better than...

"We live in a world where too many people won’t go far enough, wont do what they know is right - what they believe. I don't know how or why it got this way, where the world has become so complicated that to involve yourself in someone else’s problem is to invite them needlessly on yourself."

-Chris Carter via Frank Black in Millennium, The Well Worn Lock.

It doesn't sound nearly as impressive without Frank Blacks gravely voice. It doesn't sound quite as prophetic either. Reading over it separate from that the scene, I'm not even sure it sounds true. It is true that we live in an impossibly complicated world. Trying to gauge the complexity of our lives alongside the lives of our ancestors would be futile, impossible. The difference isn't even one of degrees, but of planes of existence.

The number of variables that we juggle in our daily lives. The layers that our minds work on. Multi tasking as a survival trait. Compartmentalizing is survival of the fittest. And it's not even that we are deeper thinkers. Our philosophers are rock stars, or movie stars who don't even speak their own words, but recite the lines of other men who lack the conviction to quote themselves. We are stretched thin, a membrane pulled tight as a drum, and infinitely tangle skein. Our complexity is not our strength, it is not our survival trait - it is our snare, it is the variable by which we will achieve our summit, our stagnation.

But to say we don't go far enough is a grotesque understatement. We do not go.... period. There was a conversation recently, between two people I care about, and two people I respect. Party #1 and Party #2.

Party #1 had just voiced the fact, in passing, not as a center piece to the conversation, that they had decided not to go to Wal Mart any more. For reasons molded purely from conscience and social awareness. Party #2 inquired as to why this choice had been made. A congenial inquiry sounded mostly from curiosity, maybe just a sliver of disapproval.

Reasons were given. Their validity debatable, as always. The tactic towards small town, the initial low prices until, to the very calendar month, the neighboring small businesses disappear, and the sudden rise in prices. The misleading advertising. Take the test yourself. 80% of all items are made overseas in this "all american" store. The lawsuits from employees. The unfair wages, the sexual harassment, the unjust terminations. And the conversation ended. Thank heavens, all that social awareness was getting boring anyway.

Until party #2 calls back later that night. I'm not in on that conversation, so all this is hearsay mind you. And yet, two things from that relayed conversation, monologue maybe. Stay with me.

First, the assertion that Party #1 is only hurting itself by going someplace with higher prices. Wal Mart has the good deals.

Second. That what party number one is doing is pointless. The mere and small fact that they won't shop there anymore is too small to make a difference anyway.

And that, somehow, sums up so much of what is wrong.

You're not going to go stand beside the woman who was sexually harassed and then fired for it, her supervisor given a verbal warning, took a corporate sensitivity class, and was promoted. You're not going to help her now that she's homeless, or stand outside a wal mart telling her story. I mean, you don't even know her. You wouldn't be expected to. I don't expect you to. I'm not helping her.

But would you even quite shopping at the store that did this to her? Stop giving money to the corporation that lets this happen? I mean, heck you're against sexual harassment, in principle at least. But it's not like it was your wife who was had her ass groped and humiliated. And besides Wal Mart does have the good deals.

You're a good person, you know sweatshops are bad. You don't think that's a good word, and you wouldn't wan to work at one. But you don't know those kids in any of the at least three factories that Wal Mart purchases products from, keep financially afloat.

In general, you don't like the idea of children being paid $2.13 for 14 hours of labour without so much as a break for the restrooms, with no healthcare, no safety procedures and no hope for anything better.

But you aren't about to chain yourself to the machine that makes the shirts. You aren't about to confront the floor manager as he scowls at children as young as 8 years old. And who would blame you? Not me. I'm too god damn lazy to even look up where the place is, much less go there.

But would it kill you to quite buying the shirts that their little fingers bled on? But it's not like it's your granddaughter being mistreated, and they do have the good deals.

It's not that we don't go far enough - though we don’t, I don't - it's that we don't go at all.

We are not a socially conscience people. We don’t' see beyond our lives. Our little lives with the shiny car, the well trimmed lawn, the clean house. We lack that thing that allows us to view ourselves as part of a greater society. We are fractured and disconnected and apathetic.

Which is fine. Maybe we've always been that way. But I wish we'd quite pretending that we are something better if we aren't going to really strive to be something better.

expiriment

does this work to link right to my yahoo group?



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Yahoo Group

Started a yahoo group, because I'm not quite stretched thin enough yet to be ineffective.  This should to it though.  It's at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thisredrock/

hey man… did you say you’ve got ding dongs?

