I felt a strong vibe just before I steeled myself and told my brother that Hunter S. Thompson was dead, that I'd read it in one of my mailgroups and then in the daily headlines. Was just reminded--and then reminded again. It was a feeling of numb despair, and it wasn't mine...
I'm not sure what I'm hearing, what I'm feeling now. This is the sort of thing where you think, well, if even he couldn't laugh it off scathingly, what does that say about where the future stands, what are we facing here? Because I don't doubt for a second that it's the state of this nation/empire, even as the rest of the civilized world seems to be evolving and learning from its mistakes, that would lead an American of such stature to put a bullet through his head.
We are regressing here, backsliding insidiously via loopholes and legislation riders and myriad condonings back towards an idyllic-framed mediaevalism, feudalism, whatever will satisfy the demands of the rich and their corporate interests. Blink as a bill goes through and you'll see nothing changed on the surface--compare the national views of a week, a month, a year...and you start to see more than you want to. The various layers of state and federal and local obscure it, if you look too closely at one or the other--but see the big picture, and the big words, and the shapes are clear. And you ask yourself, if you haven't already, is this actually my country?--the one I used to believe in as an ideal??
And maybe the answer is no. Maybe the most certain thing in this brave new world is the acceptance of lies and those who spread them, and the vilification of those who assert that "the truth" has any meaning. After all, the truth changes nothing--it has not yet raised up any Senate Investigatory Committees or other dei ex machinae, because there is no independent power left in the legislature to move that mountain, no matter what our faith. The system has been gradually hamstrung while its citizens were distracted by war--the strings are all leading right into the White House, with all action under the 'yea or nay' shadow of a single political party that has been gathering its forces and wish lists for decades. We are even now living in a state of unconstitutional lawlessness, whatever the official line of the day might be.
In such a time as this, one longs for Victor Hugo, for Emile Zola, for Aldous Huxley, for Fyodor Dostoyevsky, for Albert Camus, for George Bernard Shaw, for George Orwell, for Eric Hoffer--for everyone who has stepped to the forefront of their times, boldly or subtly, and cut through the crap to say what needs saying. We want their voices along with Bill Moyers, Noam Chomsky, Kurt Vonnegut, and all the rest of us here--everyone with the gift of words--to clarify, to show the subtle, to speak the truth and give it back its power before it's all stolen away in more distractions, more violence, less bread and more circuses but always the promise that we're getting better and better every day...
National improvement is not a natural process. It takes stern will and honesty, and willingness to plan for the future not for immediate gratification, whether it be misleading tax cuts or being able to gamble away your own retirement money unhindered. It takes looking at the needs of all people, regardless of whether they go to church or not, or how much they gave your campaign or that of your opponent--it takes intelligent humanity, not just the will of some God whose name and supremacy you latch to your cause...and "humanism" is not, must not become another dirty word, tainted with spin. Humanity is our ideal as humans, not a thing to be demeaned at every turn.
And it also takes the effort of those who will hold a nation to its own avowed ideals--the ones who will needle and nag, the ones who will deftly prick egos and tip sacred cows, and test whether people practise what they preach in this still-ongoing (till further notice) "experiment in democracy." To cite last night's "most controversial episode ever," this country may even owe a great deal of its remaining intellectual freedom (and even capacity, I daresay) to "The Simpsons"--and I've said more than once, the day when that show is forced off the air is the day that we lose all intelligent media in America.
But here we have another defining event--though "forced off the air" is perhaps too blunt and implicating a term for what has been technically ruled a suicide. And in the wake of this passing, perhaps we can make sure that his signature spirit of reckless inquiry and irreverence to all things arbitrary never leaves but only grows stronger now, pulling more people out of the wings and the shadows, off of the sidelines here.
There is too much to be done to let Hunter S. Thompson be forgotten...or Arthur Miller...or anyone who has written things that need to be spoken again, and firmly, and unmistakeably. Time to set about cutting the crap.
"Aorta (fiery version)" - digital painting, copyright K. Aurencz Zethmayr
Monday, February 21, 2005
"The Masque of the Mary Sue"
[This is specifically referring to the literary area of "fan fiction", but as usual I never quite stay within the lines...]
Bad...writing....hurts....
