Having Lost and the World Not Ending

Sometimes it’s too fucking hot outside for metaphors.
The heat is hot and makes me sweat and
feel the weight of my blistered toes and
the sag of my bra and the sag of my heart.

It makes sense for someone in the coldness,
the dankness, darkness, and wetness of Seattle
to commit suicide.  Rain, rain never goes away
and so we all fall down.

But in the scalding, boiling pot of an Oklahoma summer?
Rarely do you characterize a pout.
Just kids running through sprinklers, popsicle mouths
and the hapless wave of straw hats with a
“Boy is it hot out here!”s

In this heat I feel most like I’m “in it”.
It’s claustrophobic and I take the sweat to mean
that I’m nervous.  You want no one to touch you
because that would mean more hotness and clinginess of
polyester to your skin.

And I hate that self-satisfied simper of winners.
And the lowliness of feeling a loser as I
sit in this scratchy carpet chair in Gittinger Hall,
half-assedly applauding for my peers and pretending I know what the dean means by
something something apparatuses.

I am a fraud, I tell you.
I feel the disappointment.  I don’t logic the disappointment.
I feel.  I feel.  I feel.
And among many of those feelings is worthlessness.
So heavy a feeling I take it as a concept and I run with it.

All of us here, gesticulating what we think Emerson means
or what Shakespeare intended or what Arab women feel
about feminism.
We guess using our logical faculties.
We assume and we award ourselves for assuming in a way that is
“nicely stylized.”
And we congratulate our people faculties.

I am a fraud, I tell you.
I sit there and I wonder at how much of a loser I feel.
I’m embarrassed.
The professor who nominated me for this honor probably sits in the back
hiding her face so she doesn’t have to congratulate me on my effort.
Is there anything more annoying
than being congratulated for your effort?

It’s like:
No,you asshole.
 I am a loser.

But I am not a loser.
I reiterate:  I am not a loser.
I am a fraud.

Here I type and this is me.
Not Emerson or Shakespeare but you wouldn’t call it a masterpiece.
I’m saying: there is no masterpiece.
And I imagine Huxley would agree and say,
Yeah fuck those people for their analyses,
their gratuitous logic and magnanimous pretending.

Sipping on my Starbucks I feel so trapped.
I’d like to drop out of school and become a bum.
I’d like to stay in school and become someone famous.
I’d like to kill myself.
I’d like to save myself.
I’d like to do many things, really.

It bothers me no one knows the answers.
Perhaps that’s why we write academic papers.
And believe in gods.
And believe in science.
Believe in karma,
good will towards man
free will, no will
and utopias.

I walk out of there with my head held high
right into the beating sun, noticing girls
with their tits hanging out of their bikini tops.
And I bet they’re happy
‘cause they’re not wearing a polyester suit.

It’d be better if I could just take all my clothes off
and run into the fountains and
splash and pretend that I feel better.
Maybe I’d feel better.  Maybe not.

All of a sudden I forget how to write when I’m angry.
And I just leave it at that and say:
It’s too hot outside for metaphors
as the leaves wither in the heat of summer and they think to themselves:
If I knew it was going to be this god damn hot outside
I never would’ve bloomed in the first place.

Give me winters of solace.
Snow to bury my failures in.
And don’t remind me that this is all a cycle.
That, like the seasons, my temper will change
as the temperature goes from 0 to 90.

All I know is that I’m sadngry.
And that it’s too fucking hot outside for metaphors. 

Deathlier

I did not know when I heard the crunch
of virile fragile wings
—a dark maroon
now mixed with yellow—
that inordinate ideas
would swarm me

devour and somehow hold me
in a fixed firm embrace,
millions of identical
black beetles and black crows
and black cats
and black flies

I am not sorry that it died
I watched it squirm its legs
underneath the demands of my weight—
uncertainties,
fallacies,
lies
both black
& white

because I was
not
a burden

because
I was
fate

and white-hot
butterflies
holding me to the start of their existence.

