The tirade
From the deepest cocles of my soul...
What the hell is a weirdNano? What's nano, what makes me think it's so damned weird? Why would you care? Who am I that would purport to offer up a fruitless definition, and then to further expect that it could withstand the all-gazing and hyper-discriminant eye of these internet traffiks? What ignorant little bird told me that a foolish venture such as this would do anything but wither and die, more tire-fodder on the internet super highway? It was a bird alright, standing on my rump... eating the fly shit from between my back hairs and pecking mud off my oh-so-supple skin. Oh sure, I'm what's for dinner... but who am I that would beg for your attention in these boring back-water recesses of the great web-wide ocean? What could possibly delude me into thinking that I have even a glimmer of understanding for I'm talking about, when it ought to be so abundantly clear to everyone else that I don't? What makes me so damned special? When can I finally stop trying to 'make it' and get back in line with the rest of the herd? Where am I going to beg for a job when these antics are thru, and I've exhausted this pent up juvenile angst against so fully-functioning a system of employ? Who's it gonna be... them or me?
These are questions that I ask myself daily. Doubts and reservations that plague my dreams and all the hours I waste away in pursuit of my "salary". Ironically, it's that same "salary" that compels me to tuck my tail and walk into some unassuming place of business at 8 am, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. What's there to do at work but answer a telephone, and respond to the e-mails, and make small talk with the people I work with, and mindlessly munch my cud all-the-doo-dah-day, uncomfortably shifting side to side under the increasing weight of my own terribly self-induced fate? Very little. All the while, I'm struggling endlessly to find new ways in which to subvert the system in some narcissistic and insolent way... of course, not so bad that it warrants the prodding electrical wrath of my Managing Handler... just slightly less... and hopefully too, barely enough to ease the psychological pressure-cooker-timebomb I've compacted into my skull.
Work is hell, and the cud-munching morons I work with are worse. Don't get me wrong though, so many of these folk are really nice... just glazed over and unaware... and I think it could be indicative of some severe personality disorder that I'd rather just make fun of them in some underhanded internet-graffiti name-calling blogpost than listen to the boring tales of their lives. Sure, my story is just as inane, and probably more cranky and annoying, but if nothing else it's at least just lackluster enough as to be barely interesting (I hope). Am I a bad person because I don't find anything of interest in a conversation about the local sports team? Does it make me less of a man that I don't care about what skummy bar you spent your weekend jerking off in, begging everything with skin or teeth for a piece that you know you won't get? I'm just a cog in the same system work-friend...
"So tell me, how much wood would you chuck if you weren't too busy shoveling the Boss's shit to notice the pile of crap you're creating?"
"Oh, your son is in jail... so sorry for your luck, maybe you should have told him not to drink before he went driving around inside the mall? Perhaps you were too busy watching baseball games to notice he had a drinking problem... or you did notice, but were too busy squelching your own lifemare with a flat-screen football-fantasy happy-meal to do anything about it."
"Oh hey, you're still to fat to get out of your Tahoe... that's too bad, but I don't understand why that means you get to take up two parking spaces in a lot with 16... if you're so fucking fat that you can't squeeze out the door, the least you could do is park at the back and walk the extra 20 feet, it wouldn't hurt."
"Hey cranky bitch lady, I hope you drop dead today but I'm still going to smile at you in the hallway to see if you even pretend to care... because the day that you do smile back I'll know my understanding of your bad attitude (and my subsequent projection to the world-wide attitude) is totally wrong, and I can then begin to have at least some tiny speck of faith in the basic goodness of people, and their ability to live together."
Is there a way that I can utilize this personality disorder to my own advantage?
To that last seemingly-rhetorical question; I hope so. But to so many others; I certainly hope nobody reads this and finds out I'm talking about them, wouldn't that be akward... not till I'm long gone that is. After I've made my escape, they can all throw a party and make praise at the alter of their choosing... just let me slip off stage while you're napping thru this malicious sermon. Maybe after I'm done I'll nap away my self-pity with you... and day-dream to a place with flying cupcake unicorns and rainbow lollipops of elation.
Perhaps all this mess will turn out to be just a waking daydream of sorts, that I can one day open my big baleful eyes to the true workings of the world, the meat-market-machinations of this daily grind(er). Waking from the dream will open my eyes to the clear and present danger of the factory house that I wallow in the shadow of. There are a million of us, grazing in our own shit and piss, munching at the trough of the 40 Hour Teat, bleating and pleading to be nourished through a long painless life of self-delusion. Every day I'm up to my knees in bullshit, endlessly wading through a stream of meaningless meatings <sic>, and cubicle-sized thoughts. Surrounded by and cohabitating with the witless masses... but when I get home it's all "Monday Night Dancing With The Star Struck Mob Of Political Dissidents And High School Girls Gone Wild... If you go outside, then We can't feed you a word from our Sponsor...", so that's nice.
