Coffee, cigarettes and getting through the day.
For all of you out there (and I can count you on one hand) who have been eagerly anticipating a new posting on this site, my apologies. The site has been down, as they say. Through no fault of my own, it's suddenly back, as they say. Praise Jesus, or whatever cosmic forces we choose to believe are responsible for keeping the illusion of ourselves and our machines functional.
My own feeling is that things work, when they work, as a sort of punishment. Because it supports the illusion that any of us are in control, that progress counts and suffering makes some sort of positive difference. It doesn't, but it's okay to believe that it does.
I was perfectly happy wasting the day away, drinking, daydreaming and fighting with the dog. Suddenly the fucking blog is working again. I'm filled with questions that I almost care about having answered. Why now, why me, what should I do now, who am I, when will I make any money, when will I stop being angry, how will I cope with the rest of my life, does anyone really care, how often do I need sex to avoid the problem of a shrinking sex organ? Is sex the answer? What was the question, again?
But forget all this shit.
It's mostly irrelevant.
That our lives don't exactly work out
As we imagined they would.
Expectation is the culprit. That and an inability to focus. Possibly because nothing matters. Except, of course, being in the moment. Rememeber the days when we could say we were 'in the moment' and still keep a straight face? What the hell happened? For one thing, the moments we were being in kept getting shorter, less substantial as a venue in which to be, not to mention take some sort of stand within. At the same time, we kept getting larger, putting on the kilos, drifting across the margins, which we loosely ascribed to everyday stress, but has more to do with the inherent anxiety of overstaying our welcome on the planet.
Yes, at some point we began living longer than our prehistoric ancestors, thought it was normal, turns out it wasn't. Old age at 30, death at 35. It sounds harsh, but it makes perfect evolutionary sense. Life was meant to be short and sweet, or short and horrific, as the case may be, but brief, in any case.
Basically, get rid of the dead weight. Who needs 70-year-old zombies walking around university hallways in white lab coats, drawing enormous salaries, spending most of their time in the toilet, where peeing has reached the level of complexity of the unified field theory and all their conscious effort goes into not drooling in front of their students?
Clearly, no one. We live too long, our minds turn to mush, our bodies take on nightmarish characteristics and we can't even get it up on national holidays.
Ah, but we are overlooking the ultimate fear, for which we are willing to suffer all manner of humiliation and decrepitutde
to avoid. Death. Who made death the bad guy? Who came up with the notion that life, regardless of how mindless and dull, is somehow the optimal good? Overweight, dim-witted humans prowl the industrialized nations of the world. Their cause is consumption. They shop with passion. They eat animals. They fear terrorism and are therefore stupidly patriotic. They are willing to sacrifice freedom for safety, as long as it does not involve the cancellation of their favorite TV programs. They make reference to God just enough to ensure that, if there is a God and he's actually taking notes, they will be saved.
Praise the Lord and pass the porkchops.
Returning to the moment, the moment that should matter, we slip in and out of it in a trance. We confuse thought with actual experience, consort with imbeciles, are easily distracted. We spend most of the time in our own heads, but can no longer recognize the terrain.
It's some sort of salvation we seek, some confirmation that our efforts are not entirely in vain. a valid reason not to surrender, trash the machines and start watching television.
Wait a minute. Your television is a machine.
Touch my TV and you die.
Hey, you're no different from the rest of us.
I doubt it. And what the hell are you doing inside my head?
Your head? Hey pal, this is my head.
Fine. One of us is out of our heads. Let's move on.
Why bother?
Good point. Do you smoke?
Like a fucking maniac.
I'll make some coffee. We'll try to figure things out.
Now you're making some sense.
My own feeling is that things work, when they work, as a sort of punishment. Because it supports the illusion that any of us are in control, that progress counts and suffering makes some sort of positive difference. It doesn't, but it's okay to believe that it does.
I was perfectly happy wasting the day away, drinking, daydreaming and fighting with the dog. Suddenly the fucking blog is working again. I'm filled with questions that I almost care about having answered. Why now, why me, what should I do now, who am I, when will I make any money, when will I stop being angry, how will I cope with the rest of my life, does anyone really care, how often do I need sex to avoid the problem of a shrinking sex organ? Is sex the answer? What was the question, again?
But forget all this shit.
It's mostly irrelevant.
That our lives don't exactly work out
As we imagined they would.
Expectation is the culprit. That and an inability to focus. Possibly because nothing matters. Except, of course, being in the moment. Rememeber the days when we could say we were 'in the moment' and still keep a straight face? What the hell happened? For one thing, the moments we were being in kept getting shorter, less substantial as a venue in which to be, not to mention take some sort of stand within. At the same time, we kept getting larger, putting on the kilos, drifting across the margins, which we loosely ascribed to everyday stress, but has more to do with the inherent anxiety of overstaying our welcome on the planet.
Yes, at some point we began living longer than our prehistoric ancestors, thought it was normal, turns out it wasn't. Old age at 30, death at 35. It sounds harsh, but it makes perfect evolutionary sense. Life was meant to be short and sweet, or short and horrific, as the case may be, but brief, in any case.