Like A Moth to the Flame

i was outside and there were moths floating around like dust in my once bedroom, now crypt.
we have a cherry tree and it was blooming because it was spring.
rain was falling slightly in such a way that if i had chosen to record it i could’ve sold it for a good sum of money to a company that sells tranquil rain sounds to jaded old women, overworked women, young girls with mental disorders, and occasionally curious men.  all that was missing was the twitter of birds to suggest it was morning.
but it was night.
nighttime and i was on the front porch wishing that there were no cars to obstruct my view of the paved street glistening with “god’s tears”.
if god really is crying, i would like to ask him why it smells like fish.
and then i would ask him what’s wrong.
i let my dog outside to join me but even she is so human as to want to be inside where it is warm and the bark of the thunder is less of a threat and more of a measly curious sound, only somewhat threatening.
i go outside a lot to escape what i like to call the suburbanized version of the american dream.
when i was 17 it manifested itself in terms of weight loss.
when i was 19 it manifested itself in terms of not majoring in english but in something that’s “marketable”.
when i was 10 it manifested itself in not being able to go to a sleepover because it was a school night.
and i emphasize that it was a version of a version of the american dream and in such a way it was excruciatingly worse.

as i sat at my window, gazing outside, i wondered why no one has made the laptop waterproof.
maybe it’s because everyone expects that everyone with a laptop wants to be inside, under artificial lights shaped like a japanese lantern, typing.
no one ever thought that i’d like to be sitting in the rain, cold, and wondering why when the moths touch me they flicker to the ground and lay there very still as if they were dead.
bridget stepped on one.
(Bridget is my dog)
And i still wondered why no one ever considered that i’d like to maybe even be underwater and type.
or in the very least sit in the waves of the atlantic ocean and feel it pull me deeper and deeper into its abysmal existence— into the unknown where starfish lurk and those one fish with the lights on their heads (I saw one in finding nemo).

i’m actually writing this right now in front of the window but i like to write it as if it was or were because then, that way, i can figure out what all this means as if it were in the realm of history.  because history can illuminate the present, y’know.  and, anyway, every single syllable, every single letter as I type is already in the past.
they say there’s a past, present, and future.
i think there’s only the past.
‘cause the present is always gone before you can even articulate you’re there.  i think my thoughts are a split second behind reality.
maybe that’s why we fuck up a lot. ‘cause we think we’re acting in the present but we’re always one step behind.
like russia.

i want to go outside when things that largely exist inside make me depressed.
artificial lighting.  bad movies that i bought ondemand because i mistakenly thought they’d actually be good for once (even indie films are now entering this realm of subpar films.  maybe that doesn’t surprise you.)  when my parents are fighting i like to imagine i’m a rockstar.
when i can’t get the guy i like to imagine i’m a film star.
when i lost because i didn’t really try hard enough and now my ego is as broken as the voice that i use to scream my hardships, i pretend that i’m simply someone else who has a better nose.
because my nose is flat.

what’s also flat is life.
i think we all just want to avoid flatness.  sameness.
which is why i don’t understand why i like living in the plains so much.
but i deplore the mountains.  mostly because i get altitude sickness.  also because i think they only look nice from afar but when you actually get inside them they just make living complicated.  why do i have to go around the mountain to get to denny’s when i could’ve just driven straight to it while in oklahoma, or kansas, or texas, or really anywhere in the midwest (and other places, like valleys)?
we like things that are round.  butts. breasts. hills. mountains. people (well-rounded). balls (sports). pills. pooping. lakes. 
i’m sure there are even more comparisons.

i was sitting there listening to the rain and i wondered why life has to be so complicated when everything that comprises it is so very simple.
rain makes the grass grow makes the cows eat makes you eat makes you happy.
some people, like myself, skip the cow altogether and go straight to happiness made out of salads and tofu burgers.
what else is there to life than that?
helping others, maybe.
but the last time i helped someone i bought them medium fries from mcdonald’s because they were homeless.
a corporation among many corporations that pollutes the earth.
and polluting the earth is one of the most selfish things we humans do.
so helping others is more than that, i think.  or even less than that.
i’ve even heard that helping others is helping yourself.
i can believe that.

the last time i tried to help myself i inadvertently killed a moth.
most of the time when this has been said the moth turns out to be yourself and the lamp that kills you, just the sun as it rises and offers you hope. 