Physically and undeniably hurts to read it, and all the more so when you know it's being unfaithful to character/time/place/etc. as well. That's why I very rarely hang around any fanfiction that isn't very overtly erotic/intimate, and most-preferably slash at that....because anything that has a hint of authorial wistfulness, mental prudishness or conventional idealism in it tends to overturn the balance of aesthetics in really insidious if not blatant ways. And at least if it's just the 'original characters' developing relationships and making out, that means there's some halfway serious thought that had to go into planning and orchestrating the whole thing--not just plunking in someone new and shoehorning in a romance that has no firm basis in the rigours of actual character psychology.
I hate Mary Sues--I can smell 'em, I can hear their awkwardly eager manner of speech and self-description (oh, damn well do I know their scent after all this time with Ancient Pine Resin...or Pine-Sol, as represents both her Circean-solar nature and the natural desire to wash out all one's direct memory of her after parting ways. Fire may have purified 'salem's Lot, but I'm still working on the appropriate exorcisms for this one...)--and even when there's no one technically there in the verbal flesh, I can tell where her spirit lingers near, meddling and manipulating and making characters do what they never would in any saner state.
That is, the Mary Sue is the manifest Avatar of an immature ego trying to justify itself in words. I will give her that--after all, I was once in that stage myself, trying to make exact mirrors and reinvent the wheel before I started to see the keener and more fragmented reflections of selfhood all around me. Most of all signs in the world of human expression, the blatantly ideal and aggressively omnipresent Mary Sue character is proof that the authors do not yet know themselves as they naturally are, much less well enough to let other people/characters be as they naturally are. Because, of course, the Mary Sue is the center of her own universe as presented to others, and she displaces or warps all existing characters around her to suit her needs, whatever their normal and sane reactions would be to whatever she does--in short, there is never the slightest chance allowed that she will be rejected in the end, that her image will be objectively tarnished, that her dreams will fail, because she's not a real character in the first place--just an intrusion of the power/s-that-be into this appropriated world. Nothing can stand against her, not tradition nor fact nor logic. She is the incarnation of a determined Demiurge, and has all the attendant modesty of Jehovah (no matter what sweet and self-minimizing words may be put in her mouth at any given time--"Why me, out of all the other girls...?"--"I'm just a normal person..."--et cetera, ad infinitum...)
Why her?--because it's likely all the writer has of him/herself so far, and more than anything there's the fear of losing one's nominal "uniqueness"--and therefore every personal detail must be agonised over (insofar as one's capable of agonising), every facet polished exactly in the mind's eye, no matter how little of this preparation will actually cross over into the details of "reality" here. In a more experienced writer or actor this is called building the character--but here, where character itself has not yet been recognised and developed, this building is merely surface presentation, and the object beneath the gilding as insubstantial as a wraith...having as its closest legitimate relative the incorporeal form which tenants and vivifies the blood-soaked vesture and stiffened mask of the Red Death itself.
Edgar Allan Poe knew good writing when he saw it, and knew where to aim the pointer at a story's flaws. And no doubt he would recognise the Masque of the Mary Sue as well, as he had much experience in dealing with the society poetesses and authoresses of his day--I make no judgement as to their literary ability per se--since it has always been a tendency of the feminine awareness, or at least its typical situation, to write forth fantasies where there is no chance to live them out in the physical world. There might not have been the phenomenon of "fan fiction" in his day (unless it started covertly with Werther instead of with Sherlock Holmes), but I'm sure he would recognise the type.
Perhaps he might also--I do need to check my dates to be sure--relate it to a specific character--and one of the most famous in the history of first-person literature, that created by the pseudonymous "Currer Bell", aka Charlotte Bront:e. Is Jane Eyre a Mary Sue?--a governess like the author, poor and persecuted yet virtuous and rewarded in the end with the love of a brooding Byronic hero, her prime flaw being her "passionate nature", and the situations of her life being all-so-closely related to the popular novels and classics of her day?
