I am looking for my pod. I've been told by people much smarter than I, that this will never come to pass. My pod will be a few random loners I manage to piece together through a painstaking vetting process of pain and passing of time. I attempt to punch through my comfort wall and do things foreign and scary to me. That's life, right? Tonight I went to a 'Graffiti Collective.' 'Twas a mishmash of artists, musicians, drugged out dopes. I am drawn to the artistic. Knowing what I know about artists, for I once was one, I should know better than to enter my energy into such outings. I can't help myself.
Convo #1:
"I could do acid everyday and forever," says half in the bag corn-rowed chick, "Like, seriously...every fucking day."
"You could micro-dose," says random dude slowly being eaten by couch.
"I know, but then the micro would quickly turn into a full and then I would just be fucked."
This went on for some time. I feel my IQ dipping so I won't continue further.
Where are my people? Are all of the thirty-somethings married off, having babies and boring? Needless to say I left fucking early after chugging two pity beers and feeling sorry for the state of the world. Expanding your brain can come from more that saturating your body with chemicals. It can come from within. If you let it. We are obsessed with the now, that nothing of gravity is given its due time. I fear I will always be the one looking in from out, with greasy hands, tainted glass, and a sadness that permeates it all.
Saturday, August 27, 2016
Friday, August 19, 2016
People In Cars Going Places
Something strange happens when human beings climb into their motorized boxes and start on down the road...they become themselves. Not just themselves, but the truest part of themselves. This is where the rage, impatience, jealousy, hostility and seemingly lack of consequence are at their most potent. For some reason people feel safe in their driving cubes to become the worst parts of humanity. All at once!
I've barely touched the surface on how terrible people become behind the wheel and I feel like I've seen the worst the ego can do. Everything from swearing, screaming tantrum fits to near collisions because someone felt wronged and someone else was in a hurry. Why do we adopt this behavior immediately upon entering our vehicles? I can see you flipping me off through this thing called a 'windshield.' Is it because the consequences of our actions are easily sped away from any sort of recourse? I wouldn't dream of swearing in someones face on the sidewalk cuz they stepped in front of me. I wouldn't dare run up behind someone as fast as I could, step directly in front of them and then walk so slowly they had to lurch to a halt, causing them to shake their head in bewilderment and dismay. I would never bi-pass three parallel lines of people waiting for, let's say food, scream my order at the poor server and bottleneck the line. Then learn that by me butting ahead, I caused everyone else's food to be held up and delivered cold and that we all got the food at the exact same time anyway! How ridiculous the world would be if that's how we behaved when we left our homes and went out into the world. So why do we accept this behavior at speeds that cause more death than any other means?
We act as though we have entered an impenetrable force-field where no harm will come to us no matter how terrible we act. I can be witness to an asshole but I can't catch him so it's ok that he's an asshole and nearly ran me off the road? On a side-note, women drivers are just as big as assholes as our male counterparts.
Driving stresses me out. That's inaccurate. Drivers, stress me out. I can't trust that the other people around me aren't going to go mental and do something that severely injures or kills me. Failing that, I find such exorbitant amounts of tension arise from maneuvering around angry drivers, unskilled drivers, distracted drivers. A man this afternoon attempted to pass me on a one lane bridge while texting and speeding. If I hadn't of been paying attention to his recklessness, I could have been smushed. Or if I had taken some kind of offense to his ridiculous and harmful behavior and sped up to prevent him from overtaking me, I would have been smushed undoubtedly. I don't want to be smushed. No one wants to be smushed. No one wants to be honked at, tail-gated, or forced into a near miss with some entitled dick who thinks his car space is more integral than yours. Perhaps that's the ticket. We feel that owning our car means we own the space around the car. When our car bubble space is interfered with, we lose our minds. It's like personal space but at break-neck speeds and with a thousand pounds of metal and fiberglass at our fingertips.
