March 28th, 2008 by Hoopleton

If I have a fault, or maybe, more accurately, if I have another fault, it’s that I’m not motivated. The achievements of this place seem of little consequence. The idea of working toward making money all my life seems like a waste of time. I think I would’ve been happier a thousand years ago when survival would’ve been my only real concern. Or maybe, given the path were on, I should say a thousand years from now.

We were blessed with so much potential and so much intelligence and this is the system that we’ve created? We’ve taken a marvelous planet and turned it into a vast strip mall. We’ve destroyed countless animal species. We’ve destroyed countless human beings in the name of gods, governments, ideologies, hatreds and science. Progress. Let’s not forget progress. We’ve done most of what we’ve done in the name of bettering ourselves.

We created a system so petty and materialistic that we’ve managed to alienate ourselves from one another. We’ve made the pursuit of money, an object with absolutely no value, into the foundation for all of our hopes, dreams and desires. And I have to stop, and I have to wonder, is this the best we could do? Is this system, this reality, the absolute natural order of things?

It really is hard to find motivation in a world so completely lacking reason. Do I really have to spend my life working so that I can die without having to? Do I really need to make money if I want to go explore the rest of the world two weeks at a time? A lifetime in any place isn’t enough and I have to settle for two weeks? Politics, taxes, work, governments, religions, war… it consumes me and yet, ultimately, it doesn’t mean a thing to who I am.

I close my eyes and I take a long breath. I think about what the world is like and what I think it should be like. And then, as things get still, I realize that I don’t have to think this way. I can observe from a distance. Maybe the world won’t ever be what I want it to be, but I don’t think that matters either. I think all that really matters is what the world decides on next, and luckily that is completely beyond my control.

March 27th, 2008 by Hoopleton

“David and Goliath,” he said. “We’re just like David and Goliath.”

“So what you’re saying is…”

“I’m saying it’s all a goddamn lie is what I’m saying,” he shot at me. “The big guys always eat the little guys in the end, and what’s it all worth? In the end everyone loses. Are we better off? Hell no. Are we happier? Maybe a bit. But what’s that house worth? All that furniture? It’s all gonna rot into the floor eventually. It’s all gonna be gone like it never ever was a million years from today.”

“You know, nevermind. I see you’re busy.”

“Yea, busy,” he went on. “We’re all busy. We all wear ties like nooses around our necks and for what? Where’s that little guy with the slingshot to take us all down. Cause we deserve to be taken down. We do! Why? Why? Cause we’re so goddamn busy is why. So goddamn busy we can’t even see the forest for the trees… or trees for the forest. How does that go? Bah, it doesn’t matter. The point is we’re always in a rush. Always in a hurry. You know what I’d like to see? People just sitting around on park benches staring into space. I wanna see people with time on their hands. I wanna see people who aren’t going to any damn place.”

“So I’ll see you soon?”

“Oh no,” he said. “You’re not enslaving me to schedules! You’re not dictating my time! I’m done with living by the clock. I’m gonna sit right here and wait for David, and when he throws that rock, I’m not even gonna budge. I’ll just take it. Take it and die right where I am. Come on David! Come along David! Take this suited giant down!”

“But what if you’re David and you just don’t have a rock?”

To this he blinked at me and said, “I never thought of that.”

March 24th, 2008 by Hoopleton

Easter has come and gone, the race for the Democratic primary drags on, McCain is trying to act Presidential, the death toll for American troops in Iraq hit 4,000, the dollar continues to freefall and analysts across the financial spectrum have settled into two camps, one assuring that everything will be fine, the other proclaiming the apocalypse. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and most of us just struggle to eek out a meager living. Yes, it’s very interesting living in the United States of America during the declining years of its empire.

It was the Emperor Diocletian that first divided Europe into East and West, splitting the Roman Empire into two manageable halves, invariably leading to centuries old conflicts, exploitation and ethnic hatreds, but it was Christopher Columbus who’s really responsible for the mess we’re in.

In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, betting his reputation and indeed his life on the slim possibility that if he sailed west long enough he would hit the trade rich regions of Asia, thus establishing a quicker route to China, forgoing the laborious process of having to circumnavigate the African continent. The bet paid off, sort of, and Columbus began happily enslaving and murdering the local populations in order to feed the gold starved Spanish crown, and lining his own pockets at the same time. He died never having figured out that he had “discovered” a new world, but it didn’t matter, the damage had already been done.