But the answer there must be a subtle but certain "no"--because Jane Eyre is a real character in her own life, is plain and small and unvarnished and consciously self-doubting as to her own real character, suffers all the mistakes and slips and tarnishments of a real character, does not live in a fairytale world with a fairytale ending but deals with a world of tragedies and unrightable wrongs and disappointments like a real character--no, like a real person, let us say. Her existence is perhaps drawn from that of her creator, but she does not exist merely to live out vicarious pleasures and goals, whether of status or wealth, romance or unbounded popularity. She lives within a fully-delineated/shaded story, and its plot-shapes are not necessarily any kinder to her than to any other character, whatever old-fashioned contrivances within them may catch the eye. Her resemblance to Charlotte Bront:e is one of conscious causality, not of glossing-up and glorification...
And so perhaps Poe would recommend that book, as I do, to anyone looking to get past themselves and learn to write characters with actual skill and nuance and humour and details drawn out of a familiar world. It certainly couldn't hurt...
"Jane, here's your mission...."
("Onegin, Tatiana--you come too...")
Saturday, February 19, 2005
When the crazies and cults take over....
[Note: I'm not gonna say what I'm actually watching on TV at the moment (6.40pm CST, Chicago suburbs), because you might take this less seriously on account of it being catalyzed by a piece of pop culture...but I will say that this episode does have a slightly polarizing effect on a person's perceptions. Anyone who gets that reference wins the key to the planetarium...good for getting over those white nights...]
The frightening thing is not that there are fanatics and rabid ideologues in the world, or even the fact of their belief in itself, but the moment when you realize that you're in their world now, and that they've been pulling the strings far longer than you thought. When the insane becomes accepted routine all around you, and the sane is vilified and belied like the sun being just a big idealised table lamp, a lion being a hyped-up pussycat, and nothing you firmly believe in is given the credit of its own truth but just used as an empty shell of words, filled with whatever they want, shifting like desert sands in the prevailing wind...where hashisheen hold sway and no one calls their bluff, and maybe you even start to think, "well, what if they're right...?"--what if their vision makes some sense, what if the God or power they worship truly is the only thing and all logic and commonsense humanity dust in its sight...?
When you hear the urge of the herd boil up in chants and salutes and sacred signs, when the meaning of a single life becomes nothing atall compared to the great Leader, the great Idea...wherever men do not hold their own lives as forfeit for killing, but die--and fervently--so that they may kill, then the crazies have taken hold. It happens all over the world and we condemn it. It happens with strange names and foreign-looking faces and we call it evil. But what do we do when it happens under familiar names, and "in the name" of those things we dare not refute in themselves, things wherein we've invested our faith as well?
Have we the keen discernment to slice through the veils of lies and spin, the twistings of dogma, the elaborate irrationalities held over our heads and closing in around us? The strength to step upon the drug-laced fire and quench its mind-fogging fumes, no matter that we get burnt for our witnessing?
No need to go looking afar for our soul's greatest threat, or a clear and present danger--it's right in our own backyard, and stuck like a beam in our collective eye. We have met the enemy and he is us, and perhaps the best thing in the world is for all the crazies of the world to go gather at Armageddon and kill each other off in the name of their beliefs, and leave the world to those who actually value their own humanity.
But then...it's just as likely that all or most of the crazies are already far in cahoots, strange bedfellows true but under the covers all the same--and with them running things as they like, making over the world in their own puristic, fundamentalist, orthodox images...
Would that it were only a jarring dream, and not one played out in all these waking hours.
"The dreamers of the day are dangerous men..."
We badly need a few good dreamers now.
The frightening thing is not that there are fanatics and rabid ideologues in the world, or even the fact of their belief in itself, but the moment when you realize that you're in their world now, and that they've been pulling the strings far longer than you thought. When the insane becomes accepted routine all around you, and the sane is vilified and belied like the sun being just a big idealised table lamp, a lion being a hyped-up pussycat, and nothing you firmly believe in is given the credit of its own truth but just used as an empty shell of words, filled with whatever they want, shifting like desert sands in the prevailing wind...where hashisheen hold sway and no one calls their bluff, and maybe you even start to think, "well, what if they're right...?"--what if their vision makes some sense, what if the God or power they worship truly is the only thing and all logic and commonsense humanity dust in its sight...?
