BAIRD

Dark days, people.  This weekend has been pretty insufferable.  I’ve dropped applications off at quite a few places, and absolutely have some follow-up to do as next week starts, but the weekend is a rough time to be unemployed.  Everybody is closed, and all that free time starts weighing heavily on a person. The phrase ad astra per aspra (…right?) has been on my mind a lot recently; it’s a convicting thought that the road to the stars is the difficult road.  It’s not the sort of thought I like to think.  But, maybe that’s why I should. 

So with my boredom, I’ve been attempting more running.  It’s been something I’ve tried to keep up with.  And, to my enormous frustration, it’s one of the few things in my control at the moment.  Tomorrow morning, it’s the trails in Minor Park, south KCMO.  And the beginning of my summer economics course (which, in a voice rich with irony, beckons sweetly to my deadbored mind).

It’s what I have to keep reminding myself: I am a college student.  It’s my primary role right now, and that’s okay.  Get a degree, set yourself up early and then move with opportunity while you’re young.  The restrictive ball and chain that comes with full-time college enrollment, the part-time job, drags most heavily when job searching.

But the bestselling What is the What by Dave Eggers has been a great friend to both my free time and my psyche (there is always somebody in tougher straits).  A highly recommended read, especially as uncertainty in the Sudan stirs once again.

And, thank you to the NBA.  Anthropologically speaking, the parallels between sports fandom and religious devotion are too prevalent to miss (the communal gatherings, the effervescence of the crowd, the rituals, the emotive potency, a unique calendar to give cadence to the year), and I have experienced the full mercy of the Game, the glorious span of time that sweeps trivialities away in a heaping racuous throbbing collective bedlam.  It is narcotic and also stimulating; it permits one to vacate, while also reminding a man of his capacity to DO, and DO WELL.  Though strikes in other sports reveal the lack of concern many (most?) owners and players feel for the fans, it is a blessing that we get to watch Dirk Nowitski, Jason Kidd, LJ, Dwayne Wade, fight for win. 

Time for bed.  Sheesh.

“A substantial portion of the conservative movement has become a parody of its former self.  Once home to distinguished intellectuals and men of letters, it now tolerates and even encourages anti-intellectualism and jingoism that would have embarrassed earlier generations of conservative thinkers.”

I just finished reading an Esquire article about Ron Paul, his basic philosophy and rise to….marginal influence. 

I don’t know how else to say it: his words have a ring of prophecy in them.  As our government transforms more and more into an oligarchy, “rule by the few”, his message bring a refreshing clarity and continuity to our larger ideals.  Ron Paul represents an America I desire to participate in; the America represented by our current politicians is not (and, being a mere citizen, a man of no consequence or money and influence, I am not wanted on the Hill anyway - they don’t care what I have to say.)

If there are true public servants in Washington D.C., they are outnumbered by the sheepskin wolves and can thus do little to make our country a better place.  I am neither represented nor cared about in an elitist Washington that cares only about re-election and personal gain, as has been proven to me time and time again.  One must have political clout (and financial eminence) to participate directly in the rule of law, which necessarily excludes the vast majority of us. 

Don’t throw me a bone with a vote.  Stop insulting me with the insistence that I have a voice in Washington - I DO NOT.  Things will proceed just like those holding the reins plan for it to, until something radical (from the Latin for ‘root’ - consider that), some paradigm-shattering power-inverting Tahrir Square-inspired event changes the discussion (or, rather, those doing the talking).  Until then, seriously, go fuck yourself Washington.  I choose to care as much for you as you do for me. 

BAIRD WILLIAMS highly recommends the following:

What is the What by Dave Eggers…(novel, 2006)

Bon Iver by Bon Iver…(album, 2011)

The Madness of the Crowd by Ace Troubleshooter…(album, 2002)

These are the sorts of things that make life better.  Go enjoy them.  Make it a priority - place it on your to.do list. 

Behold, strange and spectacular times are upon us:

Today, I ran my entire run route.  Truly the whole time - even when I came upon intersections, I did not stop.  (Perhaps the Frogger inspiration was unadvisable, and as much as I disliked the odds of death by Corolla, I disliked even more the odds of resuming my running post-letup.)

Stranger still, as I approached my Brookside home (yeah, I live in Brookside. bitches.), a totally shocking and unexpected emotion came bubbling to my conscious mind: “Am I……sad that this run is over?!??”  And so I was.

Here is where I will add my voice to the fray and proclaim to the world: I am a BAREFOOT RUNNER.  As you may or may not know, there is an ever-swelling rank of runners (exercisers of all stripes, really) who subscribe to a philosophy of running (/walking/groceryshopping/raking-treeleaves) in minimalist footwear or totally footnude(-groceryshopping).  The apologetics for this lifestyle choice can be found with a quick Google search, although myself and many others were introduced through Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run.  I highly, highly, recommend reading this book, especially if this is a curious topic standalone for you.

May be losing my job at Muddy’s this week….Oliver is handing over the reins to two employees after his 17-year tenure, but it is proving difficult to acquire a new lease agreement with whatever real estate penny-suckering corpus owns our property.  Unemployment benefits will buffer, but I think it’s on to a new job for this guy. 

Tornadoes, seriously.  Come on, man - over the line.