Suddenly, Spain was inundated with shiploads of pillaged American gold and doing brisk business in the booming international slave trade, allowing countries like England, France, the Netherlands and Germany to find wealth by supplying their imperialistic neighbor with manufactured trade goods. Spain became the prime customer of Western Europe while the East became a ready source of raw materials, bringing in easy money, but depressing the labor force, undercutting political development and delaying the spread of the industrial revolution.

When the thirteen upstart colonies of England rebelled and formed the United States, they had little hope of joining in the grab of Eastern European, African or Asian raw materials, so instead the pillage of North America began in force. When the US took all it could from the Native Americans and the Mexicans it began to cannibalize itself, until by the latter half of the nineteenth century there were no more territories to claim and few natural resources left to exploit. And so America’s international preoccupation started with a little event called the Spanish-American War.

The sleeping giant that was the United States tried its best to become a major player on the imperial stage, but Old Europe was holding firm and centuries of American isolationism were hard to negotiate for even the most ambitious of political minds. Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico and a collection of other misty island retreats were certainly nice additions, but a far cry from real domination. Thank God for the Great War and the resulting economic collapse, which basically guaranteed that a sequel was in the works. With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States stepped onto the world stage and in four short years became the principal super power of the West.

American imperial interests in the new world order were not only represented by military bases across the globe, but also in US-backed hard-line puppet governments, corporate controlled juntas, and a presiding vigilance in preserving national self-interest. The error of the United States, as is often the mistake made by empires that think themselves immortal, was to assume that Europe would never recover from the ravages of World War II and that the once exploited countries of Asia would never be smart enough to follow America’s example of cannibalization and nationalistic self-interest.

I am not saying that Americans are bad people, or that they do not regard the other populations of the globe as fellow citizens. People can be moral while the power apparatus is not. The problem is that we as Americans have failed to see the trajectory of history, just as the Chinese are doing now. We have allowed our sense of invulnerability to cloud our eyes so much that we have lost the ability to either look forward or look back. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, it is one of the truest maxims in history, and it is the curse of the United States, which has been riding a wave of exploitation and self-gorging derived from Columbus’ premature discovery of the new world and invigorated by the heady ambitions made possible by the devastation of the Second World War.

The fall of the Roman Empire was one of the greatest calamities ever to befall the Western World. The vacuum left by the collapse of antiquity’s arguably most influential civilization was not filled for nearly one thousand years. The reasons for Rome’s decline continue to be severely argued, but most historians will agree that a number of factors were responsible. The leading culprits include: economic instability brought upon by uncontrolled free trade policies and diminishing tax revenues; an over-extension of military power leading to greater reliance on mercenaries who had little loyalty to the Roman government; gradual environmental degradation; the lack of technological innovation in contrast to their neighbors; political malaise and inaction heightened by corruption and poor planning; and the Roman populations’ general lack of civic responsibility. With so much eating away at Roman civilization it was enough that a few economic and military setbacks brought down the entire house of cards.

Perhaps the United States can still pull itself out of the dustbin of history. Civilization will certainly continue on if it doesn’t, but if we do not begin to understand the reasons for this constant cycle of rise and fall, of growth and collapse, than in a thousand years historians will be arguing about the fall and decline of the American Empire, as they sit on the edge of yet another spectacular, drawn-out collapse.

March 22nd, 2008 by Hoopleton

It’s often that I’ve looked into a sky, or sat at home late at night, and realized that someone, somewhere was doing the same thing, having the same thoughts, feeling the same sense of awe and isolation in the exact same breath. In these moments I’ve felt drawn to something larger than myself, not in terms of belonging to any sort of greater whole, but maybe instead to a sort of greater purpose.

Although we can’t always feel it, we’re all connected. I don’t just mean that we’re living in a data stream, or that we’re all just a Google search away, or that we’re all friends on Myspace, or even that we all carry cell phones. Yes, in all those ways we are part of the same community. The “six degrees of separation” experiments of people like Stanley Milgram also show quite clearly that anyone in the world is only a few connections from knowing anyone else. But when I say we’re all connected I don’t mean simply in terms of technology or social networks. When I say we’re all connected I mean that our past and future, that our reality and our base insight into existence itself is shared.

