path: root/old notes/cut- too preachy.txt

cut- too preachy

Brooke is talking about art history; she studies it in school. Indoctrination Inc., Dean calls it. To me school is as fascinating as the buzzing sound of a thousand refrigerators, but the students seem to really care in a detached, careless way. It means the air is constantly flushed with words, the razor-backed opinionated words of the young. Sharp words, bloody words, words that divide and destroy, words that dissect and leave a rusty scalpel on the table behind them. But BrookeÕs words are softer, like breasts. They are heavy against the skin. We talk of painting and architecture. I donÕt care one way or the other really, but nevertheless I manage to work myself into a frenzy.



At first glance it strikes me as ironic, the nationÕs capital is itÕs most violent city. But then again itÕs not ironic, because whatever the upper echelon is doing, so will the lower in its own mutant fashion. ÔOne Step Above Beirut,Õ the headline reads. 
Washington DC is still an hour away. I steal the front page, grab a few doughnuts and hit the road. I try to read the article while I drive. I want to know where the violence is; I want to see it. The eastern side of Washington DC looks rundown enough to be harboring violence, so I pull off at the next exit and head west, hoping to drive through the whole economic spectrum.
 I drive slowly, skirting a tidal zone, the fringe between reclaimed areas full of wealthy hipsters, and the projects, inhabited by the destitute. ItÕs certainly not Beirut; itÕs not being bombed. No one is throwing mortars or maltov cocktails; no one is fighting to the death in the streets. The projects look like they have been abandoned for many years. If there is scattered violence it stems from ego and desperation, not jingoism or religious conviction like it does in Beirut or the rest of the world. Americans have no collective identity which all can gather behind and fight for; we are on the road to redemption from such primitive and asinine sentiments. We will fight for prime real estate, or to keep the oil supply safe, but not for abstract principles. The average citizen knows damn well that when armies are mobilized, it is to protect the interests of economy, not to fight for the American way or any such rubbish. The government has gotten so lackadaisical about propaganda these days that it seldom bothers to find a cover story for wars. We live in a strange in between phase of humanity, where the archaic beliefs of the past are dying out with those that hold them. A new system of values and ideals is emerging from the primordial soup of American thought. Communities arise based not on the old lines of skin color or nationality, but on economy and lifestyle. Some groups want to go backward, some forward, but the overwhelming consensus is that we need to go somewhereÑweÕre restless with the anticipation of change. We feel cheated out of something, but we donÕt even know what it is anymoreÑfreedom. 
This area, like any other, is nothing more than those people that inhabit it. The buildings have black eyes where time has punched out windows. There are no trees, there are no bustling street corner paperboys, no pushcart hotdog vendors, no fruit stands, no people at all, no life. I donÕt remember living years ago when the green grocer was downstairs, the fish market at the end of the street by the wharf, and every morning the fragrance of fresh seafood wafted into townÉ. But of course you donÕt remember that either, you have never smelled it, never lived above a grocer, never gone to the dory markets to get your halibut. If you were born in the suburbs, you were born in the architecture of fear. You were born in a world designed by fear, built by fear, and encouraging and perpetuating fear. There is no community of mankind left. We fear our neighbors, avoiding them with fenced yards, tall shrubs, and flat-faced houses. There are no porches in the new world. You enter the door and shut it behind you, locking the world out. Even in the big cities, where human contact is inevitable, there is still the doorman and security guard to remind you that you are not a part of a community, you are not welcomed by your neighbors. You are only given a security clearance and begrudgingly tolerated.
The air and mood here is somber, but throw ten thousand people in the mix, and this place would come alive to steal all the pompous thunder of Mardi Gras. Give people a reason to celebrate and they always will. The cult of Dionysus is forever raising its head, and eventually, it will lift us all out of the muck and filth into celebration and rapture. In the mean time, the rich are still screwing the poor down here in the ghetto; the reader is shocked IÕm sure. The developers couldnÕt be happier IÕm sure. Nothing sends real estate values down like being the worst of the worst. Buy cheap, bring in consumers from the suburbs, start with Starbucks and McDonalds, and in ten years this will be the hottest neighborhood in townÑsell high and move on. No community, no Dionysian cults, only good little consumers. The endless pursuit of money and illusory control that it brings has perverted out ambitions and laid waste to the fertility of our dreams.
All these luxuries that we can not do without, what have they given us? Comfort? Why are we neurotic? Shelter? A house, you say? Something that you can call your own? But then there is me, outside your house at three in the morning with a can of gasoline and suddenly the house is no longer yours, now it is mine, and it will be the death of you. Bear that carefully in your mind as you waste away your days paying for that precious thing that you call your own. There is a line that when stepped over once is impossible, or perhaps just too difficult to step back over. Where is that line, that point at which all is lost and your life is surrendered to the ancient demonÑtime? Can you feel the fragile futility of your own existence, and yet, in the midst of that futility, sense a fond irretrievable memory of the desert plains on which you danced and sang and loved? Loved as you never have since? Loved your death as much as your life? What is our mythology but a thing that cages us inside of fear and leaves us mentally pacing, trying to figure out an escape? We are living in the early hours of morning, the end of the night, the darkest hour before dawn. The past is fading; we are waiting for a new dawnÉ
Things could be worse. In tourist guides for Moscow, one is advised against sitting in the widow seats of the busses. They suggest you also avoid hanging off the running boards because the local Mafia randomly sprays the busses with machine guns. ItÕs an intimidation tactic, best to sit near the center and let others stop the bullets. As I go on the industrial ghetto fades and signs of life begin to appear, there is a Cuban-looking man selling roses out of a bucket for a dollar a longstem. He does not strike me as a cutthroat murderer or drug running thug. He strikes me as non-white. He strikes me as foreign. He strikes me as a representative of something unknownÑsomething that America fears. When you encounter the unknown like Christopher Columbus, you encounter only fear. You see only wastelands and you leave only death. When you encounter the unknown as a passive observer, you can learn from it; in withholding judgement you can come to understand it. For those that sit in ivory towers the unknown becomes confusion, and confusion creates panic and fear. Panic and fear become racism and hatred. No one is to blame; we are all guilty of the same thing, whites, blacks, Jews, Muslims, Europeans, Cubans, Arabs, the whole rabble lot of humanity guilty as Mussolini. 
When will it all get flushed out of our system? When can we get back to the usual and fine business of living? When will the penis waving of the money slaves be recognized as the bankrupt Freudian monkey act that it is? Almost eighty years ago Wilhelm Reich wrote that unhealthy sexual morals and restrictive behavior were blocking the human potential for happiness. His book was hastily burned by those that couldnÕt face sexuality, by those that think that ReichÕs healthy sex argument was nothing more than an attempt to undermine their values. It was. It is. Someday the last puritan will be dead and the moralistic memes will perish with them. Those of us that have already left them far behind will turn around and laugh as they slide finally, and quietly, into extinction. Just like so many other memes the human race has gotten rid of Ñanimal sacrifice, slavery, trench warfare and a host of other bad ideas. Give up the ghost, give up the leaders, and live as only the human creature can, with joy and splendor.
Today the streets are empty. The Cuban with the roses is alone. Alone with twenty or thirty roses on a day like todayÉ He might be the Buddha. He might be angry as all hell that no one is shelling any income his way.