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Dec. 21st, 2012 10:09 amI hesitate to mention it, only because I have my own idiosyncratic view of the end of the world (it happened in 1995), and because they day isn’t over yet. It’s recklessly smug to wake up in the morning and claim that all is well. That is what we in the fortunetelling business call courting disaster. Your perceptions are a pretty feckless measure of reality anyway, a pretty contemptible display of empirical haughtiness. When people are assured about truths I say to them: “Why don’t you go do some science… Creep.” And to hell with your religious convictions about truth and true knowledge. There, I said it. I don’t like it when people act certain in their knowledge about facts because that is a blustery, salesey tactic of lying. What I mean is, you probably don’t know shit and waking up in the morning and announcing that all is as it should be and that the crystalline spheres that compose reality are intact is rather beside the point.
The world ends every day, the sun goes down and maybe it’s gone forever. Metaphor and understanding are the things to consider here, that the internal relationship with the world is what’s ending and resuming - see, you wake up and stretch both arms over your head yawning awake and say: “Well the world didn’t end!” All the while it pretty much did end for you, all night most nights. Asleep and dreaming or just playing dead? It’s over for you and then starts up again. When you turn off the computer do the sprites have an apocalypse? Do they know the world starts fresh with each hit of the reset button? So don’t be smug, you might not know shit.
Anyhow, the reason you’re probably disappointed that the world hasn’t observably ended is that the world probably doesn’t have that much to offer you. You’re probably pretty dissatisfied with it the way that it is. You probably don’t have enough money and sometimes wonder why money is even a thing, why this arbitrary noise about cash-money-dollars is the whole measure of your life and its quality and value. You probably work too hard and wonder, sometimes, when it’s a long, dark night (like tonight!) why you do it, what good it does to anyone? Your Sisyphean work! Your Tantalus like relationship to fading youth and waning fortunes! Your growing awareness of the encroaching scent of shit, the frozen, icy feeling of the world in winter… Oh! You suddenly put it together and realize “Well fuck! I’m in hell!”
And obviously you don’t want that! So you have an investment in the end of the world. It’s got some real appeal for you. Maybe you watch a lot of movies about it, the fall of xyz country, the alien invasion, the zombie hordes! There’s plenty of whimsical analysis of these discrete representations of the Disaster Movie’s varied iterations – but they are all still Disaster Movies. But you like seeing these grave depictions of the world in crisis, because you, and me, and all of us, we see that maybe – maybe with the disruption of all constraints, the hegemonic (maybe even wicked! Depending on your outlook) social order – then people can become who they really are. Why, of course we’re all smart, enterprising and capable, it’s only in disaster that we’re allowed to be, to overcome the roles and functions we’ve unfairly been saddled with by the dehumanizing leash/lash of Civilization.
Which is really on you. If you’ve not made your peace with civilization, I mean, that’s kind of your responsibility. I’m sure you’re an excellent example of the fruition of all human endeavors, of course you are, we all are, but that’s no excuse for not at least trying to get along with everyone else. That’s what civilization is supposed to be you know, not a shackle but a chorus, all of us together – if you’re dissatisfied it’s probably owing to your lack of participation. Get out and push is what I mean.
It’s usually pretty hard though, and sometimes you’re not even aware. Yesterday was a weird day on public transit. I was a wreck of cold-medicine and not enough sleep yesterday and I came to the second of my daily busstops just barely aware, just getting my telephone-delivered news to startle me to appropriate wakefulness. There were a couple of kids at the stop ahead of me, tussling with each other like little kids do when they’re bored and waiting. A guy, a driver – I point that out because when people are in cars I don’t think of them, exactly, as people but as drivers, which is a dangerous, crazed breed of person – he stopped and got from his car to yell at these little boys about their antics. I was… unfortunately unaware, sleepy, as I said, and didn’t have the wherewithal to intervene appropriately. Instead I glared a little at the guy, watched to make sure he didn’t raise a hand or act any more out of turn than he was, and after he’d left, with the little kids looking bullied and chastened – I told them: “You don’t have to listen to guys like that. Not everyone is an asshole.” Which maybe didn’t help. Anyhow – don’t go yelling at elementary school kids, is what I say.
Later I was on the train crossing the river, which is the best thing to do in a week. The Red-Line isn’t the bleakest journey you can make, but it’s pretty bleak – except that it is crowned and jeweled by the heroic span over the Cuyahoga which edifies and delights all aboard without fail. That mote of beauty and light that uplifts one’s own sense that the city, the world and everything are intact, permanent, whole – that is the vitality of civilization right there. We build our bridges in the image of our gods. They transcend the worlds and let us cross – the Bridge as Psychopomp is worth thinking about a lot.
And there you are in an electric machine that crosses the river and space and seems to transcend time itself - and you’re advised that, yes, civilization is a thing and it’s a pretty good one too. Then I thought: “Tomorrow I might have to do unthinkable things. When I go to bed tomorrow I might be a wholly different person than I am at this moment.” Which is really, perhaps, how I ought to look at every single tomorrow. I don’t though, I like having a schedule and keeping it, but still – I was very thoroughly moved by the idea that I might for real be utterly different, in a different world than I was yesterday. I held that feeling for the whole trip across the city and back. It’s rumors of the end of things that let feelings like that emerge, so rumors of the end of things are, after a fashion, their own reward. Let it all go and there I am, in the blasted winter-wasteland crossing the rail-bridges on foot, watching the fires in the suburbs, all alone and watchful, ready a new and dangerous self, unleashed from the bondage of civilization.
Just an idle fantasy, you understand, but we dream of unthinkable things so that our conscious, waking selves will be able to countenance them when they’re called upon to do so. We dream vengeful dreams of wished for justice and imagined heroism, and we wait till we see a break in the world, a shattering of civilization to be free to pursue that inner, perfect version of ourselves. But when that happens, are we really just going to be assholes, fucking with little kids for no reason? With some imaginary axe to grind?