When you hear the urge of the herd boil up in chants and salutes and sacred signs, when the meaning of a single life becomes nothing atall compared to the great Leader, the great Idea...wherever men do not hold their own lives as forfeit for killing, but die--and fervently--so that they may kill, then the crazies have taken hold. It happens all over the world and we condemn it. It happens with strange names and foreign-looking faces and we call it evil. But what do we do when it happens under familiar names, and "in the name" of those things we dare not refute in themselves, things wherein we've invested our faith as well?
Have we the keen discernment to slice through the veils of lies and spin, the twistings of dogma, the elaborate irrationalities held over our heads and closing in around us? The strength to step upon the drug-laced fire and quench its mind-fogging fumes, no matter that we get burnt for our witnessing?
No need to go looking afar for our soul's greatest threat, or a clear and present danger--it's right in our own backyard, and stuck like a beam in our collective eye. We have met the enemy and he is us, and perhaps the best thing in the world is for all the crazies of the world to go gather at Armageddon and kill each other off in the name of their beliefs, and leave the world to those who actually value their own humanity.
But then...it's just as likely that all or most of the crazies are already far in cahoots, strange bedfellows true but under the covers all the same--and with them running things as they like, making over the world in their own puristic, fundamentalist, orthodox images...
Would that it were only a jarring dream, and not one played out in all these waking hours.
"The dreamers of the day are dangerous men..."
We badly need a few good dreamers now.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Preternatural trifecta beat....(Scavenger Hunt #1)
"Yes, but can I dance to it.....?"
Okay, people, this is where I'm gonna get a little bit idiosyncratic and leave a few pieces out of the referential puzzle, seeing as I'm just a downright evil & sinister smartass at heart. Takes two to tango, but I'm not inclined to show all my steps--so I think I'll just give you the keyword search instead:
Keyword Search Results (there, that was simple enough...)
And then I'll say, isn't it interesting how many of us constantly underestimate, aye, even undermine the intellectual capacities and aesthetic discernment of those who don't happen to fit an established mould of the type we want all proper luminaries to be, and can't even appreciate their known qualities without typecasting them into being something that can be handled, labeled, kicked around with impunity...?
Maybe it's the nature of the pop celebrity business, that rewards pseudo-crossovers into a constructedly "classical" space as well as those "wild & crazy" "outside the box" forays--but all the same must categorize for its own categorical survival, and heaven help us if the homegrown tomatoes should mix with the cultivated gladiolii...either way, it's seemingly much easier to assume an elitist pretension in someone's words the closer it looks like--or worse, is--the real deal itself.
That is, intelligence, clarity, acuity, sensibilities. We (the mass of us) don't want that sort of thing to spoil our boys, to ruin the drunken frat-party. After all, if they showed a credible intelligence...they might be, on some level, actually better and smarter than those who consume the fruits of their labour--hey, and their labour itself might actually have some seriousness in it, something like craft and discipline, instead of just being what some lucky people get to do while the rest of us work our tails off trying to get by.
The world at large loves idols of the heart, not the head. It weeps and laughs with Paula Abdul, and boos and hisses at Simon Cowell, and it insists that really, really....all the famous people whose movements we follow aren't really any smarter or subtler than us, not in that hairsplitting or morally scathing sort of way (think of Marlon Brando, for example, or Orson Welles...)--they can have some wisdom, perhaps, but it has to be the homespun-&-homely heartwarming kind, that encourages without challenge, that inspires without really implying pain, or risk, or danger along the way of dreams. Safe celebrities--that aren't really any "better" than us--just our betters somehow in this great hierarchy of attention and soundbites and significant trends.
It would disarrange the system, in short--much as if an errant but popular prince delivered a speech fit for Whitehall. Unsettlement. Uncertainty. Chaos...in short, you have a ghastly mess--which is why all our flowergirls, by the way (I know, I jumped movies there), are best-liked while they retain their lower-class accents and say no more than is comical or flirtatious. Should they turn trenchant and succeed therein, the whole place would go up in flames....
Sorry, didn't mean to torch it like that...nothin' like a little flamboyant intellectualism...but seriously, folks--why is it that we either overlook or coo over the stupidest things that an airheaded ditz says about her aspirations, but let someone say something halfway of real consequence and suddenly they have to be dragged down by that good old stereotyping of themselves? Are we living in Harrison Bergeron's time already, by the way?--oh but yes, of course we are...it's been a guiding theme through the ages since that little stroll through a field lopping off the tallest stalks of grain, making sure no one sticks up too high, too clearly.