The Bhagavad Gita

Worth pondering:

When a man meditates on the objects of sense he becomes attached to them; from attachment desire is born, from desire anger.

Out of anger confusion arises, through confusion memory wanders, from loss of memory the intelligence is destroyed; from the destruction of intelligence a man is lost.

But engaging the objects of sense with his senses separated from desire and loathing, and subject to the will of the self, a man who is self-controlled attains calmness.

In calm all his miseries are ended, for the intelligence of the man whose mind is calm is immediately stabilized.

The undisciplined man has no intelligence, and no capacity to produce anything, and one who has no capacity is without serenity.  And how can there be happiness for the man who lacks serenity?

For a mind conforming to the wandering senses carries away one’s insights, as the wind a ship on the water.

-Chapter 2, Verses 62-67

A man does not attain freedom from the results of action by abstaining from actions, and he does not approach perfection simply by renunciation. 

For no one ever, even for a moment, exists without acting; everyone, regardless of their will, is made to perform actions by the constituents which originate from material nature.

…

If I did not engage in action, these worlds would fall into ruin; I should be the instrument of anarchy; I should destroy these creatures.

Just as the ignorant act out of attachment to action, Bharata, so the wise should also act, but without attachment, intent upon maintaining the world.

The wise man should not disturb the minds of those ignorant people who are attached to action; acting in a disciplined manner himself, he should encourage involvement in all actions.

In every case, actions are performed by the constituents of material nature; although the man who is deluded by egotism thinks himself, ‘I am the actor.’

But he who knows the principle underlying the division of constituents and actions, understanding that it is constituents that are acting on constituents, is not attached, Great Arm.

-Chapter 3

A man should raise up the self by the self, he should not drag the self down; for the self is the self’s only ally, and the self is the self’s only enemy.

-Chapter 6, Verse 5

The man sitting apart, disinterested, unmoved by the constituents, saying to himself, ‘It its the constituents that are operating,’ who stands firm and does not waver, to whom pain and pleasure are the same, who is self-possessed, to whom a clod of earth, a stone, and a piece of gold come alike, to whom the pleasant and the unpleasant and blame and praise are equal, who is constant, who is indifferent to honor and dishonor, impartial towards friendly or hostile factions, and who has renounced all undertakings, is said to have gone beyond the constituents.

-Chapter 14, Verses 23-25

[*explanatory note:  According to Sankhya theory (one of many schools of Indian thought), “constituents” refer to the teaching that “material nature (i.e. the universe and what it contains, including the physical and mental attributes of human beings) is a continuous process manifested in the dynamic interaction of three inextricably intertwined constituents, which are respectively the pure, passionate, and dark.  Of these, the pure constituent represents the principles of knowledge and freedom from pollution, the passionate those of activity and greed, the dark those of inertia and ignorance.  The qualities of these constituents predominate to a greater or lesser degree in all material phenomena, and constrain beings to act in particular ways…”]

I normally don’t do this…

I like the way natural light spills on the page while I write this, the 5:40 pm sun occupying this barren room.  Warmth.  After this year, as I leave behind tepid morning coffees and sore eyes of freshman year, I will miss this benefit of a sunset observed from the 9th floor of Walker Tower.  I will miss the feeling of acute, staggering warmth of a star so far away, literally my only “star-crossed lover”.

I thought about forming a support group.  A place where we all (we, us teens, us whiners and revolutionaries and, some of us, useless and burdensome beings) could go to voice our inner trials and tribulations.  We’re not all that different, you and I and them.  I’d hope (and only somewhat believe) that if I asked anyone what “it” is, or what is the right choice, or ask “What should I do with my life?” and explain every minute detail from “I once felt at one with the universe, one Spring day at Lake Thunderbird skipping a math class in high school in order to pursue my Self instead of equations,” all the way to “Fuck, the world is fucked.  Fuck.  Fuck!”  that you and they will understand and be able to help.  That is, if you and they too are like myself, so desperate for answers that you and they, too, can come up with some stunning unbiased solution just like *that*.

