Pass This By

This is my life.

Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash - Hurt from kakofoni on Vimeo.

I don't know what to write that isn't whiny BS. I know I got it good, there is no struggle for survival. So, I get to have opinions and vege out in front of the TV, my stomach will always be full and the house warm, just so long as I'm good little worker drone. Yet, suicide seems like such a good release, in it's permanence.

In reality, my mind if focussed on escape & release ─ I want freedom and respect. Escape to the jungle, escape to the streets. Or, throw myself headfirst into the machinery, hoping it breaks in my favor, in the realization of a new, egalitarian American Dream.

I should pack up, walk out the door, and keep walking.

Maybe, in time.

A Blog About My Blog, But Not One of THOSE Blogs About A Blog ─ You Know?

I've decided to delete the poetry blog, in order to focus my efforts here, for the time being. I'm working out an idea for a website ─ keeping the details on that to myself ─ suffice to say, the website won't be the personal soapbox this blog is. In the meantime, my goal is to continue developing my writing style and research abilities, so this blog will remain active. I want to vary the subject matter a bit, but don't want to throw readers off, so I've developed a rough content schedule, as follows:

Saturday ─ Poetry or Fiction

Sunday ─ Politics, typically using the President's address as a jumping off point

Monday ─ Music, Movie or Book review, anyway, something culture related

Tuesday ─ no post, but that's not a promise

Wednesday ─ Something Interesting

Thursday ─ (a)Theism

Friday ─ Science Feature

Updates will post at 12 Noon, 3 PM at the outside.

Peace & Understanding

Concise Manifesto

Image via Wikipedia

I've been living through an existential funk ─ we could call it depression ─ regardless, finding some purpose for myself has been a life-long struggle. I'm not so conceited, as to think I'm unique or special: i.e. I realize everyone deals with this.

I've reached the point in my life, where I need to do something. Anything? But, I can't bring myself to settle in some corporate hierarchy, with which I fundamentally disagree. Again, I'm neither unique nor special. So, why do I hold out? Why have I let myself sink into this rut?

I know that I can't live with myself if I feel I'm a cog in a machine. I realize my role, I understand life goes on without me, as it would without anyone else and even without our species. I fear, this is the fundamental issue.

To survive we need adequate food, drinkable water and security from destructive aspects of nature. As a whole, we have been marvelously successful in achieving all 3 essentials. Food exists in such abundance, that obesity has become a problem and anorexia a bizarre & twisted reaction to that unnatural abundance. Potable water exists in such quantity, that we create golf courses in deserts. Finally, throughout the developed world, we're essentially divorced from the natural world, living in cities of steel and concrete.

Basically, we've reached a plateau, where the human race has moved beyond barely eking out survival and is in fact thriving. This may not be the land, but this is assuredly the time of milk and honey. Each of us living today and that will be born in the foreseeable future, lucked into this abundance and relative security.

Yet, we are not born with equal access to the benefits of this era ─ wealth is largely inherited ─ many of us are (seemingly) systemically denied the bounty of the time ─ however we consistently yield to the standing corporation-centric economy, despite our personal interests being at odds with the current structure.

We do this (in part) out of fear: socialist and communist revolutions have ultimately yielded fascist states, so that any notion of socialism seems to be inexorably linked with totalitarian fascism. The capitalist system, as it stands, also offers a certain naïve hope, that we (or our heirs) might be able to bootstrap our way out of poverty into the middle-class, or from the middle-class to the rich-elite. Never-mind that the odds of this are approximately the same as our odds of winning the lottery ─ besides which, in a capitalist nation, one persons good fortune is nearly always dependent  upon another's bad fortune ─ the essence of capitalism being the uninhibited flow of wealth between individuals.

Trouble is, wealth doesn't flow without inhibition. In fact, wealth tends to pool amongst a small minority ─ controllers of industry and their families ─ while the common man works for a pittance.

Modern Western law and culture, is predicated upon beliefs in the innate equality of individuals, their right to self-determination, balanced by personal accountability. The current capitalist financial structure, seems to run contrary to these ideals. Inheritable wealth undermines individual equality, disparate pay negates individual liberty, while the poor and working classes are often held to higher standards of accountability.

I was born middle-class ─ I could embrace that lot ─ go to college ─ work my life away ─ generating wealth for others, while barely scraping by myself. Experience tells me, that way yields naught but frustration, personal anguish and a languishing of the spirit: while such complicity with the capitalist status quo, is in utter violation of my conscience, even if seeming inevitable.

Ultimately it seems unconscionable, that we allow such disparate divisions between economic classes, let alone hunger and homelessness, to persist. Imperatively: I retain some degree of self-determination, the freedom of expression, and the right to vote. So, I can choose for whom I work and from whom I buy. I can publish my blog. I can work and vote for change and shared prosperity. As we all do, can and ought.

Adjusting Course

I procrastinated writing this week, because the topic I was most tempted to write about was writing─ who cares to read as an amateur writer ponders upon writing?─ am I writing for some desired audience, myself, or for the sake of writing?─ am I even justified in calling myself a 'writer'?

I think it's obvious, I've been dealing with some self-doubt; likely banal autumnal-existential-depression.

Honestly, I feel justified in considering myself a writer. If asked about my profession, I wouldn't [yet] refer to myself as such, but I do write, and I do publish it to a blog. I'd not claim the title of blogger, because I'm not one of them. That is, my blog doesn't exist to spread information or opinion or feed ego, it exists so I can share my craft and, ideally, receive feedback of some sort.

I am a writer (by certain definition), but why then, do I write? I'm not going to make a cliched appeal to a contrived notion of the Art of Writing: it's not majik, in any-sense. And I frankly don't care about the science of writing either, to met it's a craft which I practice.

So, I write for myself, it's a compulsion that leads to self-satisfaction. Altho, yes, I would like to garner a following, I'd like to make a living from writing and doing as much would fuel my ego: such is the nature of succeeding in any practice. Still, I will not pander to an audience, because it is not in my nature to do so. I will write, endure and perhaps find some measure of success.

I am proud of what I've written here and I'm proud of my previous postings on this blog: whether they garner an audience or not. My efforts have been spent writing earnestly and respectfully on topics I care about. The internet is filled with enough snark and rage, which I've little enough interest in reading, let-alone contributing to.

This marks a change in this blog's function. My poetry will henceforth be found at 'Emarald Wordsmith'. I'm not concerning myself with short-fiction, for the time being, but if I write some it will likely be posted to that blog as well.

'Figuring it Out' will be devoted to essay/journal style writing.

Better Late...

I've been stuck on the essay this week. We've had family in town and I've been unable to escape it all. I seem to remember, most writers do their stuff late at night or early in the morning, locked away in a private study, or sequestered in friend's summer homes during the winter months or in the back corner of a busy coffee shop.

The point is, writing requires solitude, of some sort. I've learned recently, that silence actually helps, as the effect of noise, especially music, on mood is profound.