I am sitting here, waiting, registering myself, thinking, wondering what will ooze forth. Lately I’ve been having the uncomfortable sense that many of my stories sent to online literary editors, probably from ages 25 to 45, may not relate to the kind of stories I write. It is a false fear, I know, because the bones of a good story cross over generations. I have come to that remarkable point in my life in which I am seemingly superannuated.
Here I am with all kinds of skills and talents which are “worthless” in this society, grounded in capitalism and the values thereof. Jane’s ex made millions providing the edgings that go around tables, really ridiculous, and yet this provider of laminates, whatever, is part of the mighty course of this country’s business. I cannot fathom — nor could he fathom me — what the production of that requisite societal shit does to one’s mind, “soul” or spirit. The effort put into some kinds of business just fatigues me, the very thought of it creates a moral nausea. The concept, the idea of equity is a mental quicksilver and has no place in this writing, for fairness, justice, et al is as random as the the whirl of planets in their voids. It simply is what is, but I can comment on that because as a writer that is my task, my laminate “business.”
If you are awake or aware and you are retired as we know it in this country, a cultural artifact of significance, what do you do with your time, or your time left? It is a question that should be asked when first consciousness dawned in your noggin ( recall the Wagnerian sounds in “Space Odyssey: 2001”) I have more time than ever to cogitate over this day and the day after, of how best to “use” the time or the time left to me, as I live in this temporary husk — on loan, by the way — that has been and is being ravished by wear and tear. After all, how long can one’s innards endure stress, digestion, arterial plaque, the accruing deposits of bad cholesterol, the heart pumping for year after year, etc. It is and has always been this needling question for me, at least for as long as I can remember, of what to do with existence, for that is what I am asking. The only man who I have learned about and who I have read who apparently wrestled with this in a rational way for decades and spoke to all the issues that beset me and you was Krishnamurti. I cannot describe or assess him other than say one must read what he has to say and yet that is not enough for me. I will die in my own little Venetian glass bottle thrown upon the sands of time.
With issues like this in mind or with concerns I take seriously, I moved early into writing which is just a mere expression of my character. You can see why business in itself entirely bores me. I am figured to work out my life in other ways. That genetic reptilian part of my brain is soused in consciousness, reminding me how a good and decent tomato or cucumber can easily be soured in brine to make something else. I feel that awareness or consciousness is much like taking a pickle from a jar, soaking wet, dripping and how one must shake it a bit to get at the total savoriness of it all. No matter how we are aware we still reek of the reptile, all instinct and aimless instinctual discharge.
Here I am with perhaps 10 years or so to live, or to die, besotted with the same questions that have pickled me in brine for decades. I believe we flower, wither and die without any sense of who we are, much like the flower in the field. Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan are throwaway existences who see so far and yet so little and aimlessly live but that is their choice if they are cognizant of realistic choice rather than the rush of drugs. Humorously society now tells me to “live,” to enjoy retirement which is appalling for society is nothing more than another abstraction or “idea” concocted by this culture at this time; entire companies and medical plans are obsessed with this concept. Capitalism in no way is concerned and never was concerned about the moral welfare of human beings, for it is rooted in the abstraction of money, its making, its use, its entrepreneurial aspects. After all these years, I would like to proclaim a national day of rest which means a day of rest from ideas and any conceptualizing at all, for ideas gave us religion, systems, castes, slavery, anti-semitism, conditioning, cultural anomalies and monstrosities such as the Inquisition and colonialism. Ideas have spawned Beck, Palin, Bachman, Hannity, O’Reilly, Cavuto, Laura Ingraham, the cultural pus of our present day America. Everything ever written or said about masturbation is the ejaculation that comes from ideas about it. Americans love the mind/body split.
And so like the little mouse with his very little piece of cheese I struggle to nibble away at my existence in ways that go beyond mere survival or struggle. I have not been successful. My failures are in all my writings. It is the task I willingly self-assign myself, and I will go to my grave nibbling at whatever intention I can find for myself. It may be as wasteful as designing another laminate for the kitchen island.
Disparate Tangents
While working out at the local community gym thoughts began to coalesce about what I might write for this blog, associative threads formed and here it is. The most compelling is my dance to the death with the Arizona tax department and an audit. They are claiming, of course, I owe them money because I have not shown any profit in my writing. After five years I suppose I am to show a profit or I cannot claim on my return all the costs that come with writing. Consequently my writing is labeled more of a hobby than anything else. At first I almost caved, that is, pay them what I owed. On second thought I waited until I saw my accountant who advised that I challenge this because if I don’t they will come after me year after year for past monies and then the Feds will come in to put their grubby hands into my pockets as well. If need be, he would represent me. I had to advocate for myself, and I felt exhausted before I began.