I do this so well for my friends  I am so beyond the mostly trivial concerns they sometimes are fraught with… Funny, in writing that I realized this is not true at all.  I too fret over nonexistent love.  And who’s to say that “What is the meaning of life?” isn’t a trivial question?  Love is at least practical… or is it?  So many god damn questions.

Questions sound like the word “querulous”.  There’s an association there.  It’s ironic.  Querulousness is whining.  Are questions naturally all some sort of variation of senseless, ingratiating “whining”?  Complaining?  Probably so.  There’s also “Que?” in Spanish.  Another question:  ”What?”  Interesting.

I don’t like to talk about “trivialities” to the public and I criticize those who do.  I don’t care that you’re feeling lonely.  I don’t care that your foot is cramping.  I don’t care that you wish you had the manufactured, cocoa porcelain body of some Kardashian.  I don’t care and I’m willing to bet you that I am not the only one who feels this way. But, in light of my previous dilemma, the words I’ve already expressed to you, could it be that perhaps that type of writing is more sensical, possibly even more virtuoso?  At least that’s talking about what you know.  I merely speculate and make assumptions that I’m sure are both right and wrong.  Someone who can identify and describe what they had for breakfast versus someone wondering what’s for lunch and what exactly IS a grapefruit?  Two ways of thinking, I guess.

Here I go:  I just feel inhibited.  All the time.  I think, to some degree, everyone does whether they realize it or not.  All these kids complaining about how they don’t know what to do with their lives, mothers trying to look prepubescent, extra-marital affairs as weak compensation for diminishing passion for wife and life at large, etc. etc.  All of it (forgive me) a product of this ultra capitalist, ultra corporate, ultra fucked up society we live in.  And those, like me, the ones whom I want to confer with, they want to break free but find it SO hard to.  It is SO hard to.  It is so SO hard to, let me tell you.  But even after you’ve broken completely free (like Derrick Jensen— look him up) even more doubt, more poignant and painful begins.  Because it’s one thing to play the innocent knowledge-seeker open to both sides.  Easy.  But when, inevitably, a side has been chosen— destroyer vs. preserver, amoral vs. moral— the challenge is to do whatever is possible to subvert the evil amoral destroyers, the fuck uppers, that propagate all the fuck uppery and, tragically (scarily), mostly unknowingly.  People who don’t care to listen to you, who write you off as unrealistic, hippie scum.  People who are, in the depths of their being, just scared to know how responsible they are and have been and will continue to be for, in a word, DEATH.  Just death.

I’m at this point, and have been for quite some time, of choosing sides and resolving to stick with one.  Let me list just all the things I can think of that hinder me in doing what, in relation to this side, I think is manifestly important (ostracizing myself from society):  I like movies, entertainment, which is to say that I am an “escapist”.  Yet not (I think).  I learn things.  I pay attention.  I see parallels and themes useful to my arguing. Implications.  But is it a means of just distracting me, keeping me complacent while I contemplate the horrors of gender stratification in the 60s a la the hit t.v. series “Mad Men”?  Are those scenes of unquestionable importance, narratively, meaningless otherwise?  Just because it’s only reiterating what I already know? If I tear myself away from cinema forever, will I be missing out on something life changing?  And is life changing, all these pursuits for sensual, experiential grandeur, is all of that even important?  Is it nothing but selfishness 24/7, ways to make life more “enjoyable”?

God, my handwriting is terrible.  This pen is terrible.  My thoughts are terrible.  This WORLD is terrible.  Is it too much to ask for a good, quality pen?  Is it too much to ask for everyone to wake up and be angry?  And why am I not a person who is out there “blowing up dams”?  Is it just a matter of time before all these pages culminate and I just. go. ballistic?  When?  Now?  Later?  Never?

Reassurance.  That is at the core of the human condition.  The need for reassurance.  As I write slower, more deliberately, my handwriting is better, my thoughts somewhat clearer.  A metaphor for life, perhaps.  Go slower.  Why must we always feel reassured?  Love between man and wife is a form of reassurance, a reassurance that you might not die alone, that you’re attractive, that you’re valued.  Marriage, a form of reassurance even more, a legal contract, a binding agreement powerful enough that no matter what, for sicker or for poorer, John and Samantha will go to college because Daddy pays the annulment.  Reassurance.

