Paradox of the post-modern worker/consumer

"Here in lies the present paradox: work has totally triumphed over all other ways of existing, at the same time as workers have become superfluous. Gains in productivity, outsourcing, mechanization, automated and digital production have so progressed that they have almost reduced to zero the quantity of living labor necessary in the manufacture of any product. We are living the paradox of a society of workers without work, where entertainment, consumption and leisure only underscore their lack from which they are supposed to distract us."

A return to normalcy (3.5)

"In a country like France, where radioactive clouds stop at the border and where we aren't afraid to build a cancer research center on the former site of a nitrogen fertilizer factory that has been condemned by the EU's industrial safety agency, we should count less on 'natural' crises than on social ones. It is usually up to the social movements to interrupt the normal course of the disaster."

Answer to Max Schreck

Spoken at some point in the outmoded future.

"He also said—pointedly—that space travel nowadays was an escape from the problems of Earth. That is, one took off for the stars in the hope that the worst would happen and be done with in once"s absence. And indeed I couldn't deny that more than once I had peered anxiously out the porthole—especially when returning from a long voyage—to see whether or not our planet resembled a burnt potato."

November 2006

very, very hungry
I sit waiting for pierogis to fry. I smell the onions in the butter and oil and my stomach punchs itself in the face. I have had nothing to eat all day and it is 8:12 PM. The reason for the absense of food is one crazy schedule. of course, I've put things off, deadlines approach and my procrastination haunts my empty stomach. but there is something to be said about being hungry; hunger reminds me of our early human ancestors. I understand why people fast. there is some spiritual gain from fasting, yet there is also a biological one involving a re-adjustment of the digestive system. mentally, it reaffirms life's bottom line. FOOD. My hunger makes me appreciate food more, and in effect, it reminds me of what I have in life; I love the things I call my own. Through this, however, I do not deny I am very privileged compared to millions of other people. Self-induced hunger is one thing that makes me feel alive.

Dead
They picked his head, they stuck his feet in mud, they ran rivers over his back. He still could not hit a golf ball to save his life. Still, his best friend was dead, deader than Dan Quayle’s political career.

It appears his life was not exactly fit for foraging for compliments inside his wallet. His gestures were too subtle to be noticed by anyone, save his own mind and maybe the eccentric friend. But he knew only the crying game, the nude sculpture, and the lost-mold technique. Having seen him in deadly predicaments prior to his current eviction, I sent him candles: wick and wax in a box full of newspapers. He lights candles, jumps over them and places a piece of fabric underneath where his right foot lands. The fabrics are all chosen carefully based on hue, material and susceptibility to flame. He rhymes colors with genders.

Like genders, he is usually happy or sad. Two of the same means two different things to him. I first saw his inner conflict when he left a house with no sex. He walked straight for the nearest tree and burned it down with his Zippo. He planted a new tree within a fortnight. After leaving the house, sexless and disgruntled, he wanders to a liquor store, buys a fifth of vodka, usually, and drinks only one shot, vehemently. The remaining ethyl is then poured on a flower, usually a rose if he can find any, or else, as I have observed during later outbursts, a tulip, someone’s lawn, the windshield of a car, a pile of garbage, a fjord, a dog, a man, a little boy, a sparrow, a woman or a stop sign will take the place of the rose. The empty bottle is then filled with milk shakes and he mails the bottle to his failed lover. He sometimes, as he has told me, writes an original poem on the bottle; ties are permanently severed upon deliverance of the bottle. This does not always occur, this iterative tirade. His severance is usually followed by intervals of isolation. I once did not see him after he mailed a fifth of Smirnoff (filled with strawberry milk shake) to Leonard St. for one month and four days. When I do see him again, he is in denial of anything, carrying on his business without faintly any indiscretions, as if he had been working at the market for the entire month.

from the early summer, read in a park in Middle Village, Queens

"One night I was at this dude Grater’s apartment. He was a hardcore biker. He had nasty prison tattoos all over his neck. He sold speed and guns. There were four or five gang members hanging out at his pad. One came up with the idea of ripping off a liquor store. One guy would go in and make a distraction, then the other two would run in and steal cases of beer. I got pressured into going to steal the beer. I was so scared. I could hear my mom’s voice inside my head begging me to just please come home. Through sheer luck, we ran into some punks at a stoplight on the drive to the liquor store. They had acid so we went back to their house, tripped, and listened to The Misfits all night. I still get chills when I think about what could have happened, because a week later the driver of the car shot a convenience store clerk in the face. I could have been part of the commission of first-degree murder and armed robbery; had I been a few years older, I might have even gotten the death penalty. That I could have been strapped to a lethal injection machine is a realization that does not diminish over a couple cocktails."

http://brooklynrail.org/2007/05/express/walking-new-orleans

Summer has taken a hold of the city (reprise)

unusually warm day yesterday. but the coolness of spring has leveled. i hope things remain somewhat cool for a while before the heat sets in.

