(no subject)

Someone gave me these old photos of when I was a teenager. They're kind of embarrassing but kind of satisfying too. I mean - what a kid, I was like a goddammed saucer-man. For real - many, many beaded necklaces (my ersatz Mr. T), all these hideous bright colored paisley shirts (Value. City.), top it off with absurd hair and a raccoon-skin cap and sunglasses. I mean - what the fuck kind of person was I? A fucking saucerman. Raccoon-Skin Cap, whadda Genius.

I don't know man, I was not like other people? I kind of wish that the people I knew then were around to comment - but also - I don't wish that. At all.

I guess there's something to be said about breaking the mold, going your own way, finding the root of who you are in your personal style expression? I guess. I mean. Fine yes. I did that / do that. Kind of I wish I still had a raccoonskin cap to wear around. Hideous paisley shirts are in now though, and I just... I don't wear jewelry so there's that.

Why did I think of that? Late Capitalism's American Tom Sawyer gets high on you in the space he invades he wears a raccoonskin cap. I never was a Tom Sawyer though. Probably I'm Injun Joe.

Should I just go to stream of consciousness rambling? I'm feeling like I'm wandering in a pasture, like I'm an animal in the pasture, one that doesn't run fast - or that gets angry when he has to. I got so mad the other day, I ran to catch a bus nothing makes me angry like running does. How I hate it. Being hurried at all really, but physically running is my antagonist. So I'm in the pasture and I'm content, kind of, but I want to jump over the really not very high fence, just sometimes, I want to jump the fence and go out and explore around - but I want to be able to come back too. Vacation? Maybe I just need to get out more.

At thanksgiving people were attempting to foment some kind of rage about the American project of Indian Removal, but I... I didn't see that as the right time? It just seems a non-sequitur to me. Thanksgiving is from the 19th century, Lincoln invented it for heavens' sakes. And heck, he opposed Jackson making it a policy, so there's that too. I think Lincoln is the president that grows on you, the one you end up thinking of as the good one - like Augustus, the only good Caesar, and then, still not that good a dude. I'm more circumspect about this than a lot of people, I think that the quality of leadership that people have is reflective of the quality of the people themselves. Shitty people get shitty leadership, that's what I've observed.

I started to think about what it is that hates the rich people of our country. I mean, I do hate those people, but you know? How come? I mean, once you get past the exploitation and debauchery there's the simple reality of competition for resources. You're outcompeted and that turns to a burning resentment - remember, if someone has something, that means they won it from you. It could have been yours! So you look at the modes of competition and realize that the way that you can get something is a fairly circumscribed route - there's not that many paths that can be taken and alternatives are demolished by the winners as they go -to bury the path behind them so they can't be followed. You see the alternatives - let's say organizing the workplace and forming your own religious authority - or starting your own business - and these things get you somewhere, but go to far and you're suddenly an actual competitor - to be competed with and defeated, to be taken or arrested. I just think about this. I mean, you look at a list of the richest people - I think 90% of them, I could take in a straight fight. I could beat them senseless and take all their things - but that mode of competition isn't allowed, there's just the one way to 'compete' and it's created by the people who've already got everything. So you end up having to look for ways to get around the main economy.

More and more I think about this - about abandoning the mainstream economy and starting a parallel marketplace. Why not? Why not more of that?

Whatever, bitcoins, whatever, black marketing.


I realized that for inspiration I'm going to lean pretty heavy on the Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius. I sure wish I still had some of that to look at in person, print.

Now I repeat to myself: "I won't collect comics, I won't collect comics, I won't collect comics." Especially weird french ones, like I did when I was a teenaged saucer-man.

A letter I ended up writing

I went to some kind of transit-discussion group tonight. Mainly it started out being about impending (preposterous) construction projects to expand highway service throughout the city. Weird! But then it turned out that there were RTA executives there? And it was... There was a lot of talking and I got into it with people and it was good. I had a very nicely made Sazerac and a quantity of Japanese white-owl beer.


Then I came home and wrote this letter that I guess I will send to my political leadership. I guess!

Hello-

I was at a group discussion last night about transit policy in the Cleveland area. It was suggested at this discussion that politicians are not ambivalent about the subject of public transit and the attendant circumstances of those of us who depend on it, but rather, that it’s simply something removed from their minds, a concept that they do not interface with commonly simply because they don’t know anyone who rides the buses and trains. I thought about that, once it was said, and I realized that I certainly don’t know any politicians and likewise have no sense of the pressures or complexities of their day to day lives.

So this is an attempt to ameliorate both of our conditions. My name is Jeremiah and I live in one of Cleveland’s inner-ring suburbs. I work in one of the more barren, destitute portions of the city and to get from my home to the city and the city home I take 2 busses. I work in a factory that produces road patching material and I ride over 7 miles of very patchy road to get there every day. Sometimes, when the weather is nice, I walk the whole way. Often, regardless of the weather, I walk a decent portion of the distance anyway. I like walking because I am a human and humans and walking substantial distances is one of the most elementally human activities. And I like it. Very often of I ride the bus though. The bus takes time, an hour each way. Generally I enjoy this time, it’s a decent time to prepare for the day, to talk to acquaintances, to read and to work. I like to write and I’ve written the rough drafts of a couple of books on busses. The hours I spend on the bus are not idle, they’re useful.

I’m an IT professional, I work with computers, machines, I fix them. I have users who work in far flung regions of the country and I’ve been able to work with them over the phone, and through my computer on the bus, I’ve been able to do my job and help people do theirs all while getting to and from work. What I’m saying is this - there is a driver, a dedicated professional, who gets me where I am going, I am free. Liberated, to pursue my interests, my education and my profession, liberated.