It’s not enough to be “assured”, I must be RE-“assured”.  Constantly and perhaps never enduringly.  It’s seen as a good thing sometimes, constantly making sure one is right so as not to somehow harm someone or thing.  Other times it’s a nuisance, just petty righteousness, pathetic, professing a stout inability to enjoy anything.  Enjoyment itself (as discussed already) comes to be questioned.  And is the reason my handwriting is improving because I write slower and more deliberately or is it because the pen has acclimated to the paper, like a car engine revving and the jitters falling away?

Reassurance.  Questions and more questions never ending.  Words and more words.  More endless frustration.

But, in my Intro. to Asian Philosophy class I realized something interesting.  Life loses its “meaning” (as far a the one we’ve prescribed it with) when the prospect of immortality as a relevant possibility lingers.  No one wants to be immortal if you think about it.  To never die?  You’d read all the books ever made (some of them most likely wishing you were able to kill yourself) but then?  After a few thousand years?  You’d still be here after the atom bomb, Vietnam, various holocausts, plutonium poisoning and after the atrocities you bear witness to, one after another, human life and the subsequent loss of it, once so frightening and tragic, would seem utterly and unsurprisingly trivial.  9/11?  Ho hum.  Concentration camps?  Big whoop.  It’d all be the same.   Day by day.  Year by year.  You get it.

Wouldn’t it be endless boredom too?  Nothing to do because there’s nothing left to be done?  You could travel to every street in existence and then what?  Besides being creatures with a necessity for reassurance, we’re also those of doing, creating, of activity.  Whether writing or contemplating or exercising or taking a shit.  It’s all “doing” of some kind.  Immortality would annihilate this option after awhile.  Everything would become increasingly pointless.  ”What’s next?”, a human’s expression, would be null.  No next.  Just stagnation.  The antithesis of life.  Life would cease to be life.

I guess what I’m saying is that part of what makes life special is all the other horrific shit too.  In fact, just the fact that we can experience “horror” is special.  Knowing that some day our time will be up and some deity will pull the plug necessitates all these questions.  A way of seeing out what ways are for us to live “appropriately” and what others are not.  You are going to die tomorrow getting run over by a freight truck.  What do you do?  Figure out ways to spend your last moments well?  Nothing?  But at this moment you have a choice.  Choice exists.  Without death they wouldn’t.  The often excruciating pain of picking what’s important is a dilemma only for those who are alive and conscientious.  Are human, essentially.  Maybe then I should be thankful I get to feel frustrated.  Otherwise I can hope to denigrate into a pebble in my next life.

Here’s the catch.  Enlightenment, according to the Upanisads, can only be achieved through, basically, an entirely ascetic livelihood- rejection of all earthly pleasures.  This could be completely wrong but it speaks to a certain part of me.  Consider:  According to the Upanisads, once “Brahman” is encountered after years of trying (or rather, not trying, just meditation) everything is meaningless.  Ultimate reality is comprehended and yet, to these “Enlightened Ones”, it’s not an accomplishment or really, distinguishable at all.  You climb the mountain to receive no rapturous view, just nothing.  Just pure nothingness; utter blackness or maybe whiteness, but nevertheless a nothingness and yet also everythingness.  And also pure.  But is it worth the pursuit to feel nothing in order to “know” and “see”, “experience” the Ultimate Reality of things?  The ultimate philosopher’s dream?

Jensen would say no.  Many would.  Reality, for now, questionable as it’s been all this time, is all we have.  It’s our life source, our avenue into existence (still debatable, but you get it).  All we have is this Earth until someone figures out space travel.  And even if we can traverse the multiverse and live on multiple earths, at some point the entire thing is destined to implode on itself and, presumably, then there will be nothingness. The “Brahman” of the Upanisads.  Yet, it will also be everything.  Everything existing in nothing.  Hard to picture but easy (at least to me) to fathom.

