Saturday, January 28, 2012

Different Fields

"You like this, college boy?"

I'm angry at him, not just for the improvised weaponry but for the insult.

I think of quipping back "You think I went to college?" But he knows what I look like. I stare into his eyes.

I answer "I like keeping people from hurting themselves. And others."

I push on his shoulders and we keep him down.

I think about a co-worker. He insulted her. He threatened another, a man I respect. I'm angry, but I mean what I say.

I'm an interpersonal hawk. War scares me. Fights not so much, but still to a degree. I respect them more. I know that fights and individ dueling can represent larger structures. Indeed, I know I represent standing order. I'm being oppressive. But all I can think about are the razors he made in minutes. All I can think about is his lazy attempt to hide them.

I continue to hold him.

I want to reject him for his class status. He's one more angry man who's lost a lot. Now he's acting out in paper clothes surrounded by strangers.

But he looks at my eyes and stabs more deeply than he'll ever remember. "You like this, college boy?"

I do. I'm an imperial agent and it feels good sometimes. Not today. I think about why that is.

He gets my number, I tell another comrade. He knows what I am. I'm a clerk and an interpersonal diplomat, and I deceive and I redirect and I negotiate.

I write out the quote and pin it above my desk. I will remember how he humbled me, remember how I hung on. Remember why I did it, and why I'd do it again, and that it is still infliction of power no matter how I dress it up.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Reason of Hatred

You're going to fall short of my expectations.

You like who I don't like.
You will do what I won't do.
You won't do all that I'll do.
Your friends aren't mine.
Your experience is different.
What you've done isn't what I would have.
You don't move in my circles.
You know people who threaten me.
I don't recognize your looks.

There is plenty for me to dislike in you.

Wherever you differ, I can find fear.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Huey Lewis

Are you alone? Are you surrounded by friends but lacking some essential sort of company?

What are you willing to do for it?

Is every relationship not conditional? Are you not to meet some conditions in being with another?

So what am I willing to do for it?

I will show interest if I am interested.
I will be passionate where I feel passion.
I will try to be interesting, but also interest myself.

Do I concede anything? Where I do, am I not bowing? Am I not serving in a way?

Am I not agreeing to costs when I cut into myself?

What will I not do when I am sufficiently lonely?

What have I left from previous expense?

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Very, Very, Very Basic, Part the One Millionth

Things have been up and down. I'll get to that when I see a point; in the meantime, I'm just absorbing. Let Perrin write well about the down and divorced. It's beyond me at the moment.

Anyway, I want to acknowledge that it's damn hard to do things as an individual, let alone with other individuals.

It's hard to walk up to a party next door and make the request/demand that they turn down the music so that you or your baby or your baby's mother can sleep. Hard as a motherfucker to knock on the door of a neighbor you've never seen.

It is easier, in the moment, to use an intermediary. Maybe even easier than calling in a noise complaint is to do something underhanded, like slashing tires or feeding poison to their pets.

But which one you do has implications. Most everything has implications. Do you know what they are?

It is damn hard, as I imagined and now briefly have known, to talk to a person you have left. I bet it's pretty damn hard for that wife/lover/friend-with-mixed-penalties-and-benefits to look right back at you.

Easier, I bet, for her to mail in paperwork the day after counseling fails and have the bank take you off the joint account.

Easier, I bet, for her to send messages through children. Easier to have her parents come over when you're around. Easier to change the goddamned locks. Easier to use a lawyer through whom to talk and to whom one entrusts the wearying anger, vengeance, and other fun. And sure, for the purposes of the state and its recognition of future arrangements. But even with a little bit of lawyering and judgement, there's still a lot that can be done face to face. That's harder, I bet. Because you don't know how contractually unbound people will behave. Outside of the greatest acts and consequences, there's a lot of room. Unpredictability. Kinda like if you called the friends and their kids over. God knows what could happen.

But in Farmville friendships make sense.

When other people grow distant--and they invariably do--and have conflict of a certain level, we get uncomfortable. Easy for us to be distant too. Easy for us to employ interlocutors, go-betweens, and mutual spectacle.

The hardest thing still is to keep trying once someone else tries to put a barrier or an intermediary in your way. Likewise, returning to direct communication when you've yourself lapsed into abstraction.

And speaking of lapsing into abstraction, I'd better do some exercise. You know, divorce can be pretty unhealthy. If anyone jokes with me about how aged I should feel upon turning 30, I'll punch them in the face and kick them down a flight of stairs. In but seventeen days, my world has been shaken to its foundations. I am simultaneously heartened by the fact that I've been through worse and cheered to think that, after this, there are few things that can hurt so goddamned much.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Dramatic Pause

Just spent a few days without a driver's license. Now that's humbling and radicalizing all in one.

I'm going to be a while. I wish I had some clever way to say it, but the long and short is that I'm separated, likely divorcing, and taking my social anarchism nonsense to the real world. Notes on my experimentation will follow, but until then, those few of you who follow are dearly appreciated.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Basics Again

If people acted differently, then institutions would change.

Rhetoric of the institution is not the actions in total of the institution. Rhetoric is a body itself, or a philosophy where bodies are disorganized.

Representatives either act in the name of, draw sustenance from a group of, or otherwise relate to non-present individuals.

What purposes do these individuals see in their representatives? What power do they hold over them? Can they remove their power?

Zeroth Blood

I smell a Rambo reboot!

A manhunt is under way for an Iraq war veteran wanted in connection with the murder of a ranger at a national park in Washington state.

Mount Rainier National Park was closed after ranger Margaret Anderson, 34, was shot dead after she set up a roadblock to try and stop the suspect's vehicle.

The suspect, named locally as Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, is also wanted in connection with an earlier shooting.

Mr Barnes is reported to be an Iraq war veteran with survivalist skills.

Police said they had recovered his vehicle, which had weapons and body armour inside.