All this struggle-to-survive talk is a lake of bullshit... nobody is struggling here... anything but. We're all being force fed a low-protein-gruel of get-rich-quick, diet pills, sex toys, lingering debt, poprock culture, sick-boy french fries, minute-hand smoke, organic soda-pop, high fructose Chicago Bullshit... and all it does is lead me to write these time-wasting tortuous tirades. <sic> We're not struggling... we're getting fattened up and primed for the Plant. Grow, Job, Spend, Job, Fuck, Job, Sleep, Job, Eat, Job, Spend Fuck Retire DIE! And thus we begin anew... recycled piece by tiny pointless unimportant piece, into byproducts of our own self-destruction.
It's that Lifemare of the slaughterhouse and the dream of Waking to which I devote these efforts. It's that dream of living a life of merit, where my thoughts and opinions, correct or otherwise, are the basis of my worth... not my ability to arrive at a building on time 71% of the week, clock-in, clock-out, rinse, repeat, retire. It's a dream that my life goals and my work goals will at least approach a degree of familiar proximity. And in this fiendish fantasy, my work is not the J.O.B... the work is my life, and it's enriching me and fulfilling me, and it's contributing to a net gain, and it necessitates that I exist and survive in an open range, free to think thoughts I haven't As Seen On TV... It's my life damnit, and I'll do what I want because I fucking feel like it! You can get bent if you think that I'll suffer under your intolerable Management for another year...
Oh but, I'll suffer for a while longer... I'd be a fool to walk out on this sweet nourishing teat before I've cut my teeth and found out what, when, and who to eat, but it's untenable for me to allow myself another 8/5/52/year of this. And it's that self-loathing determination which will set me free. I've pledged myself to be unemployable. I've pledged that I will define my own worth, or lack thereof. Oh great Man-ager, how do I respect thee, Your paycheck is appreciated to the extent that I have wasted nearly 100% of my adult life striving for it... and it's kept me fed so well... but no longer can I tolerate this painfree, mindnumbing, tear-stained existence of self-serving servitude. The buck will necessarily stop somewhere... else I'll have no choice but to jump the fence and wander alone and afraid on the super-highway. With any luck, the first 20-ton Mack truck with a cattle-guard and some Mud-Flap Girls will put me right out of my self-induced misery.
But, your telephone will not go unanswered... your e-mail will undoubtedly be responded to... somebody will most definitely listen to your stagnant opinions and the un-important banter we've loved so long... somebody will be willing to listen to you drone on and on and on and on about your son/daughter/neighbor-kid's softball team... BUT IT SURE AS HELL WON'T BE ME!
No, you won't be left high and dry... my job isn't that important, and I'm not either... I'm self-deluded, but not so much at to think I'm irreplaceable. Your lives will keep moving right along, and somebody will fill the void... but when you look around your wonderful air-conditioned cubicle stockyard, you might notice that one of the drones is missing... your soft squishy brain may register the change, but it won't remember me... that's okay, I don't really care... all I want you to remember is that I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!
I don't know everything I need to about this new adventure, and I'm not going to pretend that I'm most well-suited mongrel for determining the outcome of any given setup, much less this one. I certainly haven't packed a lunch... and it will probably turn out that I need it and one other. I'll miss my easy living, and I'll miss the Herd I'm from, but the truth is that it doesn't matter if I know the outcome, or if I could even predict it with a grain of accuracy, or if I have a lunch or two. All that I need to do is make a few ripples in my own private puddle of shit and piss. Make a few ripples and pray to the ethers that the ripple is seen in a bright and divine light of value and high-quality. That the ripple is just barely big enough, so when it bounces off the walls my delusion and insanity... that it will return to me and nudge my liferaft of loathing a bit closer to the looming shore of personal prosperity and the truly self-fulfilling prosperity. Just a nudge is all I need to drift a little further, ever so slowly towards that pin-prick on the horizon. And when I get there I'll stuff a dollar in my first empty wine bottle... shove a cork in the top... and toss it back to the waves with the hope that it finds its way to some other slack-drunk internet cowpoke.
In the meantime, I'm done with this daily meat-grind crap! Somebody tell me where I can find a pair of the finest pointy vegan snake-skin boots with a matching chaps and lasso... I'm making my bed, and I'm about to go sleep in it.
Sure, I'll be back tomorrow at 8 a.m. with my nose to the teat, suckling like all the others... but bear witness: Some soul-deep 90 amp fuse is defiantly blown... and replacing it is totally out of the question. The hamsters will be working in the dark till we get the city out to repair the damages.
Until then, you can find me cowering in fear of the sharp pointed prod of my Manager's wrath... mixing my metaphors and biding my time... waiting for the first opportunity to run like hell, and hoping beyond hope that I can make it out the door before the bolt hits my temple.
All my love and condolences,
David Vorriccelli - the one and only.
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March 17th, 2009 - 12:37
I hear your cries. My face is full of craggy canyons cut from the rivers of tears my eyes have poured out over the years from the similar sets of emotions.
