Uncertainty - Look What the Cat Dragged In

Old, never published before. Now seems good. 

Sunday, September 20, 2009

"I find this uncertainty exciting and embrace the indecisive nature of my work." - I don't care.

My computer, crashed. My cell phone, dead. I couldn't ask for better circumstances.
It came suddenly.

For me, I've never felt the desire to slow down, become one in isolation. But I love being abandoned in the middle of nowhere. I love being inaccessible to humanity, no one has any idea where I could be. I love that. Stranded, helpless, in the wonderful vastness of nothing.

Now, I hope that great expanses of technology collapse. Some say, solar flares are gonna burst up 'round the year 2012 and that will demagnetize everything and destroy computers all over. Makes Y2K look weak.
Or, better yet, the poles are gonna shift (in 2012 again) and demagnetize everything again. No more laptops, iPods, or 3G networks. Fuck it all.

I don't really believe these fantastic theories, but one can dream. I want to be sent back to the stone age. All great things must come to an end.

But until then, I have my moments of isolation, where I have no perceived audience, where my rules are my own, where freedom is it's own weight.

In the desert, I imagined it much differently. Everything hot, with a warm filter on the lens. Sweating heavy, til it dribbles down the bridge of my nose, dabs my lips and I can taste nothing else.
I would extend a stiletto and cut down the forearm because I wanted the swelter to mingle directly with my blood. Would anyone understand that? That I need fire in my veins.

I would have brought a gallon of water and enough bread for three days. And I'd pour the water over my head, til it soaked into my salty flesh. I would have fed the bread to the vultures. I would have screamed and run my fingertips over cactus needles, sewing them into my fingerprints.

But what did I expect? Instead, I walked for less than ten minutes, drank what little was left in a small water bottle and discovered nothing. I found the burned out wreckage of a car, perhaps set aflame in the desert by drug cartels or the Mafia. But nothing else. I returned to air conditioned slavery and schedules and homework and paychecks, directly deposited, every two weeks.

Starving! Thirsty! Delirious!

The End can't come soon enough.

(appendix):

A second visit to the desert proved more fruitful. Where were we, the other end of the planet? It was darker than a basement, the stars like old, white Christmas lights.
We happened upon some bombed out shell of a brick house, inside, nothing but the remains of pests. Nothing even infested this place anymore.
Of course, we burned it all. I flicked cigarette butts into the underbrush, hoping to "accidentally" start a blaze, but it didn't happen, of course. I pulled out a flare and it bloomed like the sun and wielding it like a torch, chased Luke through the wilderness. He swung a wooden bat at me, but even as I stepped back, my voice advanced with eerie strength.
"C'mere, c'mere," I said. Yet, it was not I that spoke.
The flare burst in two directions. Eric sparked up a bonfire and the flame grew luminous and green.
The air is not natural here, I thought.
When the flare started to dwindle, I threw it into the fire and the whole blaze turned red as blood. I darted off, blinded and snagged myself on a rusty barbed wire fence. I was able to snap it back and the wires crumbled in my fists.

Existentialism Diaries: Part One: There is Still Time ... Brother

When I was 12, I had this strange habit of watching ancient black and white films just to make fun of them. Until, I saw On The Beach and it completely changed my life.

I was young, so maybe I didn't understand the deeper meanings, but at the time it was one of the most beautiful films I'd ever seen. To say the least, I was surprised there was so much meaning packed inside.

On The Beach is a 1959 film set in 1964, right after World War III, right after all the bombs fall, atom bombs blossoming in the sunset. Gregory Peck, Anthony Perkins, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire are four people living in Austrailia, awaiting huge clouds of radiation to float down and suffocate the world's only survivors. The film focuses on the last scraps of humanity, slowly being eaten away, the extreme existential emotions of expecting the inevitable.

A lone submarine journeys to America to investigate a strange Morse code signal and find survivors, but upon arrival in San Francisco the crew realizes their worst fears. The end really came.

And so they submarine returns to Austrailia and the characters wait. They go to the pharmacy and the government gives them suicide pills if they wish, and everyone waits.

A few people fulfill their lifetime dreams in quiet desperation. Fred Astaire races a vintage Ferrari. Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck have a romantic fling. Old men sit in their country clubs and complain about the wine. A waiter plays pool. Everyone goes fishing and they sing, "Waltzing Matilda".

They do meaningless, stupid things because they want to. Because they can. They want to add some last-minute purpose to their doomed, pathetic existences. And then the power flickers out.

For years, the poignant imagery in the film has been stuck in my mind. The empty streets of San Francisco, the empty Golden Gate Bridge. The S.O.S. Coke bottle in the window. The banner, waving in the wind, proclaiming, "THERE IS STILL TIME. . . BROTHER." Few plot lines fascinate me as much as the inevitable.

I realize that my introduction to On The Beach was my first experience with existentialism. And I am an existentialist as well as a follower of Christ. They don't always contradict. My existentialist views can be good because of the retarded anxiety they produce. I am constantly trying to accomplish the goals and dreams I have, as if I'm already a decapitated chicken.

To the rest of the world, On The Beach was a warning to the world, a promise more poignant than The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) (another film I saw merely to make fun of and ended up loving). And perhaps the message of OTB was not entirely a don't-blow-yourself-up plea. Maybe it was a reflection of humanity. At this moment in time, we humans aren't facing imminent extinction, at least that we know of (global warming aside), but we all have the same anxieties. We all have these dreams and awkward motivations to somehow make our eating, sleeping, shitting, breathing MEAN something.

Only, because, since we don't fear death as much as the Australians watching the skyline from the Beach, we suppress our desires. Procrastinate. We never worry about that next breath.