But then...I'm a tall stalk of grain myself by nature, and I know firsthand how people love to cut things down.
Okay, people, this is where I'm gonna get a little bit idiosyncratic and leave a few pieces out of the referential puzzle, seeing as I'm just a downright evil & sinister smartass at heart. Takes two to tango, but I'm not inclined to show all my steps--so I think I'll just give you the keyword search instead:
Keyword Search Results (there, that was simple enough...)
And then I'll say, isn't it interesting how many of us constantly underestimate, aye, even undermine the intellectual capacities and aesthetic discernment of those who don't happen to fit an established mould of the type we want all proper luminaries to be, and can't even appreciate their known qualities without typecasting them into being something that can be handled, labeled, kicked around with impunity...?
Maybe it's the nature of the pop celebrity business, that rewards pseudo-crossovers into a constructedly "classical" space as well as those "wild & crazy" "outside the box" forays--but all the same must categorize for its own categorical survival, and heaven help us if the homegrown tomatoes should mix with the cultivated gladiolii...either way, it's seemingly much easier to assume an elitist pretension in someone's words the closer it looks like--or worse, is--the real deal itself.
That is, intelligence, clarity, acuity, sensibilities. We (the mass of us) don't want that sort of thing to spoil our boys, to ruin the drunken frat-party. After all, if they showed a credible intelligence...they might be, on some level, actually better and smarter than those who consume the fruits of their labour--hey, and their labour itself might actually have some seriousness in it, something like craft and discipline, instead of just being what some lucky people get to do while the rest of us work our tails off trying to get by.
The world at large loves idols of the heart, not the head. It weeps and laughs with Paula Abdul, and boos and hisses at Simon Cowell, and it insists that really, really....all the famous people whose movements we follow aren't really any smarter or subtler than us, not in that hairsplitting or morally scathing sort of way (think of Marlon Brando, for example, or Orson Welles...)--they can have some wisdom, perhaps, but it has to be the homespun-&-homely heartwarming kind, that encourages without challenge, that inspires without really implying pain, or risk, or danger along the way of dreams. Safe celebrities--that aren't really any "better" than us--just our betters somehow in this great hierarchy of attention and soundbites and significant trends.
It would disarrange the system, in short--much as if an errant but popular prince delivered a speech fit for Whitehall. Unsettlement. Uncertainty. Chaos...in short, you have a ghastly mess--which is why all our flowergirls, by the way (I know, I jumped movies there), are best-liked while they retain their lower-class accents and say no more than is comical or flirtatious. Should they turn trenchant and succeed therein, the whole place would go up in flames....
Sorry, didn't mean to torch it like that...nothin' like a little flamboyant intellectualism...but seriously, folks--why is it that we either overlook or coo over the stupidest things that an airheaded ditz says about her aspirations, but let someone say something halfway of real consequence and suddenly they have to be dragged down by that good old stereotyping of themselves? Are we living in Harrison Bergeron's time already, by the way?--oh but yes, of course we are...it's been a guiding theme through the ages since that little stroll through a field lopping off the tallest stalks of grain, making sure no one sticks up too high, too clearly.
But then...I'm a tall stalk of grain myself by nature, and I know firsthand how people love to cut things down.
Selfhood and 'containing multitudes'....(part of my manifesto)
[This was first posted on the MSN group The Flowered Grave--I was responding indirectly to some rather exhortative meditations/catechisms that had been posted lately by another member, and directly to some poems posted by the group owner.]
From: Aureantes_ in response to Message 3
Sent: 2/18/2005 3:07 AM
Hmmm......I'm rather fond of all those great personalities too. Characters, even....or, as the saying goes, character is what you have when no one is looking.
My deliberate approach to life is like the opposite method of going around the world--the actor's and novelist's way. By maximizing and multiplying awareness of selfhood, a spark of spirit caught in circumstance, and living as many lives or slices-of-lives as possible, like Walt Whitman--"I am large, I contain multitudes" ("Song of Myself")--and Edna St. Vincent Millay, in "Renascence":
... I saw and heard, and knew at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The Universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense
That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence
But could not, -- nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out. -- Ah, fearful pawn!