 
There are Ding-Dongs in the break room vending machine.  Every time I look at them I can hear, as clearly as if it was spoken over my shoulder, the Voice of Bruce Campbell doing Elvis and saying, “hey man… did you say you’ve got ding dongs?”
And I don’t know if that’s the sign of a sick mind, or a sick vending machine.
When I was younger, in about 5th grade, maybe it was 4th grade, I heard about lucid dreaming for the first time.  I checked out library books, learned a few tricks.  I learned about triggers, timing, conditioning, and phases of sleep.  I became the subject of my own experiment.  I don’t know if it worked, I don’t know if anything was accomplished.  I think that I can me to a point where I could easily recall and control my dreams.  I could bind the fabric of them so that they were a real and inter-active landscape that could be consciously tread upon and lived through.  But before long dream memories mingled with waking memories and formed a tight tangled knot that refused to unravel. 
Which isn’t that odd when you think about it.  Memories are, as un-poetic as it may be, are just chemical pathways.  Just neurons, little bits of flesh and electricity, lining up in a given pattern. Dreams are the same thing.  Flashes of chemical and lightning along pink pits of organic material.  There aren’t separate file folders for each.  You can’t keep one on the red disk and one on the green disk. 
Maybe that’s why dreams fade so quickly, maybe it’s an evolved trait, like stitches that dissolve, dreams steam away with the morning light so that they don’t mingle themselves in with our waking memories.
But part of this experiment, part of being able to walk trough your dreams was being able to recall them afterwards.  And in building up that tenuous self dissolving string into a chain of recall, that self defense mechanism was destroyed.  There is a patch of my life, a period of about 6 to 9 months from which I cannot trust my memories.  Into which all sorts of things that I know must be dreams, are mingled with true memories. Some of them are easy.  I know that I did not receive that sweet soft kiss from my biggest fourth grade crush.  But some of them are not so well defined.
I have a very very clear memory of a patchy cornfield in late summer. Of exploring it and coming upon and dried spot of flooding, a bald spot in that tall green maze.  And startling something that stood and fled so quickly it was hard to get a good look at.  A white flash taller than a deer, its legs bent backwards like an ostrich, and completely white.  Something albino whatever it was.  I have no idea if that was real or imagined.  It seems so real.  And there are so many others.
Sometimes, as butterfly like as it is, I wonder if this isn’t still one of those lucid dreams.  I just feel so out of place sometimes.  Like today, here at work.  I feel like I’m the item on the right hand side of the children’s bulletin. 
See the 2 pictures of Jesus?  What’s different in the picture on the right? What doesn’t belong?  There’s the wrist watch on Judas.  I think Thomas is holding an umbrella, and does Mary have a wedding bouquet?  Oh, and what’s that off in the corner?  It’s me! I don’t belong in this picture either… bugger all.
There’s this little mantra, I’m sure it should be attributed to someone, but I don’t know who, that says “you are exactly where you need to be at this very moment.”  I’ve clung to it, and calmed myself with it time and time again.  I’m not prepared to disregard it entirely, but on days like today, it serves no salve.
It’s probably self centered and egotistical to say that I feel like I should be doing something bigger.  And I’m probably too lazy to be doing something bigger.  But there ist is anyway.  I feel like this is all a pointless waste.  At least I’m getting something bloggable out of it though.
So many things in my life seem like wasted space.  Wasted energy going into wasted places. I try to take stock.  There are some things that are right and good.  I love my wife, I love my daughter, and I can’t imagine any existence without them.  They are right.  But like me, they are in the wrong scene as well.  And to make it worse, I have no idea what the right scene is. 
Sometimes I get some vague inkling of it.  Some apple pie scent upon summer wafting breeze.  But it’s gone. And I’m frustrated.  It’s not to be rich.  Not only is that something I can never have, but luckily it is something to which I do not aspire.  It might be to be famous, but only on a smaller level.  I will confess that the prospect of having my name recognized, at least in some circles, is appealing. It is to own less and do more.  It is to live a little life and leave a larger wake. 
           

My first post

My first post, my first blog, my first on-line type thing at all. How boring and trite to say that I don't have a purpose or an idea, yet there it is.

Today... today I wish more than anything that I was something or someone else. There is sunshine outside, a breeze across damp grass, just a hint of moisture fringing the sidewalks, last nights rain dissipating east and even the footprints it letft behind are fading. Everything feels young. Everything has hope, and a "freshness". Everything but me. I feel old, and trapped and worn thin. Like tread that has taken too many sharp corners, scraped the curb too many times when parking. I feel my little wires poking through, I feel my surface stretched tight with no tension beneath, only tired stale air waiting to escape, not in an explosion, but in a putrid sigh.

There's good in life, of course there is. There are simple little pleasures that I look forward to. There's a small patio, a square on concrete you could barely fit in if you laid down. There a sturdy wooden picnic table, and a red, glass globe with a candle in it, there's a wooed hill to the west, soaking up the sunlight from early afternoon until sunset. There's the shifting shade that the trees throw across that cement slab, that wooden table, that red globe.

But sometimes those little things shudder next to the all the fun and excitement that I know the Young are stirring up just out of sight. I know they're doing it right now, and I know I'm missing it. I'm missing it because I'm old, and aging and getting rounder every minute. And I'm tired, and I want to be irresponsible, but can't. And yes, i would like a side of coleslaw with that big ole helping of self pity.

Maybe it's just summer, maybe that's why i like winter more anyway. Everyone feels old in the winter, everyone covers up and cowers indoors. I think I just crossed the line into grumpy-oldman-hood.

Whatever... whipper-snapper.