reading burroughs
i never actually realized that wm s burroughs was from st louis. and died in lawrence, KS shortly before i moved there. less than a month, in fact.
wierd.
i dont know why i never knew this. they dont teach us that in school. no, they teach us mark twain and laura ingolls wilder.
while i dont have much in common with a financially-privileged drug-addict, i think there is a kind of searching and self-loathing that perhaps only midwesterners get. unlike people who grew up in big cities, we have a constant feeling of inadequacy. no one puts it this way anymore, nor even says it out loud, but in a previous generation, we might have been admonished for 'putting on airs.' where kids of arguably less talent in other places will believe whole-heartedly that they deserve riotous success, midwestern kids are convinced that if they do achieve something, it was probably a fluke, or they have pulled a fast one. i know plenty who never left and slowly waste away in menial jobs far below their intellect, while reading in the late hours and writing beauty that no one will ever see. or maybe they gave up on that long ago to work and drink and do drugs and pop out kids (not necessarily in that order). not because they lacked the ability, but because the subsistance level of midwestern life gets into your bones and you just stay.
so i left, and i still face that demon of inadequacy and mediocrity every day. we are from the middle and to the middle we return. the guts of the country. few can romanticize digestion and bile. you want to get out of that? good luck, but you will spend half your life convincing yourself that you deserve anything at all. what comes out of the guts but shit?
heres another thing: its not that the people around us dont encourage us to think larger. sure most midwesterners are locked into a provincial mindset. its the everyday, and - please dont mistake me - it is important. but i was encouraged to go out into the world, i was. i was given every opportunity, often by people who had no way of fathoming just what those opportunities really mean. how can anyone who has never dipped their head below the surface understand how far one must dive to reach the bottom? when they see you disappear and then return, the assumption is that you have touched it. how can you explain how much further there is to go? how the depths are so dark and endless that even when you run out of breath you still cant see the bottom, much less feel it... its like explaining color to a person born blind. your words may be beautiful but they will never understand.
it still sounds like im being critical of the midwest, or of the people there. thats not it at all. i love them, they are me.
its exactly the fear of losing them that keeps me rising to the surface again. i am afraid that one day i will have to just keep going down and down, and no one will understand where ive gone. ill never be able to share that with them. all the things i cant possibly explain. thats a terrible kind of lonliness, to have to leave those who made you who you are, who you love most, and who will never believe that.
still, i am tired of fighting my predilection for not putting on airs, not believing that i could do as much as anyone and more. believing that i am just a stupid hick with an over-inflated sense of self-worth, even as i am woefully self-depricating. i wonder if i have ever dipped below the surface at all.
wierd.
i dont know why i never knew this. they dont teach us that in school. no, they teach us mark twain and laura ingolls wilder.
while i dont have much in common with a financially-privileged drug-addict, i think there is a kind of searching and self-loathing that perhaps only midwesterners get. unlike people who grew up in big cities, we have a constant feeling of inadequacy. no one puts it this way anymore, nor even says it out loud, but in a previous generation, we might have been admonished for 'putting on airs.' where kids of arguably less talent in other places will believe whole-heartedly that they deserve riotous success, midwestern kids are convinced that if they do achieve something, it was probably a fluke, or they have pulled a fast one. i know plenty who never left and slowly waste away in menial jobs far below their intellect, while reading in the late hours and writing beauty that no one will ever see. or maybe they gave up on that long ago to work and drink and do drugs and pop out kids (not necessarily in that order). not because they lacked the ability, but because the subsistance level of midwestern life gets into your bones and you just stay.
so i left, and i still face that demon of inadequacy and mediocrity every day. we are from the middle and to the middle we return. the guts of the country. few can romanticize digestion and bile. you want to get out of that? good luck, but you will spend half your life convincing yourself that you deserve anything at all. what comes out of the guts but shit?
heres another thing: its not that the people around us dont encourage us to think larger. sure most midwesterners are locked into a provincial mindset. its the everyday, and - please dont mistake me - it is important. but i was encouraged to go out into the world, i was. i was given every opportunity, often by people who had no way of fathoming just what those opportunities really mean. how can anyone who has never dipped their head below the surface understand how far one must dive to reach the bottom? when they see you disappear and then return, the assumption is that you have touched it. how can you explain how much further there is to go? how the depths are so dark and endless that even when you run out of breath you still cant see the bottom, much less feel it... its like explaining color to a person born blind. your words may be beautiful but they will never understand.
it still sounds like im being critical of the midwest, or of the people there. thats not it at all. i love them, they are me.
its exactly the fear of losing them that keeps me rising to the surface again. i am afraid that one day i will have to just keep going down and down, and no one will understand where ive gone. ill never be able to share that with them. all the things i cant possibly explain. thats a terrible kind of lonliness, to have to leave those who made you who you are, who you love most, and who will never believe that.
still, i am tired of fighting my predilection for not putting on airs, not believing that i could do as much as anyone and more. believing that i am just a stupid hick with an over-inflated sense of self-worth, even as i am woefully self-depricating. i wonder if i have ever dipped below the surface at all.