For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire,
--Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each, -- then mourned for all!
A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore through my throat.
No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine, pity like the pity of God. ....
A thorough odyssey there, to contain and feel all--but there, that's the whole thing, as Atticus Finch said in To Kill a Mockingbird, that you never know a man "till you've walked a mile in his shoes." Empathy carried toward its positive extreme exceeds individual selfhood, making each such contemplative a myriad light, less and less worried for his particular place and title and status even as he plays his own instinctive/allotted part. If you follow the dictum "Know thyself" and carry it to the nth degree of seeing yourself in others, others in yourself, than gradually this myriad light is multiplied times itself, onward and deeper and higher. Not that the personal self must disappear "in the end", but that its boundaries cease to matter, its own anxious self-definition ceases to be a need, for it is at home in the consummation of all selfhoods, all awareness. The culmination is bliss and paradox.
Here's some pages I came across while looking up these quotes--and a thesis I find (of course) extremely intriguing and valid:
http://www.students.dsu.edu/roemmica/Nonpage1.htm
http://www.students.dsu.edu/roemmica/Nonpage2.htm
http://www.students.dsu.edu/roemmica/Nonpage3.htm
http://www.students.dsu.edu/roemmica/Nonpage4.htm (with the Whitman quote of "contain multitudes")
Enjoy....
From: Aureantes_ in response to Message 3
Sent: 2/18/2005 3:07 AM
Hmmm......I'm rather fond of all those great personalities too. Characters, even....or, as the saying goes, character is what you have when no one is looking.
My deliberate approach to life is like the opposite method of going around the world--the actor's and novelist's way. By maximizing and multiplying awareness of selfhood, a spark of spirit caught in circumstance, and living as many lives or slices-of-lives as possible, like Walt Whitman--"I am large, I contain multitudes" ("Song of Myself")--and Edna St. Vincent Millay, in "Renascence":
... I saw and heard, and knew at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The Universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense
That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence
But could not, -- nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out. -- Ah, fearful pawn!
For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire,
--Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each, -- then mourned for all!
A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore through my throat.
No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine, pity like the pity of God. ....
A thorough odyssey there, to contain and feel all--but there, that's the whole thing, as Atticus Finch said in To Kill a Mockingbird, that you never know a man "till you've walked a mile in his shoes." Empathy carried toward its positive extreme exceeds individual selfhood, making each such contemplative a myriad light, less and less worried for his particular place and title and status even as he plays his own instinctive/allotted part. If you follow the dictum "Know thyself" and carry it to the nth degree of seeing yourself in others, others in yourself, than gradually this myriad light is multiplied times itself, onward and deeper and higher. Not that the personal self must disappear "in the end", but that its boundaries cease to matter, its own anxious self-definition ceases to be a need, for it is at home in the consummation of all selfhoods, all awareness. The culmination is bliss and paradox.
Here's some pages I came across while looking up these quotes--and a thesis I find (of course) extremely intriguing and valid:
http://www.students.dsu.edu/roemmica/Nonpage1.htm
http://www.students.dsu.edu/roemmica/Nonpage2.htm
http://www.students.dsu.edu/roemmica/Nonpage3.htm
http://www.students.dsu.edu/roemmica/Nonpage4.htm (with the Whitman quote of "contain multitudes")
Enjoy....
Thursday, February 17, 2005
"Working for the man".....
[Alright.....this starts off me feeding this blog in earnest, with annotations and hyperlinks even, starting with a semi-personal post from today in one of my rather more recreationally topical groups--the site, if you find yourself intrigued atall, is
Striped Tomato's Revenge --and I think I'll just leave that all to speak for itself when you get there....anyhow, I did not get that job with the local police department.....though, the general commentary re jobs still stands as I reread this a good while later. You wanna know more about the fangs and blue eyes, check out Starsky & Hutch--BloodPromises...otherwise known (well, still unknown, mostly) as one of the most original and daring Starsky & Hutch roleplays ever concocted.....]