I also think that driving has been made so easy, we quickly forget the dire consequences if bubbles collide. We forget that speed directly affects live or death. How irresponsible we've become with such a wonderful and efficient gift. All awareness and compassion for others lost. Only selfish need to get somewhere on time remains. I for one am going to do my best not to let the ease of my travel means affect how I treat the rest of the world. I'm already part of the problem, why exacerbate it so? We're all in this together people and your car cannot forever shield you from the eventuality of cause and effect.
I've barely touched the surface on how terrible people become behind the wheel and I feel like I've seen the worst the ego can do. Everything from swearing, screaming tantrum fits to near collisions because someone felt wronged and someone else was in a hurry. Why do we adopt this behavior immediately upon entering our vehicles? I can see you flipping me off through this thing called a 'windshield.' Is it because the consequences of our actions are easily sped away from any sort of recourse? I wouldn't dream of swearing in someones face on the sidewalk cuz they stepped in front of me. I wouldn't dare run up behind someone as fast as I could, step directly in front of them and then walk so slowly they had to lurch to a halt, causing them to shake their head in bewilderment and dismay. I would never bi-pass three parallel lines of people waiting for, let's say food, scream my order at the poor server and bottleneck the line. Then learn that by me butting ahead, I caused everyone else's food to be held up and delivered cold and that we all got the food at the exact same time anyway! How ridiculous the world would be if that's how we behaved when we left our homes and went out into the world. So why do we accept this behavior at speeds that cause more death than any other means?
We act as though we have entered an impenetrable force-field where no harm will come to us no matter how terrible we act. I can be witness to an asshole but I can't catch him so it's ok that he's an asshole and nearly ran me off the road? On a side-note, women drivers are just as big as assholes as our male counterparts.
Driving stresses me out. That's inaccurate. Drivers, stress me out. I can't trust that the other people around me aren't going to go mental and do something that severely injures or kills me. Failing that, I find such exorbitant amounts of tension arise from maneuvering around angry drivers, unskilled drivers, distracted drivers. A man this afternoon attempted to pass me on a one lane bridge while texting and speeding. If I hadn't of been paying attention to his recklessness, I could have been smushed. Or if I had taken some kind of offense to his ridiculous and harmful behavior and sped up to prevent him from overtaking me, I would have been smushed undoubtedly. I don't want to be smushed. No one wants to be smushed. No one wants to be honked at, tail-gated, or forced into a near miss with some entitled dick who thinks his car space is more integral than yours. Perhaps that's the ticket. We feel that owning our car means we own the space around the car. When our car bubble space is interfered with, we lose our minds. It's like personal space but at break-neck speeds and with a thousand pounds of metal and fiberglass at our fingertips.
I also think that driving has been made so easy, we quickly forget the dire consequences if bubbles collide. We forget that speed directly affects live or death. How irresponsible we've become with such a wonderful and efficient gift. All awareness and compassion for others lost. Only selfish need to get somewhere on time remains. I for one am going to do my best not to let the ease of my travel means affect how I treat the rest of the world. I'm already part of the problem, why exacerbate it so? We're all in this together people and your car cannot forever shield you from the eventuality of cause and effect.
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
The Day the Awareness Died
I get paid by way of retail. I see the worst in people when they don't get what they have come for.
Standing in the aisle, minding my own, a man approaches on a mission.
"Do you have anymore of theeeeze?" He impatiently shoves an empty bin under my nose.
"Sorry. They're on order." I say with a sigh as I don't actually work at this location. I merely provide the consistently tardy product.
He scoffs in my face and storms off. I feel relieved as this was a relatively innocuous exchange. Back to the doldrums and daydream I head. Blissful in my thoughts of the beach, he returns with an actual employee and shoves the bin under his nose. The employee looks to me for aid and I side-step over to assist, stating once more that the product desired, is on order. Perhaps my previous answer was not clear. Perhaps the man thought I had no idea what I was on about. Perhaps the man is a total twat.