"Beautiful elms, English and American, Douglas Firs, birch and Hawthornes and of course, the Moses favorite London plane stood scraggly and poorly trimmed. I should not be presumptuous as to the condition of the London planes. In Paris they choose to trim them a certain way, the street side of the tree being flat with no branches hanging above the street. Here the branches are more natural, being trimmed only for practical and safety reasons.

"The walk wound me up by the reservoir. Two girls were jogging and gossiping in unison. The left one seemed to be more into the jogging part of the song. I would imagine she did not really know the girl on the right and only humored her if only to have a running partner. The reservoir seemed to be at low tide. This observation is, of course, erroneous; there is no outlet to the ocean known by me. Of course there might be one, which would lead my overall judgment to be wrong. In any case, there are several possibilities of me erring. This fact, once realized, can be used to fight evil everywhere.

"I decide to walk down the horse trail below the jogging path. It has since been used as a back road for the NYPD for park equestrian and beat patrol. Automobiles rested idly in the back of the precinct. The road would have been nicer with no people on it, or at least with shy peasant girls delivering bundles to arbitrary destinations. The overgrowth of brush amongst the many species of trees seemed peculiar. It is an artificial wilderness maintained by the city. It can be scene as a mockery towards us, humans, and our forgotten roots from the forest. I see it as an arboreal art form. Squirrels scampered here and there, disappearing farther along the road. When the point of disappearance is finally reached no small rodent is ever seen.

"The eastside emerged only a couple of minutes before my exiting of the park. Central Park is a modern marvel. Forested areas tucked away between posh residencies, tourist areas and poorer building projects carry nostalgia for those who are perceptive. My feet meandered along the path of east-siders content with their seemingly mundane rituals: walking dogs, strolling in money-threads, standing outside their buildings’ vestibules with cell phones to ears, haling hailed taxis. I would occasionally pass those curious outer-borough folk who are known to the residence here by various rapid transit coined colloquialisms. 103rd St. came upon the Ponies, moist from perspiration. Trekking continued eastwards. The contour of the land changed from being flat to somewhat dangerously hilly. A trestle emerged after a row of building projects, the Metro-North speeding to Grand Central atop medieval arches. Park Ave. precedes Lexington. I am sure Purchas had at one point meant for his accounts to change the world. “This small ash has been superceded by a larger hornbeam of the mightiest stature,” I imagined he would say in if such a sight were before him.

"The street signs on Lexington Ave. read “NO PARKING” very defiantly, unquestionably due to the steepness of the streets. Garbage pick-up must be a bitch. The subway station at 103 was narrow and warm. The area was above the Upper Eastside and Yorkville. I now wonder about the area slightly over from the ritz that is the Museum Mile, seeing several “Associated” grocery chains within walking distance, the George Washington Carver housing projects, the campy stylings of Kool-Man ice cream trucks. It may be Carnegie Hill. The city keeps reminding me of impoverished ancestry with modern, though esoteric, aesthetics."

"the first of many goodbyes" (reprise)

I used to work at a gas station down on Nassau and North 15th-Banker Sts. The fumes would render my synapses limp by the time I would arrive home. my father suspected the fumes would make my hair fall out and replace the bare patch in the backyard. Luckily, they closed that station with a wrecking ball. The triangle lot still exists, barren, separating the "Billy Burg" scene from the Polish of Greenpoint. (the day they were filming the Substitute sequel in the vocational school across the street, they made us all fill up the deli trucks without them paying us) The view I used to have from the top of the tankers was a Manhattan skyline filled with fudged clouds of smog. I imagined what it would be like to eat a poison fudge brownie. The taste must be excellent for poison.

Arsenic in your coffee (Arsenic café...?) meets sulfuric brownies. It comes with a coupon where you get $1 off a pound of doughnuts at the Dunkin chain. Though, I must say, I was glad that the gas station was wrecked, since i wasn't making enough money to get anywhere fast. I'd have died before I found true love, as so many visionary artists who have stolen from each other over the years would say. I give them all credit for making some people cringe and cry with delight. After the wrecked N 15th station I had to go work at a printing company. The Gazette was smelly and foul with tiny mice living inside the back rooms where the giant ink cartridges were kept. i could get all the ink on my toast as I wanted, though! Black India! (no, not exactly) the interesting thing is, for some reason, they would grow bamboo in one room, cut it and split the ends in another room, before making brushes in a third. I always thought bamboo was rare, though it actually grows quite rapidly. It's been a major invading species since the colonies were set up back centuries ago. The 17th century must be grinning in it's grave. Technicolored morticians mesmerizing titular dignitaries from the western hemisphere sometimes seems unmitigatedly farcical. Pixelated screens mesmerize. I hear communication companies laughing in each others’ faces after the allusions to their divine plot are revealed through constant satire. Getting no where fast.