____________________________________________________
--- In stripedtomatosrevenge@yahoogroups.com, "David Michael Starsky"
wrote:
--- In stripedtomatosrevenge@yahoogroups.com, jill wrote:
> I love the fangs!!! And the blue eyes are awesome!!
>
> You actually WANT to work for the PD? You want to
> work for the man? What's wrong with you??!! Yeah,
> okay, a job's a job..I guess. DO they run a background
> check for that position?
>
> What is this "Research" you're doing????
>
> [....]
'Research' means watching S&H Season 2 episodes, in this case--they're running them out of order on Channel 23, so it's a little tricky as to exactly what'll come up when. So I watched "The Committee" before hitting the hay, basically.
And yeah...a job's a job, and this one pays pretty well. I'm technically well-qualified for it, but my main worry is just that I'm temperamentally too much a live wire for most regular jobs--if I can dominate the situation, that's fine, but I'm apt to clash with people on account of hating 'arbitrary authority' till proven otherwise. The main reason for trying for bein' a parking clerk, since the ad appeared in the paper, is that I wouldn't have to make or justify any decisions on my own account, whether I agree with them or not--only deal with people reasonably and tactfully according to what's on the books, which I *can* do. It's a bit Lawrence-of-Arabia-after-Arabia, in terms of abnegating individual discretion, but I hate being stuck in positions where it's a limbo of vague accountability. I either want to be completely responsible for things where I have the
widest latitude, or not have to be responsible for anything decision-wise besides getting the paperwork and data entries right and keeping people's tempers cool about it.
Plus, I see it as a learning experience more than anything else (besides having a steady income, of course). I see a lot of things that way--of course, sometimes all that it shows is how deeply unsuited I am to the rest of the workaday world, and how much I disturb the rest of them...that sort of thing. I'm just not the steady and consistent foundation upon which society is based.
There is a background check (and a drug test), but I myself can likely pass that--the worst they'd find is that I'm pretty much flat broke and 'living at home', unfortunately distractable when not securely employed, and that I should have applied for a deferment on my student loan payments a long time ago. Smart people need firm niches and/or higher academic credentials--I got "Leonardo da Vinci Syndrome" instead (one of my terms for ADD)...too many talents, not
enough definite footholds for a specialized world. Or, to put it another way, a foot in every pie and a finger in every door.
But really--and I'm assuming I'm not even going to make an interview for this thing--it's a bit the wrong time for me to have any wholly- positive regard for the establishment. I respect people for doing the best they can do in an often-thankless job, but that doesn't, unfortunately, change the facts of the climate in which we are living. The needs will always be there, but the priority of going about them will also always be a dicey and often-f**ked-up balancing process, and idealism--like stubbornness--is both a strength and a weakness of mine. So far as the whole establishment goes, I oughta be working as a profiler for the FBI or something--I have those skills, that overview of things--but how long do you think I'd last in any initial-foundational-literal process getting in, before I could get around to doing some good?
The same thing happens to teachers, too--the best ones, the ones with a vocation (I take that word very seriously) are often burnt-out on account of the training system itself before they have a chance to apply their vision and energy to the classroom...it's the ones who play it safe and burn dim-but-steady who get their earthly rewards, so to speak. The real point of the job is far too often obscured with its own trappings and hierarchy, and it takes a lot to persist through all that while retaining real passion and integrity for the work itself. To continue playing with fire analogies (hey, I started it in the last post anyhow...), the more of it you have, the more likely you are to either get burnt-out or burnt-up by the others around you. A person needs a whole lot of close moral support to keep going when those are the odds.
But I really should stop sermonising--or, as I said I was going to do, save it for my formal blog (I'll forward this to it directly, actually--ah, the wonders of modern technology). I had a rather odd dream involving royalty last night/this morning, in convenient metaphor--but that's another one to dissect elsewhere, I suspect...>:)
Glad you like the pics...I always say I'm "doing dastardly deeds" with Photoshop whenever I tinker with stuff like this.
DM/Aurey
_____________________________________
--- End forwarded message ---
Striped Tomato's Revenge --and I think I'll just leave that all to speak for itself when you get there....anyhow, I did not get that job with the local police department.....though, the general commentary re jobs still stands as I reread this a good while later. You wanna know more about the fangs and blue eyes, check out Starsky & Hutch--BloodPromises...otherwise known (well, still unknown, mostly) as one of the most original and daring Starsky & Hutch roleplays ever concocted.....]
