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May 24, 2006 14:46



THE GRIM PILL'S PROGRESS
or
SPILLING MY SEED IN THE COLD DEAD GROUND EVERY DAY

"i have seen the greatest minds of my generation destroyed by cheap labour" opines Jose, a coworker and ally in The Struggle. i am hesitant to become so fatalistic yet myself - the sentiment holds true, but to superimpose this destruction onto oneself is to both "surrender" and, more humiliating, to include oneself in the lumpen aggregate of the hypothetical. these blanket statements do not apply to us, the polyvalent cynics making them - too insecure to discuss the personal, we diss-cuss the patina...

...which sometimes will manifest itself as an actual physical layer on our bodies. a coat of grime and insect bites (bites which I am opting for over the chemical spray, at least for now) is a mark with as much or as little metaphorical resonance as its wearer wishes: a sign of solidarity or a rapidly calcifying shell.

though if we wanted 'solidarity', we could quickly find it. the particular nietzschean streak we share brings a willingness to sacrifice everything for a chance to liquify inside a violent cocoon. the reasons motivating this choice, as far as can be intuitied or inquisited, fall into a few broad categories: a final grunting thrust at debt, reckless experimentation, there simply being nowhere else to "go"...

which defines a certain peregrine caste among canadian youth. transients on the hajj with no mecca. one garners suspicion by remaining stationary and unsettled, but is appalled by the prospect of setting up a homestead; who would want to 'settle down' in the mechanized morass? without a clear destination, no mythical 'san francisco' as described with suspiciously saccharine nostalgia by the travellers of a few generations past, the only option is unmitigated flow. to be a treeplanter, a reluctantly imperialist youthful "english teacher", a party-hearty ecstasy jock on a thai beach, one tries to live in the loophole and take advantage of a circumstantially-placed infrastructure. agents exist inside this to keep track of us, but the force of will of one who does not want to LIVE anywhere puts up some spiritual force... 'some' being key. not the neoromantic punk travelers watching sunsets and scrounging coffees, we are admittedly part of a less appealing league: convenience jockeys in transit, solipsists running from the static, the capillaries open up (blown open by niacin, bolstered by citrus bioflavinoids and rutin, escorted through the blood brain barrier - three b's, like the irate vitamin, we notice - with a dose of phosphatidyl choline) and we, blood and brain and all, are pointlessly propelled.

but... and it's the big but... who would want to live in "This" ?

From my favourite book:

Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpend that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity - most of the World, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which sooner or later must crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World cna supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life. Living inside the System is like riding across the country in a bus driven by a maniac bent on suicide... though he's amiable enough, keeps cracking jokes back through the loudspeaker, "Good morning folks, this is Heidelberg here we're coming into now, you know the old refrain, 'I lost my heart in Heidelberg', well I have a friend who lost both his ears here! Don't get me wrong, it's really a nice town, the people are warm and wnoderful - when they're not dueling. Seriouslyh though, they treat you just fine, they don't just give you the key to the city, they give you the bung-starter!" u.s.w. On you roll, across a countryside whose light is forever changing - castles, heaps of rock, moons of different shapes and colours come and go. There ar estops at odd hours of the mornings, for reasons that are not announced: you get out to stretch in lime-lit courtyards where the old men sit around the table under enormous eucalyptus trees you can smell in the night, shuffling the ancient decks oily and worn, thbrowing down swords and cups and trumps major in the tremor of light while behind them the bus is idling, waiting - 'passengers will now reclaim their seats' as much as you'd like to stay, right here, learn the game, find your old age around this quiet table, it's no use: he is waiting beside the door of the bus in his pressed uniform, Lord of the Night he is checking your tickets, your ID and travel papers, and it's the wands of enterprise that dominate tonight... as he nods you by, you catch a glimpse of his face, his insane, committed eyes, and you remember then, for a terrible few heartbeats, that of course it will end for you all in blood, in shock, without dignity - but there is meanwhile this trip to be on... over your own seat, where there ought to be an advertising plaque, is instead a quote from Rilke: "Once, only once..." One of their favourite slogans. No return, no salvation, no Cycle - that's not what They, nor Their brilliant employee Kekulé, have taken the Serpent to mean..
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