I always come back to this, because I believe life has the meaning we give it: life means nothing unless we recognize our Creator and more so, realize brokenness is the only way to survive. In that sense, On The Beach completely changed the way I look at life and got me closer to God. At least, in an "eat, drink and be merry" sorta way.

It's kind of terrifying to be so open about that belief, but I'm not trying to belittle anyone who doesn't agree with me, only it can come across that way.

Still, I hope to live life with the helpless anxiety portrayed in the doomed eyes of Anthony Perkins as he serves his wife and child cyanide laced tea. Or maybe without that gaze. I can't decide.

I leave off with what Yeoman Swain said in the film, right before he jumped ashore in San Francisco, essentially committing suicide, "I have a date on Market Street, Captain. I'm going home."

Finger Crossed (A Depressing Look at the End)

I hope the economy collapses. Flatlines. Nothing left.
I think we could use it. We can rebuild from the rubble.
A new start? A new dawn? Sure.

Let's hope those 2012 predictions pan out as well.
The sun scorches the earth and earthquakes split the ground, eat us alive. California launches into the ocean and the magnetic poles turn upside down.

And I don't care for them, but those environmental scare tactics about climate change? Mine as well pray for mass extinction and melting ice caps. The new El Niño.A new ice age. A new dawn.

Remember that Russian professor who predicted the downfall of America by the end of this year?
He forecasted inevitable civil war and even estimated how the states would be divided. I wrote a New Year's blog about how to make this next year, 2009, the best ever because it could be America's last.

Wonder if we'd still be killing random Arabs then. Wonder if we'd still torture. Wonder if.

But back to that prof. -- I don't feel I've really made my life all that much better by now. It's only been a month and a half, and January always blows. I'm not exactly behind am I?
But now I'm worried. So worried that I just want my worries to come true.
I still haven't found a way to deal with any of this. I don't have a World War Z plan. I don't have a metaphorical bomb shelter. Nothing.
All I have is my camera, my pen and a package of cigarettes to protect me.

Oh, and today I learned that Wal-Mart and Walgreens are completely becoming dry labs by March. Target will likely follow suit. No more film developing, except for send-out, but that's a little more expensive, I believe. I don't have the money, but that's OK; I have the debt.

Everything is going digital much faster now because it's cheaper. In this economy, no one can afford to spend $10 just for 24 pictures. Soon CDs and Vinyl records will be gone too. I hope print newspapers and books will last another decade, or at least that, but I don't have my fingers crossed.

Here I am, shivering with my soon-to-be-obsolete technology. It's comfortable, isn't it?

Maybe the solution is to curl up in a ball and listen to sad songs.
I recommend The Bad Plus' cover of Wilco's "Radio Cure".
Arcade Fire's "Windowsill".
Elbow's "Grace Under Pressure".
Radiohead's "No Surprises" or "Lucky" or maybe just all of OK Computer.
Maybe I should just make an apocalypse playlist and then I'll sit on a mountain and play it while writing what I see, those atom bombs blossoming in the sunset, and the whole event will mean something.

As Bright Eyes said once, "I just can't work it out, but for memory and clarity, I had better write it down."

When I was a kid, I used to read those Bailey School Kids books, about the four friends who always assumed their teachers were vampires, werewolves or leprechauns. Sometimes they were close to right, sometimes they were dead wrong, but it usually had this open-ended, cop-out finish. That one girl, Liza, whenever she freaked out and worried her teacher was a goblin, her nose would start bleeding. This fascinated me, and sometimes I wished it happened to me. I like bloody noses. They make me feel important.

I got sick of the Kids and started reading Goosebumps. Both series of books had terrible cookie-cutter plots with cliché bullshit endings. They were supposed to be scary, but never really disturbed me. Except the aliens. I was never afraid of ghosts or witches cause I knew for certain they didn't exist. But aliens? No one could disprove that. The aliens books gave me nightmares of having the life sucked out of me, of being dissected, of being kidnapped.

I also read those worse than terrible Left Behind books, but the whole "the sky is falling" storyline scared the hell out of me. I musta been ten and I cried and cried that The End was Nigh. That I would die at age 11 and never live a full life and I would never experience all the wonderful life promised me once I reached 21. Or at least once my balls dropped.

I was never, not really, worried about Y2K. As grocery store shelves emptied of water and canned goods, I just went to school and drew comic strips. I played Nintendo and used AOL. When the big night finally came, when the ball dropped, I was sitting in the living room, playing Donkey Kong 64 with my brother. My alarm went off and that meant it was my turn to play. The power didn't even flicker.
I heard the next day some casinos lost memory, but the rest of the world was safe. Airplanes didn't nosedive out of the sky, gas tanks didn't explode. In the morning, the pacemakers and credit cards still worked and the rest of the planet was still on life support.

Those things, those worries, seem silly now. Adorable, if you think neurotic children are adorable. There's got to be a way to face these current problems differently.

I could ram a truck into a gas tanker like this woman, only do it the right way.
http://www.azdailysun.com/articles/2009/02/14/news/20090214_front_190872.txt?rating=true

I could listen to the advice of Interpol: "Pace is the Trick / and to all the destruction in man. . .and to all the corruption in my hand."

What I'm most likely to do is keep worrying, petty and stupid and helpless. But like I said, I'm so worried I just want my worries to come true.

But perhaps this is the best advice of all from Robert Anton Wilson:
"All of us should treasure (John Dillinger's) Oriental wisdom and his preaching of a Zen-like detachment, as exemplified by his constant reminder to clerks, tellers, or others who grew excited by his presence in their banks: "Just lie down on the floor and keep calm.""

You Won't Get This (So Try Anyway)

	You have to read the whole comic to understand the character, but this one taken out of context is beautiful: Links: If you can't read it, here is a larger version: http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus37.html Site: http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus.html