitch hiking the Deus Ex Machina to heights Apocalyptic, Eucalyptic, Aristophaneac, and Divine – I suppose, and I wonder what the cat might think – To Cruz I say “your cat is having golden thoughts (su gata tienes pensas de or)” but she doesn’t understand for a thousand and one billion manifold reasons swimming in the swarm of her milk thoughts Buddha-buried in the stress of her illness enduring – “What’s Pensas?” she yells to the others, she doesn’t know that the cat is having golden thoughts – but the cat loves her so, and stays there, little behind to her chin, purring, glad, eyes X-closed and stoopy, kitty kitkat like the Pinky I’d just lost in New York run over on Atlantic Avenue by the swerve dim madtraffics of Brooklyn and Queens, the automatons sitting at wheels automatically killing cats every day about five or six a day on the same road. “but this cat will die the normal Mexican death – by old age or disease – and be wise old big burn in the alleys around, and you’ll see him (dirty as rags) flitting by the garbage heap like a rat, if Cruz ever gets to throw it out – But Cruz won’t, and so cat stays at her chin-point like a little sign of her good intentions.” - Jack Kerouac
“... So I vowed to keep myself alive, but only if I would never use me again for just me — each one of us is born of two, and we really belong to each other. I vowed to do my own thinking, instead of trying to accommodate everyone else's opinion, credo's and theories. I vowed to apply my inventory of experiences to the solving of problems that affect everyone aboard planet Earth.” - R. Buckminster Fuller
More good conversation...
Hugh: You know what?
Rory: What?
Hugh: Car headlights...
Rory: ?
Hugh: ...are kind of like school (see, after talking to you anything I dislike is suddenly very much like this "school"). They seem so useful but then, when something happens and you need some flexibilty or your energy and motivation "burn out", they're impossible to change. I have to take off my bumper to get at the screws to take off my grill to get at the screws to take out the light. And these screws are stripped, so I must take each one out with a combination of my oh-so-clever-but-very-slow-mechanical-techniques and the raw strength that grows from built up anger and frustration. And you can't free them without destroying them and much around them. You could hit the car with a sledge hammer, and get free...but that's so destructive. So there's only one solution (I would take credit for this but I would never steal Aaron Smith's ideas): I am forced to drive with my lights off.
Rory: That's profound.
and also...
Rory: I think I'm going to resolve myself to floating at least a foot and a half above the ground at all times and getting around by pushing off walls, or prodding things with a long stick, or going where the wind blows me.
Alex: That'd be fun. Let me know if you figure that out.
Rory: What is there to figure out? It's a new years resolution... they just happen right?