"Well! You have been out of theeeeze...for three days!" He, clearly not concerned with escalating a perfectly inoffensive exchange, begins to grow red in his already bloated and useless face.
He once more stomps away, defeated and seething. I'm not sure what goes on in that twats day. I don't think I want to know. I do feel curious only because when I pontificate on what others can go through in three days and not only survive, but not bitch about it, it really puts things into perspective. I felt my sanity wane as I thought about those that haven't had food in three days, or clean drinking water. People who suffer grave injustice at the hands of others. People who are bombed, raped, tortured, starved, beaten...I'm not sure they would see the merit in the things most of us take for granted and then complain about. We are all children throwing tantrums until we are granted what we want. It sickens me.
I ponder if it was his emotional state that drove him to the over-reaction? Why did he allow himself to become so riled up by something so inexplicably harmless? Why was the product not being there when he demanded it, such an affront to his mental and emotional state? Did that product have some kind of special meaning to him? Had he been told No, everyday of his life for the last forty years and today was the day he couldn't take it anymore? Why does awareness go out the window when we don't get what we want, or think we need? The employee even tried to sooth the life-sucker by offering him another similar product that would have done the job just fine. The man chortled some lame excuse for the substitute failing and dug himself even deeper into his self-made pit of loathing and despair.
This experience today may seem trivial to write about. But, I believe this to be a microcosm for the way the world is currently progressing. People have become so terrible, entitled, selfish, and unaware. We all have bad days. Alas, before vomiting our vitriol on one another, please take a moment to think about what others are capable of going through in the span of three days!... and how our time here, doesn't need to be as stressful as we structure it.
Standing in the aisle, minding my own, a man approaches on a mission.
"Do you have anymore of theeeeze?" He impatiently shoves an empty bin under my nose.
"Sorry. They're on order." I say with a sigh as I don't actually work at this location. I merely provide the consistently tardy product.
He scoffs in my face and storms off. I feel relieved as this was a relatively innocuous exchange. Back to the doldrums and daydream I head. Blissful in my thoughts of the beach, he returns with an actual employee and shoves the bin under his nose. The employee looks to me for aid and I side-step over to assist, stating once more that the product desired, is on order. Perhaps my previous answer was not clear. Perhaps the man thought I had no idea what I was on about. Perhaps the man is a total twat.
"Well! You have been out of theeeeze...for three days!" He, clearly not concerned with escalating a perfectly inoffensive exchange, begins to grow red in his already bloated and useless face.
He once more stomps away, defeated and seething. I'm not sure what goes on in that twats day. I don't think I want to know. I do feel curious only because when I pontificate on what others can go through in three days and not only survive, but not bitch about it, it really puts things into perspective. I felt my sanity wane as I thought about those that haven't had food in three days, or clean drinking water. People who suffer grave injustice at the hands of others. People who are bombed, raped, tortured, starved, beaten...I'm not sure they would see the merit in the things most of us take for granted and then complain about. We are all children throwing tantrums until we are granted what we want. It sickens me.
I ponder if it was his emotional state that drove him to the over-reaction? Why did he allow himself to become so riled up by something so inexplicably harmless? Why was the product not being there when he demanded it, such an affront to his mental and emotional state? Did that product have some kind of special meaning to him? Had he been told No, everyday of his life for the last forty years and today was the day he couldn't take it anymore? Why does awareness go out the window when we don't get what we want, or think we need? The employee even tried to sooth the life-sucker by offering him another similar product that would have done the job just fine. The man chortled some lame excuse for the substitute failing and dug himself even deeper into his self-made pit of loathing and despair.
This experience today may seem trivial to write about. But, I believe this to be a microcosm for the way the world is currently progressing. People have become so terrible, entitled, selfish, and unaware. We all have bad days. Alas, before vomiting our vitriol on one another, please take a moment to think about what others are capable of going through in the span of three days!... and how our time here, doesn't need to be as stressful as we structure it.
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