I’ve been fortunate to have been able to pursue a few different careers in life. Once, for a period of a few years I sold cars. I got a pretty good sense of what cars are about, what it means to own one. When I started selling cars I thought that in Cleveland they are a necessity, I hadn’t thought of going without a car, in fact, I was often in precarious financial straits in service to my car. More than once I had to make a decision to spend money maintaining my car or spend money paying a parking fine or traffic ticket. I’d scrounge for change so that I could afford the gas to get home, I’d struggle with payments, all of it. I never felt like I was free when I had a car, and when people would come to buy a car, I never felt like I was helping to liberate them. In fact I’d often see people deeply in debt, just like me, who felt that they had to have a car, no matter what, and they would go further and further into debt so that they could own a depreciating asset. Or more truthfully, so that they could have the opportunity to service a debt on an asset that would only decay over time losing value and costing more and more and more. I came to see my customers as hopeless people, desperate and afraid who were taking big chances, incurring big debts and gaining nothing of any real value. I stopped selling cars. Then I stopped driving.

When I can, I walk. Walking is an elementally human activity, as I’ve said. What I mean by that is this – the world itself was populated, almost entirely, by bands of people walking. Through generations people walked out of Africa and all through Asia and Europe all the way to Patagonia. People, humans, have walked everywhere since time immemorial. We did it on our feet and that was good enough for a hundred thousand years. Now? Now I have to be careful about where I live. Since I walk, I have to be particular about the neighborhood where I live. Can I get groceries? Where are the schools? Dentists, doctors, dining, libraries, all of these things matter and I have to be particular. I’ve found a pretty good neighborhood and I like living in it, I can walk nearly everywhere I have to go. There are plenty of places I’d like to go – further afield, distant – and often enough I can get there by train or bus. I do alright. I get where I need to go, usually. Some places are more difficult than others. My parents want to live in the outer ring suburbs. Their generation precipitated the decline of cities by leaving them while parasitizing them from exurbia. They rely on the highway – or would, if they were still capable to drive, as it is, they are housebound now, too aged to properly negotiate the highways that make their town viable. It takes me three hours to get to them, usually. An hour or two each day is nice, it becomes a useful routine. Three hours each way, once a month is exhausting, it’s too far, it’s too uncertain. Because of the way transit works in the far flung exurbs three hours can balloon to four if you miss a connection, or a bus doesn’t get enough green lights in a row. So I don’t get to see my parents as often as I’d like – nevermind that we share an area code. Then of course there are peculiar instances where some civic minded local mentions to me that there will be a discussion of the role of transit in the city and I go to that. These things happen, often enough, in the farther edges of the city and so I need to rely on the RTA to get me there as well. What I am saying is that each month I spend $85 on my monthly RTA pass and each month I do what I can to make sure I get the full value from that $85.

So that’s a little about me. I was told you don’t talk to people like me in your day to day life, and I thought I’d introduce myself. I think that cars are overpriced at any price, that they offer much less than they demand and that most of the people who own them do so out of a sense of fear, fear that they couldn’t get by without them. I think that it is unfortunate that people often enough succumb to this weird servitude to a possession that demands so much more than it offers. And in the end a car also comes with more than its share of external obligations. Should I buy a car? But then I am enriching companies that my conscience forbids me from assisting. I’d be giving money to oil companies, to insurance companies, to banks. I don’t want to do those things. I don’t want those kinds of organizations to have my money. So instead of sinking thousands of dollars every year into objectionable businesses, I get to give my money to local businesses, to companies that don’t engage in objectionable practices and which don’t hold me captive through my car. I realize that it’s very likely that you disagree with my assessments and that’s fine - it’s very well that reasonable people disagree about large subjects like these. However, there is a very small number of people, in my experience, who have the luxury to make these decisions. People like my parents, for example. If I were cruel I would note that they must lie in the bed they’ve made, but I am not. I think it a very great shame that they must commit such a great percentage of their wealth to gasoline, insurance, financing and repairs. What’s worse – should the markets determine that gasoline, repairs or insurance rise in price, well, they are stuck deciding which meals they will have to miss. My parents are an example that I present, but they are representative of a very large number of people in my life. A very large number of people in your constituency.

In the meantime, I could not tell you what it costs to buy a gallon of gasoline – I have that luxury. Public transit has liberated me from this particular care that is so preoccupying to people.   I think it is important that I explain to you that I do not want to drive a car, I do not want to have a car, I do not want to spend time commuting in an expensive box on an expensive highway next to thousands of other people doing exactly the same thing, all of them in a hurry, all of them unhappy. I want to live my life in an ordered, conscientious way and because of public transit – I am able to.

What I hope you can understand here is that I feel that I have a decent life here in Cleveland, that I live pretty comfortably and well. I learn and work and contribute and engage in my community as best as I am able. I do these things and I’m able to do these things because of the RTA. The RTA is, effectively, a vital resource for me and thousands, and thousands of others. Imagine, for a moment, a city built up on a river. The river provides energy for mills, water, transportation – the river is the essential component – the sine-qua-non of the city. It is a valuable, essential resource. For thousands of years people have lived in cities like this one. They have built up civilizations, religions, languages ad cultures that have withstood time itself. They could do this because of the predictable rise and fall of the river, because of the predictable flow of the river. The RTA is an essential river to me, to the city and the region. It provides a certainty, a stability, it is a constant assurance that I can live, and work and successfully inhabit Cleveland, Ohio, and that I shouldn’t leave here, that I shouldn’t look for someplace better to live- because I have the assurance of an ongoing vital resource.

So my interest here is to give you a perspective you might not have heard, and speak up for a very large number of people who might not have thought to have spoken to you. I know that it hadn’t occurred to me, before tonight.

Thank you for your kind attention

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