Basically, get rid of the dead weight. Who needs 70-year-old zombies walking around university hallways in white lab coats, drawing enormous salaries, spending most of their time in the toilet, where peeing has reached the level of complexity of the unified field theory and all their conscious effort goes into not drooling in front of their students?
Clearly, no one. We live too long, our minds turn to mush, our bodies take on nightmarish characteristics and we can't even get it up on national holidays.
Ah, but we are overlooking the ultimate fear, for which we are willing to suffer all manner of humiliation and decrepitutde
to avoid. Death. Who made death the bad guy? Who came up with the notion that life, regardless of how mindless and dull, is somehow the optimal good? Overweight, dim-witted humans prowl the industrialized nations of the world. Their cause is consumption. They shop with passion. They eat animals. They fear terrorism and are therefore stupidly patriotic. They are willing to sacrifice freedom for safety, as long as it does not involve the cancellation of their favorite TV programs. They make reference to God just enough to ensure that, if there is a God and he's actually taking notes, they will be saved.
Praise the Lord and pass the porkchops.
Returning to the moment, the moment that should matter, we slip in and out of it in a trance. We confuse thought with actual experience, consort with imbeciles, are easily distracted. We spend most of the time in our own heads, but can no longer recognize the terrain.
It's some sort of salvation we seek, some confirmation that our efforts are not entirely in vain. a valid reason not to surrender, trash the machines and start watching television.
Wait a minute. Your television is a machine.
Touch my TV and you die.
Hey, you're no different from the rest of us.
I doubt it. And what the hell are you doing inside my head?
Your head? Hey pal, this is my head.
Fine. One of us is out of our heads. Let's move on.
Why bother?
Good point. Do you smoke?
Like a fucking maniac.
I'll make some coffee. We'll try to figure things out.
Now you're making some sense.
posted by Bruce Leigh at 10:29 PM
3 Comments:
Never mind it's dated five days ago, it was worth the wait. Interesting take on the illusory, comforting nature of our routines. The better to avoid thinking, in the first person, about mortality.
Not that I consider it worthy of emulation or anything, but I've been smoking like a chimney myself lately. One more cup of coffee, por favor.
Apropos the future of the race, does it seem to you, too, that among the hues of homo sapiens the white tribe is particularly out of touch and overly given to violence? Or has it less to do with racial characteristics and more with diet? Specifically, our largely unexamined dependence on the breeding and slaughter of animals.
Now let's see, did I read that somewhere, or see it on TV?
John E.
(in limbo...still)
And it's a never-ending feedback loop. Your new blog entry has provided me with another means of procrastination. Now, instead of finally getting to work on the seemingly infinite unfinished projects laid out before me, I can read and re-read your laconic and stunning new rant and post a comment of my own. I had exhausted all other means of postponement and a shot-in-the-dark click on your bookmarked blog site was my last hope. And there it was and here it is. This is momentary living at its besst, no? Now, if only there would be another complete power failure in New York City, precluding me from getting to work in the recording studio portion of my apartment. Or maybe I'll be blessed with a not-nearly-virulent flu strain and I'll be forced to lay or lie in bed reading Gogol and watching Marx Brothers movies all day long. As for the incessant smoking a drinking I'm happy to say I can't imagine relating to that. I love alcohol, too, and it's my drug. But my consumption takes place after the sun goes down, except in the summer time. All daylight drinking must be executed outdoors. By the way, uncle, I did some research on our ancestor who came over to the New World on the Mayflower. Yeah, everyone says they have an ancestor who came over on that boat but we have the papers to prove it, drawn up after exhaustive research by some fixated relative a hundred years ago. Edward Doty was his name and he was a Bukowski-esque servant. He was arrested in Plymouth on numerous occasions, for dueling, fighting, and rabble-rousing. Sounds like interesting company. Maybe you could raise his spirit and see what he thinks of saki. Just this morning, as I was returning home from the park with Virginia Halfwolf, I was observing the memory flashing through my mind of you and me and my sisters and maybe Diane sitting around the old round kitchen table in Dix Hills. You were telling us that other dimensions intersect our own and that other times in human history exist simultaneously but are mostly inaccessible due to their other-dimension-ness. You were telling us that in the space that very table was occupying, at that very moment, other events were occuring. That always stuck with me. You brought mystery and wonder to my pre-adolescent world. You continue to bring it to my quasi-adult world, too, but with borderline-healthy doses of nihilism, cynicism, and pessimism. The whimsical humor is a constant, as are the incisive self-satire and the brutal castigation of the brainwashed automotons. Okay, I must tear myself away from this lovely little rectangular comment box and plow through my day of work. I'll drink a toast to you tonight. Love, Randall Leigh P.S. I tried using HTML tags, as suggested, to break up this commentary but they weren't accepted. Consequetnly, I'm sorry for the run-on paragraph.
It is indisputable that the Leigh mind (in all male forms) possesses some insanity, but far more sheer genius. My 92 year old grandmother who sleeps in a nursing home as I write this has been saying for 15 years at least, I never wanted to live this long. Perhaps there should be some sort of barometer on us humans that indicates if we are eeking the utmost life out of our pathetic little lives, and if not we would self-destruct. The future is only a moment away.
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