Today disavowed yesterday

Driving on a dark back road, I was puzzled by the leaves. Are those leaves hopping? No, not leaves. Frogs. Like, uh, a million of em'. In January. The air busied itself to 73 degrees (6 degrees higher than ever recorded in this town) and a half inch of warm rain fell. There was a tornado warning. As the weather was typical for May, the frogs, understandably, came out of their pseudo-hibernation.

I was fixing new latches onto some of my greenhouse windows, today. It started to snow. Wind whistling. The work required dexterity which gloves blunt. I hurried my ass up so I could get inside before the pain in my finger tips became too much.

The Magic in a Gesture

An exhilarating, emotional event is not always a good story to re-tell. Even if the event was full of drama and joy, like so many good stories. Because those moments that seem so special often operate by the logic of magic. And magic only works with incomplete understanding. If only we could leave it at that.

Tee vee programs specialize in presenting the angst surrounding virtues (vices too) in a story-form. Viewers tune in for their serial drama or comedy, where one or two virtues is confronted, circled, poked at, misunderstood, re-considered, and then wrapped up. It works well. Competent actors under the watch of writers and suits. The viewer knows this, and then somewhat intentionally forgets it, and that is, more or less, that. Its a good little trick. But there is another trick that the tee vee attempts, with much less success: to recreate what feels good about a "feel good" story.

Take the recent feel good case of Owen Groesser, the dedicated equipment manager for his middle school's basketball team. He has Down Syndrome. His mother asks the coach if Owen might wear the team uniform and play in a game, despite not being a player. The coach agrees, and makes some sort of an arrangement with the opposing coach. So Owen gets to play in the game. He makes a few shots. The crowd cheers enthusiastically. Smiles abound. And then tee vee shows up (via Twitter) to re-tell the tale.

Clearly stated: what was done for Owen was a very nice gesture — even if his mother instigating it makes it a little less cool. But regardless of how nice it was... it is a gesture. From medieval Latin gestura, from Latin gerere ‘bear, wield, perform.’ And a large number of "feel good" stories (hell... maybe most) seek to capture the effects of a gesture. A gesture which often seeks to make the impossible, possible.

So a gesture is a type of performance. Symbolic. A tool. For example: I want to express gratitude to a friend for helping me with something unpleasant. I take him out for a few drinks, dinner, pay the bill, pay for the cab, and my gratitude has been signified with food and banter. I don't even need to "say" thank you, I've signified with actions. A simple gesture. Or, a homeless family can be given a house on national television. Also a gesture.

Owen was unable to make the team. Everybody knows this. It is a "cut" league, serious business, so you don't get to play just by paying your entry fee. You must qualify to pay. And Owen didn't qualify. But the gesture invalidates that truth. Quite suddenly, Owen is on the team! Like magic.

The magic of a performance is easy to mess up. The other actors have to stay in character, and so does the audience — they have to know: this is special. This gesture rearranges normal. We ignore the sense that Owen being on the court isn't right. And then the curtain raises and its already happening. Owen is on the court. He's catching a pass. He's heaving the ball towards the hoop, and it falls in. A boy with down syndrome, who isn't on the team, is on the team, and he's scoring points. You see... magic.

But for the sake of all that is good, don't talk about it! Nothing robs the gesture of its magic like pointing out what is actually happening. So just enjoy it. Don't try to get on ESPN, just be happy it happened, magic doesn't reward the greedy. Because if you talk about it... if you make a big fuss and tell other people... well. The truth. Oh shit. The truth doesn't come out. Thankfully. But something does. And it's a huge pile of shit.

The pile is Amazing! He defies all odds! He's a superstar!

Oh. No. What just happened? Owen made two out of four shots in a middle school basketball game. It was not amazing because... Owen is a pretty decent shooter, according to his father, and the video I saw. The kid can shoot. Did he defy all odds? Well, this is inherently hyperbolic, but while the one-too-many chromosome crowd aren't the most athletic bunch... we're talking about basketball. A put-the-ball-in-the-goal game. 

Eighth-grader Owen Groesser always knew he had what it takes to be a superstar and that’s what he has become. (Los Angeles Daily News)

A superstar? Again, I get that overstatement happens, but in these cases, the absurdity is necessary to avoid the limits of the story.

This video from Detroit's ABC affiliate, the news person says:

The sincere care for this kid, who happens to have Down Syndrome, was unbelievable, and would make anyone witnessing these acts of kindness shed a tear.