Human beings are an amazing species. It’s no wonder that our most important academic disciplines are devoted entirely to the study of ourselves. The institutions we create, the socio-cultural behaviors we exhibit, the ways we think, are often so incredible that they defy real explanation. We are also a brutal species, doing to one another things that appear nowhere else in nature. Things that defy all reason and all logic, again defying any real explanation.

What interests me, however, is not what we do, or have done, or why we do it. What really fascinates me is how you can meet someone and feel certain that you’ve known them before. Or how you can look into blank space and see in your mind’s eye someone you’ve never met staring into the same abyss.

We all think. We all dream. At one point in our lives we all ask why we’re here. Whether a saint or a gas chamber attendant, we all feel and we all search, as though desperately, for people who can bring some reason into our lives. In this way the mind is both an amazing blessing and a horrible curse, and it is the very act of thinking that both plugs us into eachother and allows us to elevate our own needs above everything else. We act to destroy because we can’t cope with our nagging loneliness.

I suppose that ultimately what I mean to say is that time, distance, language and culture are all barriers as artificial as the technologies we use to surmount them. Individuality and difference are wonderful, but also damaging. We all beat with one heart. We are all connected, not in some New Age, cosmic, energy way, but simply by the very act of being. We are all connected because somewhere inside of us we realize just how alone on this little planet we really are. That we are one people now as we’ve always been. And maybe, on a deeper level, we are all connected because our souls, if such things exist, do not belong to only ourselves. Existence, all that is and has ever been, everyone that is alive and ever will be, everything is still part of that same stuff that erupted from the moment of creation.

As Kenneth Patchen once wrote, this is my faith, my strength, my deepest hope, and my only belief.

March 19th, 2008 by Hoopleton

Today is a somber day. Today is the day that the war in Iraq began five years ago. In that time 3,990 American soldiers have been killed. Over 29,000 have been wounded in action, thousands of those so severely that they will never have a normal life again. Veteran suicide rates climb with every day. Over those same five years 308 troops from Allied nations have lost their lives. It is estimated that anywhere between 150,000 to 600,000 Iraqis have suffered the same fate, with over 4.4 million forced out of their country as refugees.

In terms of cold hard cash, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that as of today the United States has spent over 1 billion dollars on Veterans’ services, 26 billion on foreign aid, 21 billion on Iraqi security forces, and over 440 billion dollars on military operations in Iraq. Some estimate that the war has already cost well over 1 trillion dollars. None of these figures include an additional 80 billion in funding for the war currently pending approval in Congress. None of these figures include the interest added to the national debt.

In terms of America’s image, the United States ranks lower than Communist China, North Korea, Iran and various other nations with horribly poor human rights records in overall approval and favorable standing. Latin America, under the instructions of Hugo Chavez and other leftist revolutionary leaders, has taken steps to form an anti-American military and trade alliance. The instability created in Iraq has been a boon to Iran and other anti-US Middle Eastern powers. The United States, for the first time in its history of non-aggression has a preemptive military policy and is viewed by most world powers with suspicion and contempt. Confidence in the United States may perhaps best be reflected in the continually plunging dollar.

In addition to the many failings, in addition to the many costs, the five-year-old war in Iraq has solidified the grasp of what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. Global conglomerates such as Haliburton and private contractor firms such as Blackwater run and manage the war just as the East India Companies and their private armies of mercenaries did some three hundred years ago. The privatization of war and peace continues unabated. The lessons of history continue to fall on deaf ears.

We live in a strange time. Behind us are periods of great social, political and economic change, of world wars and amazing advances. Ahead of us are times of increased instability, environmental catastrophe and cultural upheaval. In the present, all we have are doubts and the malaise of conflict. All we have are bickering and impotent world leaders who lack any concern for anything other than their own fading historical relevance. Our visionaries are mainly silent. Our prophets are mainly ignored. And with everyday we add more numbers to our costs. The damage done is so severe already that the consequences will only rise. The price will be paid for generations and generations to come.