Today at work, one of my regulars (I work in a coffeeshop, not on a corner) told me a protracted story about how his long lost prodigal brother, well appointed in his Redondo Beach condo (or whatever they call apartments in California real estate) and sitting on a emerald mine in the Philippines, killed himself and left my customer all his money in various savings accounts.

As this story grew more ornate, a burgeoning distracting doubt came to veil my mind, and by the end of his account I was completely unsure if I believed any of it, or of where I had stopped believing it.

My frequent customer is a shaggy odorous brightly-colored room-rug of a hippie, and impressively dilapidated.  He looks shockingly like the second Albus Dumbledore.

And the reason I was so distracted by the veracity of his story is because I had to know, in a visceral way, if I could regard him more highly than his physical appearance led me to. 

This need to know, to be fully briefed for my unstoppable compulsive judgment, came tumbling out of me as all taken-for-granteds do, and that is my confession. 

I’ve said I would for too long.

I bought the Vibrams so long ago for this anticipated day.

I have strung together excuses in a way that impresses even a cynic like me (I didn’t think such postponement was achievable!).

But tomorrow, after a very long embryonic stage, I am going to wake up early and go running.

…….tomorrow.

I hope.

Dearest world.

I need a place to be able to express how totally fucked up I think it is that we as Americans hate Osama bin Laden for such shallow reasons.  I need a place to tell you how much I love (or hate) this or that band, or hate (or love) this or that social tendency.  I need a place where I can use whichever words come to mind. 

In short, I am looking for a place where I don’t need to censor myself.  I am not a fabulously interestingly controversial person, but let me assure you pre-emptively that I am an opinionated one, and for the betterment of both myself and the world (haha-I never know how serious I am when I say things like that), I need a place where I can get drunk and say what I truly think.  For example, I just accidentally spilled my Greyhound on my girlfriend’s roommate’s couch, and I just wiped it away with my hand, and I simply don’t mind.  Another example: I had to look up how to spell ‘accidentally’.   My first approach was ‘accidently’, and it just didn’t look right.

There will be times I discuss music, times I discuss books I’m reading that no one gives a shit about, times I air frustrations, times I get quite personal and confessional (the Catholics have it lucky in that regard): in short, a place where I will.  This is my YHWH space: I am that I am, I will be who I will be. And I expect, and dearly hope, to be surprised by the outcome. 

Give me this one uncensored space, world.  Allow me this forum. 

Until my next drunk (or sober) outburst (or deliberate rumination),

my own self.

Ryann needed to get her brakes changed last week.  Brake-changing is something that I’ve helped accomplish before, so let it be understood that one needs literally no qualifications to do it.  Price quote at Goodyear, for parts and labor: $350. 

My step-dad and I (my step-dad) purchased the parts needed and then we (he) fixed this issue in less than an hour.  For 55 American dollars.  $55.  Fifty-five, not three-hundred and fifty.  One-seventh of the quote.

I am tired of getting ass-raped, America.  Does anyone relate to this?  The cold and piercing fact the confronts me on every page of the newspaper (especially the financial news section), that yells louder and blinks brighter than all the bells and insufferable whistles, is that I AM NOT CARED FOR.  Where the motion of capitalism was once to make my life easier by delivering goods and services I NEEDED, it now only holds out its hand expectantly.  I’ve had roommates like this: give him a cookie, and try not to get pissed when he steals your milk.  The more grandiose the attempts, the more this fact is revealed to me: it’s really all about profit at my expense. 

I’m not conspiratorial.  But it is a discredit to good sense to disbelieve that a spade is, after all, a spade.  Capitalism has been the engine for plenty of good things.  It is a tool, just like any other economic structure, to better order and calibrate social activity.  Tear down capitalism and something else will replace it - we need economy in a structural way. 

But this meta-capitalistic bullshit just can’t fly anymore. 

Why, Goodyear, did you look at a college-age female with an old-model car and old brake pads, and ask for $350 with a straight face? 

Why, CEO, comfortably seated atop the entire world with more money than can be gathered in a Duck Tales swimming pool, have you just forgotten (did you ever know) what it’s like to be me?  Are you as barbaric as your decisions make you seem?  Why the hell is the bill for your self-addiction being shared by so many? 

Why do profits have to be maximized?  What does a job mean to you?  Why water down quality just to produce MORE MORE MORE? 

I don’t need these answers to change my behavior.  That’s basically why I’m writing.  I am not anti-capitalist, but we’ve plunged down a slippery slope over the past century and a half, and the putrid stench of corrupted power has become overwhelming. 

I am disheartened, discouraged, furious, and so very sad.  Why do we treat each other this way?  MLK Jr. said decades ago that the great danger presented by the 20th century would be the isolation of the individual. Truly, it has come to pass.  We are so compartmentalized, cut off, insulated, from EACH OTHER, and the community now has to deal with the overspill of individual desire, consumption, selfishness. 

Long story short, I’m trying to get out of this destructive, parasitic relationship.  It’s unhealthy and harmful in every way, and decision by decision, I’m trying to extricate myself.

ADDENDUM: The woody cumbersome thoughts here expressed have, as it turns out, been much more finely spun in the 1976 film The Network with Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall and….others. (that’s all I can remember).  Watch that instead of considering this.