Joan Didion said, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Perhaps we could go further and say that the act of storytelling is synonymous with the act of living. And what do all stories have in common? Motion, animation, the difference between atoms jiggling at their lowest threshold and Absolute Zero: as cold as cold can be, motionless, truly dead. But nothing in this world is ever truly dead. There are always reverberations, continuing streaking fierce momentums carrying a state to a state, or a loss to a dispersion.
And finished flesh still holds heat and potential, as the carrion of the carcasses of those we love are eaten to nourish a predator. But predators want to live like prey once wanted to live, and life is always all about living, as love wants to love, and life wants to live and lifelightlove wants to rejoice in loifve (I miss your friendship CJR).
But Hell. Talk about collapse. How have you been lately? Answers are stories told, and I could say good and the story of my life, the ongoing unfurling is ‘good’ or I could tell the laughtrack in my mind, which I usually do ad nauseum, but in doing so build a foundation on which to walk, not unlike the sculpture on 30th and Canyon of the Self-Made Man, who is literally chipping himself out of a solid block of stone, but you wonder, who initially made his wrists?
The Story:
The tipping point. Writing obliquely for self-protection, though they say the truth will always set you free. Freedom is the story and it is the tipping point and there are so many ways to dig through a ditch, but only one way to eat an elephant: one piece at a time.
Cannipitalism is at it again and this time instead of inspiring metaphysical views through the clouds of the clockwork of time and fortune, I feel fierce, I feel bloodthirsty, I felt like the Lorax who speaks for the trees for the trees have no tongues. I was a wounded wolf, with no pleas for pity, only an acid hatred for the men in white suits with hooked wands, tasers and nets. If I’m going to go down, which I am, then I will yell as Lucifer once yelled (for a very different reason) non serviam. They tell me I’m paranoid. They tell me I’m taking too much of the world’s pain onto my own shoulders to shoulder too much responsibility and eventually it will crush me. That’s OK, I don’t mind being crushed.
Every morning I’ve woke up since I was 14, I’ve tasted a vague and inconsolable nausea in my mouth. [Here now begins the story, flourishing poeticisms completed.] Starting with my own dearest Mother, I saw that our consumer-oriented culture was always at the expense of Her: that is to say, we slice and scorch and suffocate and poison our Mother Earth for every plastic bag that conveniently helps us conglomerate and carry our mass consumptions back to our isolating and alienating boxes of dwelling. But at least it’s comfortable, right? Why is it comfortable? Because of the 70% of the Earth’s population that has not, not because they are lazy and didn’t work as hard as the average American after finishing high school, but because the average American, whether consciously or not, stole their money by way of an unjust system of economics built by the beneficiaries to be winner-takes-all. And we have taken all that we can take. Which has led to our glowing radiance of happiness, right? Yep, that’s why most of this country is on anti-depressants.
I wake up nauseous. So I search for a solution through travel, study, alternative lifestyles, investigations of consciousness, and I conclude that to save a victim of abuse, the first step is to separate that victim from the abuser. If that abuser has an ax, would you really try to sew up the ax-wounds while the ax-happy aggressor remains in the room, swinging the ax?
But there are always excuses: excuses of stagnation, excuses of comfort. It’s easy to ignore deforestation and the decimation of the oceans when the hills are so green around Boulder, Colorado. Meanwhile, I work hard for money in order to turn around and purchase products that reinforce that system of infantilism, a system that does nothing but belittle me, keep me dependent on the tap, and the light switch, and the supermarket. A system that tells me that so long as I’m not the most beautiful then I am next to worthless, valueless: a system that measures a man’s soul by an economic standard.
All the while, the Earth is still being killed, the Brazilian government just announced they have finally (despite the monomaniacal efforts of far too many environmentalist who should never have had to sacrifice their lives and their time to fight against something that shouldn’t have existed in the first place) approved plans to build a dam on the Amazon.
A straw broke my camel back. My ship through the desert has sunk and I can’t live this way anymore. I can’t continue contributing to the system that continually breaks my heart. I can’t allow the excuse of paralysis to hold me at bay anymore. I have nothing but options and need only a direction now. There’s a certain point where we must draw a line in the sand about our own moral stances and begin walking forward by way of that foundation. Moral relativism carries us so far through philosophical debates but when the time comes to actually act, to actually decide ‘how then shall I live?’ Nothing is more paralyzing to actually living in a concrete world.
These are my moral beliefs:
1. I’m against cruelty and exploitation in any and all forms.
2. I’m for personal responsibility and the autonomy to live by (and die by) the decisions we all make in this life.
I’m thinking of environmental activism, walking to Argentina, making a documentary in the Middle East, learning wilderness survival skills, writing a novel in Slovenia, etc...Fuck, who knows what's actually useful, what will help and what will just play back into the system. But for now, the world is wide open, it always has been. But now, finally, taking a stand, I quote Cesar Chavez, “I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”
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