John McCain has said that this war in Iraq may go on for decades. Many believe, as he does, that it would be irresponsible to give up. That to leave the Iraqi people now would mean more death, more violence and even higher costs. But what these people don’t understand, what these people don’t seem to see, is that costs are already too high. That staying doesn’t matter anymore, because whether we are there or not, there really is no end in sight. Iraq doesn’t represent a failure only in political or military means. It’s a failure of us as a species. It’s a failure of us as a human race. The true cost of Iraq is what it represents in terms of who we are and the values we seem to disregard.

March 18th, 2008 by Hoopleton

Yes, telling the truth is hurtful. Yes, lying, especially to ourselves, makes us happier in our lives. There’s science to back this up, you know. The truth is that the world is a horrible place. If history and the daily news are any form of indication, one can see that human beings cause, above all else, horrible pain to one another. Genocide, torture, war, repression, slavery, exploitation, rape, murder, slaughter, cannibalism, suicide, persecution… these are all actions specific to our species and not found anywhere else in nature. How can anyone but a liar be happy in a world like this? How can anyone but those who delude themselves find any happiness here?

Reality is painful. Reality is dark. And so the act of lying is a natural evolutionary adaptation. Another uniquely human trait. Lies get us through to the next day, without them how could we possibly go on murdering eachother for too long?

The human mind is a very complicated instrument. There’s so much of the process and capability of ourselves we as yet do not understand. Our mind dictates how we interact with the world, how we understand our place within our environment and also the type of people we are meant to be. Our achievements, our failures, are all manifested within the mind. Lies might get us through the day, but it’s our capacity to form our sense of self that decides what actions we take.

If self-deception makes us happier, then doesn’t it stand to reason that self-perception makes us who we are? Outward confidence attracts the opposite sex. Pessimism leads to decisions that invariably cause misery. Suspicion manufactures deceit. If you see yourself as failing at everything, will you not fail at anything you try? If you see yourself as being an agent of God, will you not inspire miracles?

Placeboes only work when people believe that they will. Success only comes to people who have an unwavering sense of their own destiny. To be great, we have to trick ourselves into believing in our own greatness. To achieve our dreams we have to manifest our own realities. To know ourselves, to truly understand who we are, to glimpse our futures and alter the course, we need to embrace the idea of the self that we have manufactured. Despite the obvious downside, we need to start telling ourselves the truth.

March 16th, 2008 by Hoopleton

First there was the weak dollar. Then the housing bubble. Then oil went up to over one hundred dollars a barrel. Now comes news that some of America’s largest banks may be on the brink of collapse and that investors are frantically buying up gold as a safeguard toward the financial apocalypse to come. Things look bad and we’re all getting tempted to start adding some padding to our mattresses. But there are rays of sunshine to every storm cloud, and history is often a guide through troubled times, so in the hopes of shedding some desperately needed optimism on our dwindling finances I offer this short list of six reasons why the devastation of the American economy might not be so bad…

1. Shanty towns. During the Great Depression millions of Americans, suddenly without work or home were forced to live in sprawling make-shift communities dubbed Hoovervilles, named after President Herbert Hoover, who, after a massive sell off of over 12 million shares of stock, famously reassured the American people that the stock market crash was nothing to worry about. Surprisingly he wasn’t reelected. Average people were suddenly thrown into the despair of homelessness, forced to construct housing out of cardboard, wood, or most anything readily available in city parks, forest preserves or under railroad embankments. Living in Hoovervilles was a daily struggle to survive starvation, weather and the occasional police raid, but on the positive side there was plenty of fresh air and you never had to lock your doors at night, though mainly because their were no doors. So start staking out prime park real estate before the first Bushville goes up, spots will fill up quickly and you don’t want to be the schmuck stuck by the port-a-potties that our welfare state will hopefully be generous enough to provide.

2. Train travel. Who could beat the romance of a thrilling journey by rail? Throughout American history dozens of the greatest writers have been inspired by the pumping machinery of the locomotive and the promise of destinations unknown. With gasoline prices promising to climb into the near astronomical and America’s refusal to adopt more economical fuel standards or ditch oil all together despite the national security and environmental concerns, more and more of us can look forward to traveling by train as cars and airplanes will soon be far beyond our means. Just think of the thrill of jumping onto a moving train, leaping into an empty boxcar and snuggling in among your fellow hobos as you journey toward another frail promise of employment somewhere over the horizon. Oh, you thought you’d actually be able to afford a seat? I’m sorry, seats are reserved for the few people who still have jobs or happen to be Amish. But think of the comradery and adventure of the trip as you and your fellow Bushvillians share a can of beans, exchange stories of your many thrilling adventures of survival and play an almost daily cat and mouse game with the various train inspectors who will most likely kill you if they ever catch you riding their train.