Let the world go unended, that’s what I say. There’s assholes enough without everyone being given that chance, that one chance to finally show everyone how deep-deep down they are the right kind of bully-asshole that the world has been waiting for all along.
The world ends every day, the sun goes down and maybe it’s gone forever. Metaphor and understanding are the things to consider here, that the internal relationship with the world is what’s ending and resuming - see, you wake up and stretch both arms over your head yawning awake and say: “Well the world didn’t end!” All the while it pretty much did end for you, all night most nights. Asleep and dreaming or just playing dead? It’s over for you and then starts up again. When you turn off the computer do the sprites have an apocalypse? Do they know the world starts fresh with each hit of the reset button? So don’t be smug, you might not know shit.
Anyhow, the reason you’re probably disappointed that the world hasn’t observably ended is that the world probably doesn’t have that much to offer you. You’re probably pretty dissatisfied with it the way that it is. You probably don’t have enough money and sometimes wonder why money is even a thing, why this arbitrary noise about cash-money-dollars is the whole measure of your life and its quality and value. You probably work too hard and wonder, sometimes, when it’s a long, dark night (like tonight!) why you do it, what good it does to anyone? Your Sisyphean work! Your Tantalus like relationship to fading youth and waning fortunes! Your growing awareness of the encroaching scent of shit, the frozen, icy feeling of the world in winter… Oh! You suddenly put it together and realize “Well fuck! I’m in hell!”
And obviously you don’t want that! So you have an investment in the end of the world. It’s got some real appeal for you. Maybe you watch a lot of movies about it, the fall of xyz country, the alien invasion, the zombie hordes! There’s plenty of whimsical analysis of these discrete representations of the Disaster Movie’s varied iterations – but they are all still Disaster Movies. But you like seeing these grave depictions of the world in crisis, because you, and me, and all of us, we see that maybe – maybe with the disruption of all constraints, the hegemonic (maybe even wicked! Depending on your outlook) social order – then people can become who they really are. Why, of course we’re all smart, enterprising and capable, it’s only in disaster that we’re allowed to be, to overcome the roles and functions we’ve unfairly been saddled with by the dehumanizing leash/lash of Civilization.
Which is really on you. If you’ve not made your peace with civilization, I mean, that’s kind of your responsibility. I’m sure you’re an excellent example of the fruition of all human endeavors, of course you are, we all are, but that’s no excuse for not at least trying to get along with everyone else. That’s what civilization is supposed to be you know, not a shackle but a chorus, all of us together – if you’re dissatisfied it’s probably owing to your lack of participation. Get out and push is what I mean.
It’s usually pretty hard though, and sometimes you’re not even aware. Yesterday was a weird day on public transit. I was a wreck of cold-medicine and not enough sleep yesterday and I came to the second of my daily busstops just barely aware, just getting my telephone-delivered news to startle me to appropriate wakefulness. There were a couple of kids at the stop ahead of me, tussling with each other like little kids do when they’re bored and waiting. A guy, a driver – I point that out because when people are in cars I don’t think of them, exactly, as people but as drivers, which is a dangerous, crazed breed of person – he stopped and got from his car to yell at these little boys about their antics. I was… unfortunately unaware, sleepy, as I said, and didn’t have the wherewithal to intervene appropriately. Instead I glared a little at the guy, watched to make sure he didn’t raise a hand or act any more out of turn than he was, and after he’d left, with the little kids looking bullied and chastened – I told them: “You don’t have to listen to guys like that. Not everyone is an asshole.” Which maybe didn’t help. Anyhow – don’t go yelling at elementary school kids, is what I say.
Later I was on the train crossing the river, which is the best thing to do in a week. The Red-Line isn’t the bleakest journey you can make, but it’s pretty bleak – except that it is crowned and jeweled by the heroic span over the Cuyahoga which edifies and delights all aboard without fail. That mote of beauty and light that uplifts one’s own sense that the city, the world and everything are intact, permanent, whole – that is the vitality of civilization right there. We build our bridges in the image of our gods. They transcend the worlds and let us cross – the Bridge as Psychopomp is worth thinking about a lot.
And there you are in an electric machine that crosses the river and space and seems to transcend time itself - and you’re advised that, yes, civilization is a thing and it’s a pretty good one too. Then I thought: “Tomorrow I might have to do unthinkable things. When I go to bed tomorrow I might be a wholly different person than I am at this moment.” Which is really, perhaps, how I ought to look at every single tomorrow. I don’t though, I like having a schedule and keeping it, but still – I was very thoroughly moved by the idea that I might for real be utterly different, in a different world than I was yesterday. I held that feeling for the whole trip across the city and back. It’s rumors of the end of things that let feelings like that emerge, so rumors of the end of things are, after a fashion, their own reward. Let it all go and there I am, in the blasted winter-wasteland crossing the rail-bridges on foot, watching the fires in the suburbs, all alone and watchful, ready a new and dangerous self, unleashed from the bondage of civilization.
Just an idle fantasy, you understand, but we dream of unthinkable things so that our conscious, waking selves will be able to countenance them when they’re called upon to do so. We dream vengeful dreams of wished for justice and imagined heroism, and we wait till we see a break in the world, a shattering of civilization to be free to pursue that inner, perfect version of ourselves. But when that happens, are we really just going to be assholes, fucking with little kids for no reason? With some imaginary axe to grind?
Let the world go unended, that’s what I say. There’s assholes enough without everyone being given that chance, that one chance to finally show everyone how deep-deep down they are the right kind of bully-asshole that the world has been waiting for all along.
