Train-of-thought dendrite-spinning
An idea is being born. I can feel it twisting out of the soil of my brain, reaching for some related knowledge to cling to like the morning glories outside grasping for an anchor. I don't want to lose it. Think think think.
There is a problem. The stock market crash in 1929. Surplus production puts millions out of work. In my mind and the fibers of my being, the definition of work is problems to be solved. The goal is to complete the work. To strive towards fewer problems. Fewer tasks. Less maintenance. Less in need of doing. I don't arrange my house so that I'll constantly need to be cleaning it, reorganizing it, setting it right again. That would just be stupid. I choose the path of least resistance. But the very building blocks and chains and gears of our life here, the machine that keeps existence going as we know it, abides-rather, is entirely fueled-by an opposite principle. Work is what keeps us eating. What allows us to prove ourselves useful enough to be fed. Supported. When there is no more work to be done, we get sent home without pay, and consequentially, the umbilical cord of sustenance is severed. Do you understand what this means?? It means that to solve problems is to throw a wrench into the spokes of the machine and bring it to a grinding halt! Nobody wants to solve problems. Nobody wants to make life easier. Nobody strives for a more low-maintenance existence. To do so would be to kill our own livelihoods. We are in the very business of creating problems, and we call it various things from "creating jobs" to "staying productive" to "looking busy for the boss-man." Shoes are built to always need replacement. Technology is conceived with an already scheduled obsolescence. Ziploc bags are designed to be thrown away after one use. AM I THE ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD WHO THINKS THAT THIS IS RETARDED? Who goes through all the trouble of creating something just to see it buried in a landfill within days? WE DO. Because we need to be fed. This ideology will - kill - us. If not from an utter collapse of the earth's capacity to support all this, then from the overwhelming stress of a productive (distracted, joyless, confused) life. So many people will see their life end before they see the truth of this hooey in its full light. I know people who say, "Good Lord, it's only Tuesday? I was sure it had to be Wednesday at least" and shake their head at the disappointment. What kind of life are you living if you actually *wish* to be cheated out of an extra day? Is your life really that hard to get through? Reason tells you "no", and so you pay no mind to the telling slip you utter week after week, instead of examining the feeling and wondering what it means. I know people who only get out of bed each day in order to not fall behind. The body just does not respond with resounding joy to an unspoken life purpose of senseless productivity. I BELIEVE that some primordial cell within us KNOWS, just like a three year-old KNOWS but doesn't necessarily have the means to express itself. Thoreau had one ornamental object in his cabin - a rock, or a hunk of wood I think it was - and cast it out, horrified, the moment he realized that even that collected dust. This is one extreme, true. But we're all at the end of the other. I watched the History Channel special ... Life after Man or something like that ... about how all our cities would decompose after we were no longer there to maintain them. What would happen first, and next, and so-on. I watched plants pull apart brick walls, and meadow overtake parking lots and forests grow into gaping houses. It was fascinating - how hard we have to work to keep all that going. A constant, everyperson army running at full speed sun-up to sundown, day after day, year after year, from age 15 to age 65. Who could not watch this and not feel TIRED? I feel tired. I watched it all breaking down and felt this enormous release. Like an exhale that consisted of more than just breath, but tension, anguish, fear, worry, stress, fatigue.
I wonder if I have a brain tumor. I feel very separate from my environment in moments like these. My morning glory has spun itself up into the sunlight, only to look around and find itself in the middle of a tundra, quite confused about how it got there, and how it is to thrive here in this strange land, and how it is to ever find its way home. If I weren't 25, I imagine folks would bend down to me and ask me if I knew where I belonged.
There is a problem. The stock market crash in 1929. Surplus production puts millions out of work. In my mind and the fibers of my being, the definition of work is problems to be solved. The goal is to complete the work. To strive towards fewer problems. Fewer tasks. Less maintenance. Less in need of doing. I don't arrange my house so that I'll constantly need to be cleaning it, reorganizing it, setting it right again. That would just be stupid. I choose the path of least resistance. But the very building blocks and chains and gears of our life here, the machine that keeps existence going as we know it, abides-rather, is entirely fueled-by an opposite principle. Work is what keeps us eating. What allows us to prove ourselves useful enough to be fed. Supported. When there is no more work to be done, we get sent home without pay, and consequentially, the umbilical cord of sustenance is severed. Do you understand what this means?? It means that to solve problems is to throw a wrench into the spokes of the machine and bring it to a grinding halt! Nobody wants to solve problems. Nobody wants to make life easier. Nobody strives for a more low-maintenance existence. To do so would be to kill our own livelihoods. We are in the very business of creating problems, and we call it various things from "creating jobs" to "staying productive" to "looking busy for the boss-man." Shoes are built to always need replacement. Technology is conceived with an already scheduled obsolescence. Ziploc bags are designed to be thrown away after one use. AM I THE ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD WHO THINKS THAT THIS IS RETARDED? Who goes through all the trouble of creating something just to see it buried in a landfill within days? WE DO. Because we need to be fed. This ideology will - kill - us. If not from an utter collapse of the earth's capacity to support all this, then from the overwhelming stress of a productive (distracted, joyless, confused) life. So many people will see their life end before they see the truth of this hooey in its full light. I know people who say, "Good Lord, it's only Tuesday? I was sure it had to be Wednesday at least" and shake their head at the disappointment. What kind of life are you living if you actually *wish* to be cheated out of an extra day? Is your life really that hard to get through? Reason tells you "no", and so you pay no mind to the telling slip you utter week after week, instead of examining the feeling and wondering what it means. I know people who only get out of bed each day in order to not fall behind. The body just does not respond with resounding joy to an unspoken life purpose of senseless productivity. I BELIEVE that some primordial cell within us KNOWS, just like a three year-old KNOWS but doesn't necessarily have the means to express itself. Thoreau had one ornamental object in his cabin - a rock, or a hunk of wood I think it was - and cast it out, horrified, the moment he realized that even that collected dust. This is one extreme, true. But we're all at the end of the other. I watched the History Channel special ... Life after Man or something like that ... about how all our cities would decompose after we were no longer there to maintain them. What would happen first, and next, and so-on. I watched plants pull apart brick walls, and meadow overtake parking lots and forests grow into gaping houses. It was fascinating - how hard we have to work to keep all that going. A constant, everyperson army running at full speed sun-up to sundown, day after day, year after year, from age 15 to age 65. Who could not watch this and not feel TIRED? I feel tired. I watched it all breaking down and felt this enormous release. Like an exhale that consisted of more than just breath, but tension, anguish, fear, worry, stress, fatigue.
I wonder if I have a brain tumor. I feel very separate from my environment in moments like these. My morning glory has spun itself up into the sunlight, only to look around and find itself in the middle of a tundra, quite confused about how it got there, and how it is to thrive here in this strange land, and how it is to ever find its way home. If I weren't 25, I imagine folks would bend down to me and ask me if I knew where I belonged.