3. Prison. Currently, over one percent of Americans are in prison, that’s roughly 2.3 million people or one in every one hundred. The United States is out-pacing every other nation in the world in its climbing population of inmates. But what’s fascinating is the speed of incarceration over the last few years. According to a study by the Pew Center, if the current trend in the prison population continues than “sometime in the near future , half the people in America will be incarcerated, and the other half of the people will be employed to watch them.” If the economy goes to Hell crime rates will soar as more and more people will be forced into desperate means to make a living, if America’s brand of reactionary, deterrent style policing policies continue as they have, then this upward trend in the prison population will only grow that much faster. This is good news for all of us prospective train-hopping Bushvillians. Prison building is one of America’s hottest industries today, and as more people are forced into a life of crime that means many, many, many more new job openings in the law enforcement field. I know what you’re going to say, prison guards get paid almost nothing, but that’s nothing for you to worry about as you’ll more likely be in prison rather than working for one after you steal that loaf of bread or get busted trying to rob your local Wamu. Three squares a day, plenty of exercise equipment, and no pesky free will. And you thought the government wouldn’t help you.

4. Soup kitchens. When not gorging yourself on delicious prison grub, on extended stints between stretches in the state or federal pen, you may feel the tormenting pangs of hunger eating away at that shriveled mass you call a stomach. It’s at times like these you may contemplate cannibalism or dream longingly of that eat-in kitchen you had before your now defunct lending institution foreclosed on your house. Well fear not because starvation is not a guarantee. All you need do is show up early at one of the many, newly opened charity soup kitchens for a free bowl of hot soup and if you’re lucky even a sandwich. If the economy sinks low enough there’ll be more locations offering soup than selling Starbuck’s coffee. In the long run a steady diet of chicken noodle or tomato broth may even stem the obesity epidemic that has made America the fattest country on Earth, claiming more than 20% of the population, and is one of the leading causes for rising healthcare costs and mortality rates. Besides all that, who doesn’t like free soup?

5. The Newer Deal. In 1932 Americans overwhelmingly elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the President of the United States in the hopes that he could reverse the devastations of the Great Depression or, at the very least, ease the pain. Immediately upon moving into the White House FDR proposed an unprecedented number of bills meant to bring relief to Americans by offering debt relief and creating a plethora of federal programs meant to employ millions of Americans in a host of public works projects. Despite the fact that many of his programs were eventually defeated by the Republican party or deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, Roosevelt managed to inspire hope, head the construction of several national wonders, and put money into the pockets of many who would otherwise have died as a result of poverty and starvation. Since the era of the New Deal conservatives have systematically deconstructed the welfare state that FDR first built in the 1930s. Deregulation of the economy, the attack on Social Security and the privatization of federal programs are just a few of the examples. But with the imminent destruction of the American economy we can look forward to the possibility that Keynesian economic policy will be resurrected from the dustbin of history and that maybe America will finally join the ranks of every other modern Western nation and actually provide its people with healthcare, meaningful poverty protection and lasting retirement coverage. Now all we have to do is be willing to elect another wheel-chair bound, alcoholic, chain-smoking, womanizing, New England liberal to the White House, and in modern moralizing America how hard could that possibly be?