____________________________________________________
--- In stripedtomatosrevenge@yahoogroups.com, "David Michael Starsky"
--- In stripedtomatosrevenge@yahoogroups.com, jill wrote:
> I love the fangs!!! And the blue eyes are awesome!!
>
> You actually WANT to work for the PD? You want to
> work for the man? What's wrong with you??!! Yeah,
> okay, a job's a job..I guess. DO they run a background
> check for that position?
>
> What is this "Research" you're doing????
>
> [....]
'Research' means watching S&H Season 2 episodes, in this case--they're running them out of order on Channel 23, so it's a little tricky as to exactly what'll come up when. So I watched "The Committee" before hitting the hay, basically.
And yeah...a job's a job, and this one pays pretty well. I'm technically well-qualified for it, but my main worry is just that I'm temperamentally too much a live wire for most regular jobs--if I can dominate the situation, that's fine, but I'm apt to clash with people on account of hating 'arbitrary authority' till proven otherwise. The main reason for trying for bein' a parking clerk, since the ad appeared in the paper, is that I wouldn't have to make or justify any decisions on my own account, whether I agree with them or not--only deal with people reasonably and tactfully according to what's on the books, which I *can* do. It's a bit Lawrence-of-Arabia-after-Arabia, in terms of abnegating individual discretion, but I hate being stuck in positions where it's a limbo of vague accountability. I either want to be completely responsible for things where I have the
widest latitude, or not have to be responsible for anything decision-wise besides getting the paperwork and data entries right and keeping people's tempers cool about it.
Plus, I see it as a learning experience more than anything else (besides having a steady income, of course). I see a lot of things that way--of course, sometimes all that it shows is how deeply unsuited I am to the rest of the workaday world, and how much I disturb the rest of them...that sort of thing. I'm just not the steady and consistent foundation upon which society is based.
There is a background check (and a drug test), but I myself can likely pass that--the worst they'd find is that I'm pretty much flat broke and 'living at home', unfortunately distractable when not securely employed, and that I should have applied for a deferment on my student loan payments a long time ago. Smart people need firm niches and/or higher academic credentials--I got "Leonardo da Vinci Syndrome" instead (one of my terms for ADD)...too many talents, not
enough definite footholds for a specialized world. Or, to put it another way, a foot in every pie and a finger in every door.
But really--and I'm assuming I'm not even going to make an interview for this thing--it's a bit the wrong time for me to have any wholly- positive regard for the establishment. I respect people for doing the best they can do in an often-thankless job, but that doesn't, unfortunately, change the facts of the climate in which we are living. The needs will always be there, but the priority of going about them will also always be a dicey and often-f**ked-up balancing process, and idealism--like stubbornness--is both a strength and a weakness of mine. So far as the whole establishment goes, I oughta be working as a profiler for the FBI or something--I have those skills, that overview of things--but how long do you think I'd last in any initial-foundational-literal process getting in, before I could get around to doing some good?
The same thing happens to teachers, too--the best ones, the ones with a vocation (I take that word very seriously) are often burnt-out on account of the training system itself before they have a chance to apply their vision and energy to the classroom...it's the ones who play it safe and burn dim-but-steady who get their earthly rewards, so to speak. The real point of the job is far too often obscured with its own trappings and hierarchy, and it takes a lot to persist through all that while retaining real passion and integrity for the work itself. To continue playing with fire analogies (hey, I started it in the last post anyhow...), the more of it you have, the more likely you are to either get burnt-out or burnt-up by the others around you. A person needs a whole lot of close moral support to keep going when those are the odds.
But I really should stop sermonising--or, as I said I was going to do, save it for my formal blog (I'll forward this to it directly, actually--ah, the wonders of modern technology). I had a rather odd dream involving royalty last night/this morning, in convenient metaphor--but that's another one to dissect elsewhere, I suspect...>:)
Glad you like the pics...I always say I'm "doing dastardly deeds" with Photoshop whenever I tinker with stuff like this.
DM/Aurey
_____________________________________
--- End forwarded message ---
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