So here I was having to defend that I am in writing to make a profit, that it was not a hobby, that I explain myself to the monolithic tax department, really a latent and manifest assault on my integrity, on my self. I am particularly peeved when I am asked to explain myself especially when I know I am innocent of the alleged lie, fault, crime, malfeasance or misdemeanor. I bit the bullet and did not become ironic nor sarcastic but simply in list form machined gunned out all the awards, 1099 Misc forms (royalties), books published, stories published to substantiate that I am an author seeking to make a profit. Of course, in this nation being an author without earning a profit or not thinking in this manner is viewed as simply ridiculous. Fuck you, America! I felt like the local Muslim who has to justify his existence, explain why other Muslims are malfeasant or not, all the rest of the McCarthy-like attributions Rep. King from New York is yapping about. Of course, he glosses smoothly over his advocacy of and connection with the Irish Republican Army years back. I almost feel like joining the Libyan rebel forces but seeing Jewish stars markered over posters of Hosni Mubarak’s face (Jew hatred to the nth degree) in the last revolt I will defer for now. (No reporter has commented on that.)
It was a quick step for me to consider how corporations rule this country, our two-percent of the population plutocrats who control congressmen (and this is not paranoia, reader), with their offshore tax shelters and teams of accountants who keep them free from taxes with financial murder year after year. I find it remarkable after all these years of living that the obvious basis for this country is still opaque to most of the masses, using that term appropriately here as they are herds. Long ago through lobbying and all the rest of the horseshit we lost this country. We do not have a Republican party, what we have is an ideological group who manifests a Social Darwinian drive. Allow me as a writer or therapist to share some felt-truths and reach some conclusions you may or may not appreciate.
Let us for a moment look at Governor Scott Walker. I don’t need to know about his family, how active he is as a church member, how he is loyal to his wife, how he never has masturbated. Let us just look at his face. Behind those eyes is death. Just his face reveals a coldness to the man, an inability to soften, to negotiate, to reflect. We have seen that face hundreds of times in all the old movies about the western cavalry and its Indian wars. Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld all have that death mask, an inability to really express empathy much less sympathy. I believe it is characterological of the American male in this country, right from our historical beginning. It was the face the black man saw, the Indian saw, women saw, unions saw, an unrelenting, blunt, cold, stone-walling mind set — callous, hard, cruel, stubborn, determinatively driven by causes and racist. Americans run from this assessment, although at one time for more than 100 years we had a caste, mind you, not a class system in this country as rigid as the untouchables in India. Read your An American Dilemma. In my fantasy Glenn beck would be an Indian agent handing out blankets saturated in small box in order to wipe out all the Progressives on the reservation.
It is also my sad contention that Anne Coulter, MIchelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Laura Ingraham, Megan Kelly, all the in-house stable of Fox Views are the female versions of the American male, Gorgons all, featuring a stiletto wit, vicious bite-biting asides as crooked as Greta Von Susteren’s mouth, and just an overall toxic perfume issuing from their pretty, dolled-up faces. Very few of them give credit to the feminists who labored hard to set them free, ingrates all.
Given these tangents, I will share further thoughts I have. I recall that in the Thirties artists, writers, actors, quick-witted Jews all sensed the racist rot in Nazi Germany and emigrated to the States. I am contemplating becoming an ex-pat; I really believe we are in a dour decadent period that I want no part of it. I would not leave like a good American because it is cheaper to live in Belize, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. I would say fuck you to Medicare because in some of these countries the care is about third world as it is here in Henderson, Nevada which is a medically unsafe environment to get seriously ill in. This state is so blue-collar that they are gutting the university financially because education is really not important — that is right, it has never been important in this country. So I would leave the USA because it is no longer democratic, is controlled by a hegemonic few. The differing points of political points of view are now taking on a variation of class warfare and it is remarkably close to becoming a feudal country, with the few at the top of the pyramid and the rest pf us fighting like serfs among ourselves. Note: not one stock trader or CEO on Wall Street has had charges brought against him! Americans have the memory resource of a gnat. We get angry, we fight and quarrel but clear thinking is never an aspect of our consciousness.
Will it be better elsewhere? Of course, not. We all know that. The jolly in all this is that I will act upon a sound realization, an awakening of intelligence, if you will, that until i die I can at least choose, for the time being, to act, to opt out. I think watching America from abroad will be self-confirming as the internal tsunami of collective rot will cross the plains and mountains and cleanse both shores.
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Posted in Commentary, Culture, Politics
Tagged An American Dilemma, Bachmann, Coulter, Glenn Beck, Gov. Scott Walker, Indian wars, Ingraham, McCarthy, Rep. King, social darwinism