(no subject)
May. 17th, 2012 06:25 amHere's something you see when you're like this. You'll gt a call, an interview. You need work so you follow through - go to it.. This job will e in some nondescript office park deep in the valley, under the bridge, a half mile from the bus stop. Out in the middle of nowhere so the RTA only runs every hour & is usually not close to being on time.
You'll sit& wait to be interviewed. They won't print every page of the application. An affable man with an unforgivable ponytail will size you up in your tweedy finery, your mismatched mod coolness, you'll be dismissive. Two hours ago you were walking in your neighborhood with all he beautiful wmen where suburban tourists come with cameras trying to document how they've spent a moment in front of your house. Right now you're talking to a man with an expensive haircut & tailored shirt. You're not sure if he should be arrested or why, but gives you the feeling that he is not a well meaning professional man, but instead you see that he is a blackhearted sociopath. He mentions his success lie you stroke your beard- idly in the presence of the unwanted.
An hour ago you were on Public Square hunting a bus among buses, one of these pulls up empty fills up quick - a long slow ride out into the far reaches - wee there is no city, just office parks garlanded by parking lots, swathed in forests. You know intuitively that you will not see a sidewalk for a long time.
On the bus people are not commuter. They're strange vagabonds arguing resolutely about nothing, about how drunk they are in the morning, they are long-beared & bad smelling. There are young kids and some with children heading to their fast food jobs or some remote shopping center to shop or shoplift or loiter the day away. There are people just looking for a shady place to sleep or nurse their undiagnosable dementias.
Now the man is late talking to you. You've sat a while. Soon you'll have heard his story about success. You are good & like talking to people - so you enjoy this, but see it's taken too long. You've been more than an hour. After you're dismissed with some hopeful words of confirmation, some little confidence that you can, because you are an American in America - get a living & have some commercial value. You are reassured that with some effort you can be made to palatable for commercial use.
You will shake hands with everyone, you will not remember names.
You will walk over 3 bridges, impatient for motion even as you wait the hour out for another bus. You'll climb out of the valley on fresh-cut medians - and see the river drifting by below you. You'll think of what it means to live and how you, resourceful & capable & strong - can live down under a bridge & have all you want & more & a million-million cars go past & how every building is a profound & potent concoction of manufactured pieces, capably engineered produced, sold & bought & assembled - a whole and amazing arrangement of materials gathered for purposes from the far corners of the earth. Brought here over rail & road by mechanisms yet more complex & with even more expansive pedigrees.
All the minutia of it & you'll think of how it was brought together to sustain a single vision of our people - to grow into places, to have & make & from that gain more & you'll want things - some things - you've been trained to want & feel, in the end powerless to pursue them - because in the edifice that's been constructed you've an assignment - to produce & consume and your assignment is to join & be part of this edifice, the vast engine of the world. But you feel you have no relationship to it & do not have value to add to the world. You will be proud of this. You will come to hate the edifice. The massive connectivity of all things because it means that in the built, constructed world you've no native place, no hiding place either, only a series of positions, constraints, manacles you can volunteer to receive. No means of escape. You'll feel the constricting pressure of participation insisting, demanding - join, join or die.
Identity will e too had to negate & you'll value too much the intangible things of life - like time & novelty 0 adventure & peace. You'll find yourself unable to conceive of a life where you waste time & effort in some forlorn suburb all in service to the edifice, that after all, eats up time & effort just to replicate itself - and to offer graduated tiers of survival, all of them virtually indistinguishable.
You'll have walked a long way thinking of this. Thinking of other interviews, another tomorrow, one the day after. More applications, other chances. You'll put off any decisions hoping the edifice will smile on you for no reason. Will reveal to you that little portion, that narrow corridor of chance felicity where you can join seamlessly and not have to stoop or stretch or take some torturous posture. You'll imagine what things of yourself you'll betray for the betterment of the edifice, what you'll surrender in exchange for the modest comforts it offers, ease and you'll be antagonistic toward the thought of futile attainment.
You'll sit& wait to be interviewed. They won't print every page of the application. An affable man with an unforgivable ponytail will size you up in your tweedy finery, your mismatched mod coolness, you'll be dismissive. Two hours ago you were walking in your neighborhood with all he beautiful wmen where suburban tourists come with cameras trying to document how they've spent a moment in front of your house. Right now you're talking to a man with an expensive haircut & tailored shirt. You're not sure if he should be arrested or why, but gives you the feeling that he is not a well meaning professional man, but instead you see that he is a blackhearted sociopath. He mentions his success lie you stroke your beard- idly in the presence of the unwanted.
An hour ago you were on Public Square hunting a bus among buses, one of these pulls up empty fills up quick - a long slow ride out into the far reaches - wee there is no city, just office parks garlanded by parking lots, swathed in forests. You know intuitively that you will not see a sidewalk for a long time.
On the bus people are not commuter. They're strange vagabonds arguing resolutely about nothing, about how drunk they are in the morning, they are long-beared & bad smelling. There are young kids and some with children heading to their fast food jobs or some remote shopping center to shop or shoplift or loiter the day away. There are people just looking for a shady place to sleep or nurse their undiagnosable dementias.
Now the man is late talking to you. You've sat a while. Soon you'll have heard his story about success. You are good & like talking to people - so you enjoy this, but see it's taken too long. You've been more than an hour. After you're dismissed with some hopeful words of confirmation, some little confidence that you can, because you are an American in America - get a living & have some commercial value. You are reassured that with some effort you can be made to palatable for commercial use.
You will shake hands with everyone, you will not remember names.
You will walk over 3 bridges, impatient for motion even as you wait the hour out for another bus. You'll climb out of the valley on fresh-cut medians - and see the river drifting by below you. You'll think of what it means to live and how you, resourceful & capable & strong - can live down under a bridge & have all you want & more & a million-million cars go past & how every building is a profound & potent concoction of manufactured pieces, capably engineered produced, sold & bought & assembled - a whole and amazing arrangement of materials gathered for purposes from the far corners of the earth. Brought here over rail & road by mechanisms yet more complex & with even more expansive pedigrees.
All the minutia of it & you'll think of how it was brought together to sustain a single vision of our people - to grow into places, to have & make & from that gain more & you'll want things - some things - you've been trained to want & feel, in the end powerless to pursue them - because in the edifice that's been constructed you've an assignment - to produce & consume and your assignment is to join & be part of this edifice, the vast engine of the world. But you feel you have no relationship to it & do not have value to add to the world. You will be proud of this. You will come to hate the edifice. The massive connectivity of all things because it means that in the built, constructed world you've no native place, no hiding place either, only a series of positions, constraints, manacles you can volunteer to receive. No means of escape. You'll feel the constricting pressure of participation insisting, demanding - join, join or die.
Identity will e too had to negate & you'll value too much the intangible things of life - like time & novelty 0 adventure & peace. You'll find yourself unable to conceive of a life where you waste time & effort in some forlorn suburb all in service to the edifice, that after all, eats up time & effort just to replicate itself - and to offer graduated tiers of survival, all of them virtually indistinguishable.
You'll have walked a long way thinking of this. Thinking of other interviews, another tomorrow, one the day after. More applications, other chances. You'll put off any decisions hoping the edifice will smile on you for no reason. Will reveal to you that little portion, that narrow corridor of chance felicity where you can join seamlessly and not have to stoop or stretch or take some torturous posture. You'll imagine what things of yourself you'll betray for the betterment of the edifice, what you'll surrender in exchange for the modest comforts it offers, ease and you'll be antagonistic toward the thought of futile attainment.