After I quit the Gazette, I had to go work in an office. I felt like I'd die from heat exhaustion in a fully air-conditioned room before getting any of the work done they wanted me to do. It wasn't even the fact that it was difficult; the tasks that were given to me were the easiest of tasks to tackle. The sheer boredom and mundanity of the work made brain cells pull a Cobain on Sunday. I lasted 2 years before the day came when I had to go learn things and pay for it afterwards. we all know what I mean by that.


Last I left it, the Greenpoint Gazette had burned down, the rainbow having cut a deal with the Gustapo in Greenpoint. Hey now, get me outta that deal! That’s the real reason I quite. No room for Mafioso. Find me a hat and I’ll forward you a new bit of string for the inner stitching. If you cut corners, your hat will fall off in the mildest of breezes.

So I’ve been dwelling on my failures at the Gazette for a bit too long. I can’t soon forget all that, the pulp and the endangered trees. I feel like it caused me to grow up too fast. I can always go back to a youthful existence, yet I suppose I chose not to and still do. Do I isolate myself purposely? Has it always been so? It’s all a blur really, everything from high school onwards. I can remember a lot from before that, but my perception was different then so it is all without much merit. I remember sneaking onto city buses because I felt since everyone else did it, I should simply follow along. I knew it was wrong, but it didn’t matter. I had a free pass, and the good seats by the air-conditioning would be taken up if I waited in the front of the bus. So sneaking through the back door really benefited me without taking anything away from anyone else. Of course, the person who would have sat in the seat prior to my decision to sneak through the rear door might not have air-conditioning. I was a little selfish then. But who cared? I didn’t know what I wanted, and life was dictated to me by others. It still is, but at least I know how things work and how I can change it. I was only ever bullied in junior high school, because I was white and had pimples and couldn’t play basketball or dance. Without a bit of chemicals in me, I decided to be content with videogames until I could think for myself. That came in high school, along with alcohol and drugs. Fuck all that now, though. If I need a drug, smell my hat, feed me some pumpkin bread and send out the pill to someone else.

Before the departure from the gazette, I had a man talk to me about life without pay, and how important it was to make sure you had continuous pay. I listened to every word he said, yet his meaning escaped me then. I know now he meant that I should always benefit from everything I do. For him, this mantra had monetary conditions of interest. For me, I know this is not always about money. In fact, it rarely is. I get satisfaction in the most mundane things. I woke up to a smiling chicken disguised as a cookie jar one morning and I couldn’t stop smiling for hours. The idea that you have happiness witin and that this intrinsic happiness is triggered by something is wonderful. It’s a love you always have, yet what or who can bring that out? (music, jars, de-foliated trees?) It’s the same thing with all emotions. What brings out the sadness, the anger, the regret? It’s not that simple, since it’s about ephemeral moments in our lives. Here is a little greeting, a short goodbye, and a long stare out the window. The long stare is you thinking about the greeting (the hello) and the premature goodbye (subtle rejection). This is what separates people of action and people of thought. Here is a hello, a goodbye, and now let’s go back to work. That cannot be me. No one asked me where I should live. I live in the most convenient setting so I can think of how I should live.

The Gazette left me feeling relieved that I had not learned much from it. I could never be stuck in a dead-end job like the residents surrounding me. I knew I had no idea what I could do, yet watching machines eat bamboo and tree trunks all day was not the way my life worked. The pegs they created and the empty tabloids for the residents were all products of controlled population anyway, or quotients of dividing up certain populations based on infrastructure and distance from economic strong-points. I cannot begin to imagine the genius needed to divide a metropolis. I now know the ghost of Robert Moses’ marmot haunted the hallways of that gazette. It’s been proven by crackpot alchemists, yet I believe them for Isaac Newton was also into alchemy. Well, so much for modern science and religion being two separate things. Try to organize science too much and you get things like the wacky-wall walker. Try the same thing with religion and you get everything from Calvinists to Mormons to automatons in pressed collars on television. Both are useless and boring. I say if we had a church of science nothing would ever be boring, since you can always love nature like a mother-god. -2141; Nov 15 05

Impending failure

i sometimes get dreaded feelings. the normally calm periods of mellowness in my life are interrupted by catastrophic moments of dread....of impending failure and slight panicked pangs of fear. I close myself off to the world, site for 40 minutes, and emerge with a slight plan. the plan folds itself inside out and i keep flipping it over. something will work eventually. conceptually, it is a miraculous process.