 The moth must hit the windshield.  The cancer patient must kick the bucket.  The ant must be squished.  The still born must be still born.  The mom must commit suicide. John F. Kennedy must be assassinated.  Jose Rizal and the firing squad.  Nuclear radiation and war time reverie.  Racism and broken bottle weapons.  Witches burned at the stake and McCarthyism.  The Trail of Tears.  The extinction of the polar bear, of fishes and of monkeys.  The extinction of species.  Extinction.  And America must reign supreme.  And everyone must hate Iran.  And no one must know the atrocities of American soldiers.  And no one must embrace the American soldier.  And, eventually, everything and everyone gets blown to smithereens and yet I have no doubt some of us will still check TV Guide for when “Kourtney & Kim Take New York” airs again.  So it’s no wonder asceticism exists.

Cycles.  Paradox.  Balance.  These are three things I can ground myself in, the things I know AND feel to be true.  Yet they don’t tell me how to be.  Jensen would say “Just be.”  Even the Upanisads to a similar extent.  But how?  And why?  And is it worth it if everyone is going to not “just be” too, but rather destroy in the hopeless name of their constructed reality, whatever it is?  And if I just “be” am I faking immortality?  And if all of this doesn’t matter why don’t we just all off ourselves?  Let’s all just get to the next life where we can simply “be” like a pebble or a blade of grass or a piece of shit. 

What do you think?

Excerpts: “A Language Older Than Words”- Derrick Jensen

There are times the lies get to me, times I weary of battering myself against the obstacles of denial, hatred, fear-induced stupidity, and greed, times I want to curl up and fall into the problem, let it sweep me away as it so obviously sweeps away so many others.  I remember a spring day a few years ago, a spring day much like this one, only a little more sun, and warmer.  I sat on this same couch and looked out this same window at the same ponderosa pine.

I was frightened, and lonely.  Frightened of a future that looks dark, and darker with each passing species, and lonely because for every person actively trying to shut down the timber industry, stop abuse, or otherwise bring about a sustainable and sane way of living, there are thousands who are helping along this not-so-slow train to oblivion.  I began to cry.

The tears stopped soon enough.  I realized we are not so outnumbered.  We are not outnumbered at all.  I looked closely, and saw one blade of wild grass, and another.  I saw the sun reflecting bright off the needles of pine trees, and I heard the hum of flies.  I saw ants walking single file through the dust, and a spider crawling toward the corner of the ceiling.  I knew in that moment, as I’ve known ever since, that it is no longer possible to be lonely, that every creature on earth is pulling in the direction of life— every grasshopper, every struggling salmon, every unhatched chick, every cell of every blue whale— and it is only our own fear that sets us apart.  All humans, too, are struggling to be sane, struggling to live in harmony with our surroundings, but it’s really hard to let go.  And so we lie, destroy, rape, murder, experiment, and extirpate, all to control this wildly uncontrollable symphony, and failing that, to destroy it.

…

I do not know the interior nature of the universe, nor the essential truth about evolution.  But if there is one thing I know about natural selection it is this:  creatures who have survived in the long run, have survived in the long run.  It is not possible to survive in the long run by taking from your surroundings more than you give back, in other words, one cannot survive in the long run through the domination of one’s surroundings.  It is quite clearly in the best interest of a bear to make sure that the salmon return and that berries ripen.  They can eat them, but they cannot hyper exploit them and still expect to survive.  Insofar as competitors enrich and enliven the natural community in which they live, it is in the bear’s best interest to see that they, too, thrive, which it does by doing nothing— by simply being a bear.  The same can be said for deer, who couldn’t survive without wolves or other predators, and for wolves, who couldn’t survive without deer.  The same can be said for all of us— humans and nonhuman alike— that we cannot long survive unless we cooperate with those around us.

fotojournalismus:

Meet Loukanikos, Athens’ Protest Dog

(via TIME)

Photos : 

#1 : In June 2011, in front of a line of riot police.(Giorgos Moutafis/Anzenberger)

#2 : A can of tear gas lands near Loukanikos and protesters, February 2011.(Giorgos Moutafis/Anzenberger)

#3 : Loukanikos, photographed for TIME by Peter Hapak, November 15, 2011. (Peter Hapak/Time)

#4 : The protest dog joins demonstrators in gas masks in June, 2011.(Giorgos Moutafis/Anzenberger)

# 5 : Loukanikos — the word means sausage in Greek — has showed up for numerous demonstrations in Athens over the last few years. Here, he barks at riot police in December 2010. (Giorgos Moutafis/Anzenberger)

YUS.