The casualness of "who happens to have Down Syndrome" makes this fact sound incidental, rather than essential. The whole idea is that Owen was unable to make the team because of his genetic disability, no fault of his own. And the hyperbole about the crying...

And then from the same segment, a teammate is interviewed:

I think its a good experience for our team and our school, for somebody to show that anything is possible, no matter what kind of disability you have.

Again, while this boy is saying a nice thing, it's also nonsense. Nothing about the evening proved that anything is possible.

I've probably given too many examples already, I'm arguing that a gesture can be really lovely, a beautiful thing. But talking about it, or trying to publicize it, or recreate it, destroys the moment by either:

 A) pulling back the curtain. Explaining exactly what the gesture meant, and that it was a performance. Symbolic. And then the magic is gone.

B) Rather than destroy the magic, a bunch of nonsense hyperbole is presented as truth.


And once you're committed to the hyperbole, it's easy to lose a simple truth: trying to repeat a nice gesture, because it made YOU feel good, starts to look like charity. Owen was back on the court for the next game. Wearing his uniform. Catching a pass. Taking a shot. When Owen's shot failed to go in, the opposing team gathered the rebound, and returned the ball to their opponent. Owen missed another shot. The opposing team returned the ball. Keep shooting until you make it, was the new gesture. No longer could we have that moment of disbelief, when the impossible was possible. And the magic was gone, because everybody understood.

Entangled

Everything is owned. Every. Thing. With the exception of "trash", which can best be thought of as anti-property: not worth owning. So I'll adjust:

Everything worth owning is owned. But, it's easy to see that many things that are worth owning — to somebody, somewhere — are nevertheless tossed away as trash, and this is owed, rather simply, to convenience. Craigslist Free and the like create a new convenience (in which someone else — worse off than you, ostensibly) comes and takes your trash, shrinking the trash pile a bit, but still the trash piles and piles.

When the moments feels right, I tell youngens that they live in a world where absolutely everything is owned, and if not owned in the traditional sense of "that is mine, take your grubbies off", then regulated. I ask for counterexamples, "tell me I'm missing something", I'll request, "tell me there are some things that aren't "owned".

The air. I get that a lot. Obviously, that is both regulated and owned based on where that air happens to be. Next...

Me! I'm not owned! 

Ahem... I wouldn't be quite so sure... please reference your parents. school. and eventually (and quite sadly, if you're lucky) an employer. 

I enjoy the definition of employ:

The most common — give work to someone and pay them for it — isn't terribly enjoyable, but push a little further...

To keep occupied Or make use of. What an adjustment to a conversation. "Does someone/thing make use of you?" to replace, "what do you do?" and "are you employed?" That's very nice. A nice undermining, indeed.

Go back a bit more, and we find those straight-shootin' Latins whose implicari is allegedly the root of employ. Implicari is to be involved with or attached to. Attached to. In a world where everything is owned, the vast majority of us born debtors, being attached to a creditor is a winning strategy. The Land of the Free, some say.

Finally, this dictionary steers me to a 16th/17th sense of the word employ, a feeling which employees inherently commiserate: entanglement. To be employed is to be entangled. Twisted into a net. Involved in complicated circumstances that are difficult to understand or escape. This idea, a base quality of everyday life, something that I suppose is too jarring to easily accept: our very ability to obtain the necessities of life requires becoming entangled — caught! And put to work for money. 

I'm ready for a promotion. 

Good To The Last Drop (and then...)

I can participate on existing terms: "Yeah, Obama let us down but he's better than the alternative!"  Jesus. I'd rather put a bullet in my head than utter such a thing — not because I have an opinion about Obama but because the very assumptions this utterance enjoys begin from a very different place than I begin. 

I can try to change the terms of the discussion: "Well, what do we want from a president? Are these things even possible? What is the role of the government?" But then I'm exhausted and feel like a douchebag — probably because, in that situation, I am one. Such behavior is not socially acceptable.

I'm not saying I know any more than other people. In fact, I know less. I'm just saying that it would be nice if, in general, our collective discourse embraced a certain criticality in which questioning assumptions wasn't met with so much hostility and, worse, annoyance and befuddlement. Imagine, just for a moment, if you went to a party of strangers and the very way in which people discussed life — love, politics, art — was surprising! And you were invited to have your own strange perspective!