6. Revolution! Despite at least one failed assassination attempt that claimed the life of Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, a fascist coup led by some of the leading business interests of America, most notably the Du Pont family, and the would-be rise of a totalitarian dictatorship led by Louisiana Senator Huey Long, President Roosevelt managed to ride out the Great Depression relatively free from the troubles of major revolution or government collapse. In this way America was somewhat unique among the major Western powers. Economic downturn leads people to extreme actions and so it’s not surprising that the rise of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco among others was facilitated by hunger and desperation in the streets of European cities. It would be nice to think that if a revolution were to happen in the United States it might be a progressive one, but if history is any indicator it might look slightly different. Okay, it’s the not-to-distant future and you live in a cardboard box in a sprawling Bushville on public land, all your meals consist of soup and you spend most of your free time either in prison or trying desperately to find work as a prison guard, roaming the countryside in rags and getting beaten to an inch of your life by unsympathetic train inspectors. Sure you’re a lot thinner than you used to be but now you’re pissed off that FDR Jr. couldn’t get elected because he was caught with a hooker and lied about that polio condition. If you weren’t an ex-con maybe you could’ve voted for him anyway. You could join the hippies and have lots of free sex, getting stoned to wash those troubles away, or you could sign up with one of the many new paramilitary or ultra-evangelical political parties that seemed to have appeared as though out of nowhere. Yes, at first glance all those torch-light rallies, marching in straight lines and dress codes might seem like a lot of commitment, but hey, you get a creepy sense of belonging at those mandatory party meetings and the guy giving all those speeches seems to have an oddly hypnotic tone to his voice. Maybe he’s right, maybe it was those illegal immigrants/homosexuals/Jews/liberals who caused all this, besides, what’s a few ghettos for THOSE people if it means a decent job and the lack of a few personal freedoms for you? All that matters is that you’ll be working again and the Supreme Leader’s goals of genocide and world domination seem like a small price to pay for the return of economic prosperity.

March 15th, 2008 by Hoopleton

I want to stop for just a minute. I need to take a break and catch my breath. I need to just stand still and reassess what’s going on. No journeys through the comedies and tragedies of daily living. Just naked truth.

I took a walk on Friday night, lost in my headphones, I made my way through the streets looking curiously at the groups of people streaming in and out of bars and congregating at the dozen or so cafes in the three block radius of my apartment. One of the benefits of living in a trendy Chicago neighborhood like Lincoln Square is that there’s ample opportunity to look like you have a purpose when you’re really just mindlessly searching for a reason to be outside.

As the weather gets warmer I like to walk. Maybe I’m tricking myself into thinking I have somewhere to go. Or maybe my natural disdain for most people leads to a paradoxical need to be seen. I passed by a bar and made eye contact with a beautiful woman with short dark hair as she was laughing at some comment made by the man she was seated with. It was just a glimpse. It took less than a second. It was just a tiny moment, but one that stayed imprinted on my mind for the rest of the night. It wasn’t because she was beautiful. It was suddenly being a part of someone else’s life if only in passing. Ironically it was the realization of being part of someone else’s memory that also made me sad. It made me realize what I lack, even if I don’t want it.

I’ve often wondered if the creative process, the act of channeling creative writing, is a form of madness. If locking yourself away in the depths of your own mind is a breaking of consciousness similar to that of sensory deprivation. I need to be alone to write, but being alone causes me to retreat from social interaction, forcing me to seek interactions that only heighten my sense of isolation. Another paradox I suppose.

She was laughing, that beautiful woman with the short hair, as we noticed one another. It was a contrast between us. Her happiness brought about my feelings of misery. Did my mind interpret it the other way around?

I drink. I struggle with many mainly legal addictions. I live my life by constantly taking chances and hardly ever planning for tomorrow. In a month I’ll 29. In one day I can go from extreme confidence and contentment to complete withdrawal and depression. I think too much. I’m great in bed, at least I’ve always been told so, but apparently I’m hard to read. I’m always far away they tell me. I’m always somewhere else. The one successful relationship I ever had, one that took from me half a decade, probably lasted because we shared many of the same dysfunctions.

But I have to say I’m not cruel to people. I may be cruel about them, but I try to limit the damage I cause. And as the weather grows warmer I walk around more and more. I feel like I’m constantly looking for someone or something. I know, we all are, but it’s not just the evolutionary prerogative to procreate or the cultural imperative to find a social niche, it feels more like I’m teetering on the edge of something. Insight perhaps. Revelation. You know that feeling that there’s something not quite right about the universe? Or at least so much more than dreamt of in our philosophies? Well, it’s a little more certain than that.   It’s like I have an appointment and I’ve forgotten the time or place.

Before I took that walk on Friday night, as I was riding home on the train, again lost in my headphones, I almost willed myself to see things that weren’t there. I was letting my imagination go wild but trying to convince myself that I was having a delusion. But now I wonder how persistent the pull of my mind really is. I’ve seen and experienced things I cannot explain. No matter how much I’d like to fantasize that I’m insane I really know full well that I see clearly. And there’s the edge again. If my mind is sound than what explains the things that I’ve experienced outside of the accepted boundaries of reality?