Take The Time To Do This →

What is a Who and Who is a What and What Do We Do About It

Do you take and take to fill a void in your life?  Like teenage girls frolicking in short shorts, red mouths bleeding with lust?  Are you us, absorbing our daily dose of reality television or corporate media bull shit?  Do you wander inside your 90s carpeted hallways at work, to your little cubicle, your sad slice of mindless, robotic purpose, only briefly feeling life through unceasing anger at some something you cannot define?

What are you?  Who are you?  To want nothing but to destroy so as to benefit, plunder so as to profit, rape so as to exploit?  I don’t understand you and I don’t understand why I must try to understand you.  We seem to think you are a Who when you are just a What we created to sustain our fantasy of a better world where equality was synonymous with a dollar bill.  We credit you with this evolved state of affairs even if it means devolution in other areas.  We do not question you much like the slaves of our sordid past never questioned their masters.  We endeavor to explain you through new computer graphics on a board that can be touched with the finger on primetime television.  We make excuses for you through something called a DOW.

You reading this.  You are not this “You” although you are a part of it.  Yes, all these “you”s are the same when sustained by all.  You are not exempt.

If there is a first step amongst all this it is that:  to no longer cease to question all that you once thought was real.  I beg of you to imagine a future brighter than the one you’ve gagged on as it was stuffed down your throat in American History.  I beg of you to see what will not be shown: the degradation our planet goes through, the degradation others on the other side of the world go through just to sustain our lazy manner of living.  I ask you to act, but how can I ask you to do that if I first do not ask you to think?  All this technology is just another way of enslaving your mind into worthless, valueless systems of thought.  What should I eat today?  Will I reach a new level in Call of Duty?  What’s Snooki going to do now?  Why does Lindsay Lohan have a gap in her tooth?  What stock went inevitably down today?  Where is my cell phone charger?  How much did that sweater cost?  Will David talk to me today?  Am I attractive?  Why don’t I look like she does?  Why aren’t there anymore Cheetos?  When will Katie finally text me back?  Is there something wrong with my phone?  Why isn’t Safari loading?  What am I going to do now that The Jersey Shore is finished for the season?

Please, please, PLEASE
No longer ask those things.
Instead,
“What is it that makes me live this way in some sort of jaded, accepted manner of life impoverishment?” “Do I like it?” “What will I do about it?”
“Who am I?”
“What do I stand for?”
“And is it this?
This this I do not understand?”

And isn’t it sad when life, something we once were making strides in finally understanding, has become so depressingly unable to be understood.  We can let numbers and “facts” sustain the illusion for as long as we want to and it feels as though that is what science is today.  You know how you say “Communism is evil” meaning Capitalism is all there can ever be. You know how you say it is the only system that has ever worked and brought so much profit to us (although it ceases to now).  You can sustain the dream through wishful thinking.  Yet the reality is a world in which half the species are gone forever and there’s nowhere to get fresh water and I’m burning under the heat of the unblocked sun and things are turning to dust, into the anti-Ice Age and I’m starving and you’re starving.  Isn’t it ironic that is how Sudan lives right now? But who cares so long as it isn’t you?

It isn’t the you of the first paragraph,
It isn’t the you of the fourth
that suffers excruciatingly.

But we are all humans.  We are all animals.  We are all beings of this planet.
So if you ask Who are you? long enough
And What do you stand for? persistently
You will look around and be and know that the you of the first paragraph and the you of the second, they are just the Whats and not the Whos.
Because a Who cares.  A Who is a person.  And a person is part of a people.
And evolution said people are supposed to have brains for a reason.