You’ve not asked for advice. I’ll try not to give it. I’ll simply say what I do to nudge forward.
1 – I turned off my TV. (Still addicted to film, but filling up on the shit eventually made me intolerant to it more and more)(I still watch shit, but I am clear what it is now).
2 – I walk away from my computer more and more.
3 – I let things go – try to need less stuff.
4 – I keep going back to school. Each time leads me closer to the truth of who I want to be. Each time I move a bit closer, I have to let go of some piece of what I don’t want to be. It’s harder to do than I ever think. But I still do it.
5 – The truth of it is, the movement is never fast or far. I’ve had to come to terms with, and learn to accept and appreciate the amount of movement just as it is.
6 – Impatience without action doesn’t serve me. It just makes me pissed off all the time. And I don’t function all that well when I’m pissed off all the time. I just stay stuck in being pissed off.
7 – It’s easy to buy in, but much like being in the Hotel California once inside.
8 – Simplify, simplify.
9 – Watching the others suffer breaks my heart, but I have had to let go of them as completely as possible. Buddhist concepts of detachment are important lessons for this form of truth seeking. Bow to the fate of the neighbor teat piglets. The one thing we all have are choices – however small and powerless they seem. I must remain true to myself – I cannot work in a cubicle, so I do not.
10 – I have to fix myself. No one else can or will.
11 – It’s OK to refuse conversations, or stop them if they suck one dry. I have been slowly learning to walk away. I am no lonelier than I ever was for refusing a bad conversation. People in pain and need will take your time, attention and energy, but I have figured out that it’s my choice to let them, so less and less, I don’t.
12 – Some places don’t suck as bad as others.
13 – I’ve had to work my ass off, commit fully, and never give up to move one inch forward – and it has been completely worth it, even though I’m exhausted, because it’s my fucking inch.
14 – I don’t need as much food, clothing, electronic stuff, anything as I think.
15 – My life is and has been, for as long as I can remember, a huge amount of suffering. Accepting that as best I can has been the one thing that makes me keep going. It brings it all into sharp perspective, and lights up the route to joy on the map. Not every day, but enough days that I think I may be getting there. Again – slow journey – but movement of any kind counts.
16 – It all became a bit less maddening for me with time, but not for my husband.
17 – I had to become somewhat uncompromising of my goals – it’s hard, and full of fear and hopes that sometimes get crushed, and back sliding. That’s why I have to be uncompromising, and rise to it all day after day.
18 – Some days I can only do a tiny amount. Some days I yearn to go back to my ignorance when I felt proud of having a special rubber stamp in my desk drawer, and felt satisfied by the clunk it made when I stamped it. I want to say the truth is the lie. But I can’t anymore.
19 – Art makes more sense. I seek it more.
20 – Nature makes more sense. I seek it more.
21 – I don’t care anymore if no-one reads my blog. When I feel like I start to worry about it, I remind myself to stop because it is a tool for me to process my life, to scream into the void with the billions of others, to try and make sense of it all even though I know it’s futile. When someone hears me it’s cool, but even if they don’t, I still get something from speaking. My words don’t always make sense until I spit them out of my head. Blogging lets me grow and change. Sharing my intentions helps me act, and creates an accountability loop that propels me forward. Finally, I’m no lonelier than I was before for blogging to no one. It is a gain with little to no loss.
35 – I try not to apologize for speaking. I fail sometimes.
57 – I love you.
58 – You’re on an adventure, Charlie! But you don’t have to go into the cave. Rainbow nap land is full of danger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPONTneuaF4
59 – I’ve had to learn to keep faith in myself. Others might have faith in me, but they leave, don’t always have time, don’t know how to have faith in themselves and therefore others, or they simply die, so it follows the only person that can truly have faith in oneself is oneself. It helps a lot.
60 – I am trying to embrace every moment of life. I am trying to find the most important things – which turn out to be healthy whole foods, love, relationships with the people I love, yoga (the right kind for me has to do with awareness and compassion) animals, weather, trees, and trying to cling to life instead of waiting for the end of it or simply hoping it will improve, and trying to tell the truth more and more at every moment without cruelty. I am demanding of myself to like air and water more. I am trying to become full with less and less.
139 – I try and find as many moments of beauty and joy in a day as I can and stay connected to them. Sometimes, it’s simply pleasure in the color or texture or smell of dirt.
I hope maybe one of these things on my list might help you and ease your writhing rage and pain.
March 17th, 2009 - 19:48
Well, thanks for trying… but nothing could ease this particular writhing pain. I will say though, that #58 seems to have smothered my rage with confusion… which is different, if not necessarily better.
July 12th, 2009 - 11:29
write more
May 27th, 2010 - 19:23
Sweet beans… what an insightful bit that was. Let’s hope they don’t take it *all* the wrong way. I’ve been applying for jobs and pointing hiring managers to this website. Maybe somebody will get the underlying bit:
Job = wasted time
Work = what I want.
Please,
.dv.