I have no conclusion to this. I don’t know where this leads. I wander and I wait. I can’t tell you what for, or when it’s supposed to come, but I wait all the same. And until I find it I’m going to continue to cut myself off from contact. I’m going to starve myself for the benefit of expression. And maybe that’s the biggest irony of all. I isolate myself from people so that I can express myself to them that much better. And I hate every minute of it.

March 12th, 2008 by Hoopleton

The trauma of being born must have overwhelmed us. The sudden infusion of light and noise is probably why we feel so prone to stress, so naked in our own skin. This is all before our childhood of course, before the countless, tiny, seemingly insignificant occurrences that formed the basis for our phobias, manias and idiosyncrasies. Maybe we arrived already flawed. An infinity of previous experience and memory jumbled somewhere in the junk strands of our DNA that predisposed our proclivities, our strengths and weaknesses.

I have flashes of memory to when I was three, or four. Fragments that lack much context. But what stands out among the disembodied shards of the past are not the people or places involved but the feelings of childhood. Safety. Innocence. Curiosity. And yet that lingering feel of tremors moves back in time as well. The vibration of unease. The rumbling of shock.

I like to think that life isn’t just a test, but I often find myself wondering if we were meant to live at all. What if life was a mistake? The accident of nature wasn’t to create living beings, but to create living beings that might be traumatized by the realization that life ends. If nothing exists beyond our days than birth is cruelty. If we are meant to just disappear than existence is absurd.

Beyond anything we go through maybe it was the trauma of birth, that first moment of life when we realized that we would die, that painted the rest our time. In that moment we forgot everything we knew before and our minds asserted in that place a whole new identity removed from any context in an effort to cope with the grief of living.

I walk the streets and pass people with so much pain in their hearts. I stand on the sidewalk and watch the disembodied ghosts of humanity brush past. Is this what we’re living for? Are the chores of daily life consuming us so much that we go through the motions of what we think life is?

We seem to be damaged. We seem to be suffering from the symptoms of some undiagnosed disease. We accept insanity as reality. We accept mortality as an unfortunate myth. Although we may rally against the things that displease us, we often lack the clarity to face what’s really wrong. We hurt. We cry. And we reject eachother, when it’s human contact that offers any real solutions to help us heal.

So what should we do with us?

What can we do to ease the pain?

I don’t know what to say. To this I have no answers. All I have is question upon question, each more frustrating than the last. The only thing I can do and the only thing I can bear, is to let the hands of fate guide me. To keep writing and keep living. To have faith that there’s a reason for this all. My focus is on the things I can control. My interest is in the things that I enjoy. Because despite the trauma of life, I find inspiration to create. I find reasons to look into the sky. And maybe that’s all that matters. Maybe that’s enough.

March 7th, 2008 by Hoopleton

Ok, Barack, I’ll admit I was being a little unreasonable yesterday. I said some things, you said some things, and yes, the whole Nader thing was a little extreme. But I’ve had a chance to cool off, and, well, I can never say no to a pretty blonde with blue eyes (no, Barack, I obviously don’t mean you). So, I’ll tell you what, if you give me another chance I’ll give you one too.

I just get frustrated when I see you acting below the man I know you are. What happened to that renegade idealist that I first voted for so many years ago? I know, I know, you’ve been under a lot of stress. I know, you hate Bill Clinton. So do I. But that doesn’t mean you have to play it safe. It doesn’t mean you have to pander to the Clinton dynasty’s mud slinging. It doesn’t mean you have to be afraid of admitting who you really are.

Okay, yes, the joint ticket thing was a low blow. Of course you should be at the head of the nomination if it ever came to that. We all have our moments of doubt. I’m sure you’ve had times when you’ve glanced at other voters and wondered, what if? But we both know things haven’t been as great lately. And you know Nader is right, if at least partially, about the two party system.

In the end of the day though, I just can’t deny that you’re my candidate even if you are running as a Democrat. You have my vote. And I promise not to do anything rash in the future. Now, about those campaign buttons you promised me and still haven’t delivered…