                                                                               - Daniel Coffeen 

In all of the descriptions of perilous situations that I have studied, arising during adventures on the high seas or in the high mountains, or during armed conflict, a single mistake rarely proves fatal. More often than not, death comes as a result of a sequence of bad choices which reinforce each other. These choices may not appear bad at the time—but they certainly do in retrospect! The end result is a situation in which no further steps can be taken that would not be either harmful or futile. This is the essence of checkmate: no moves left. At that point, none of the previous moves can be undone. Nor do they even exist, really: they have gone off to an imaginary universe populated by the regretful ghosts of those who didn't make it.

                                                      - Dmitry Orlov 


I had been considering "depletion" this morning. From the latin plere (to fill), with a de in front. Rather incorrectly, with a sidecar of embarrassment, I got myself in the jerkoff position of considering my life, my existence, as something that is being depleted. Meaning: I was thinking how I'm "running out" of life. Now, this is a very silly way to think of Time and its ways... but of course, Time is not terribly easy to think about (how would I know?).


The impetus for this contemplation was Part "Fuck IT!" from the bestselling series, "Rich People = Control of Energy". This installment peeked at Infill Drilling Optimization which is a means to keeping an existing oil field at its highest daily production for the longest time possible, and then production completely collapses... very very quickly. Despite modest efforts towards avoiding such a process (you should see this garden I'm stewarding) it is clear that I am doing essentially the same thing: keeping my material/energy consumption standard of living as high as possible — for as long as possible. This is not a good idea. And yet, like a tee vee addict (or any addict) who knows their addiction is not serving them well, the addiction is — at least to some extent — all I know, and re-becoming "me" (which is very necessary since current "me" is too often paralyzed) requires the type of attentiveness that I'm a bit to weak (or a bit too something) to stick to. 


My daily tool against this weakness/something is to look around more often (I figure this is a low energy activity, and one that I enjoy quite a bit). Anecdotally, I'm guessing restructuring my "free" time first, and then work towards the more rigid "unfree" time in which the human monoculture takes a bite out of my ass, is the way to go. I can't abandon the ass-biting if I'm lost without it. 


Here are my moves, and I'll happily take suggestions for new ways of looking:


1) Go horizontal: lots of laying down outside, the middle of the kitchen floor, etc.
2) Get high: slightly dangerous, but climbing on the roof and easy-to-ascend trees is a favorite
3) Stare: this one gets me all jazzed up, staring makes the normal go away
4) Strobe effect: slightly dangerous here as well, move quickly with eyes closed, open... close and move again

The day moves along

Fundamentally our actions are in an incomparable manner altogether personal, unique and absolutely individual there is no doubt about it; but as soon as we translate them into consciousness, they do not appear so any longer. 

This is the proper phenomenalism and perspectivism as I understand it: the nature of animal consciousness involves the notion that the world of which we can become conscious is only a superficial and symbolic world, a generalised and vulgarised world; that everything which becomes conscious becomes just thereby shallow, meagre, relatively stupid, a generalisation, a symbol, a characteristic of the herd; that with the evolving of consciousness there is always combined a great, radical perversion, falsification, superficialisation, and generalisation. 

Finally, the growing consciousness is a danger, and whoever lives among the most conscious Europeans knows even that it is a disease. 

As may be conjectured, it is not the antithesis of subject and object with which I am here concerned: I leave that distinction to the epistemologists who have remained entangled in the toils of grammar (popular metaphysics). 

It is still less the antithesis of "thing in itself" and phenomenon, for we do not "know" enough to be entitled even to make such a distinction.  Indeed, we have not any organ at all for knowledge or for "truth": we "know" (or believe, or imagine) just as much as may be of use in the interest of the human herd, the species; and even what is here called "usefulness" is ultimately only a belief, something fanciful and perhaps precisely the most fatal stupidity by which we shall one day perish. 

Nietzsche

Kicking the ladder after y'all done climbing OR Obama makes a funny face

I am endlessly amused by The ""United"" States ""economic"" policy (double quotes for double bullshit).

To read that the bosses have Obama and pals suing (fucking suing!) the Chinese boss men for protecting their rare-earths-fuel-modern-life goodies is just endlessly fucking enjoyable.

It's like, Protectionism is really fucking great until you're ready to go bully some bitches... then it's time to get yo' free trade on.

My sides are split. Check the LA Times story to see Obama's hilarious mug.

You Will Never Die

I know this is meant to be sincere, but I thought it was some pretty goddamned funny gallows humor. I'm heading to the New York Times to do something more embarrassing than simply reading the New York Times, and I see an undeniable opine called: The Best Part About Global Warming.

By this shitbirds logic: warmer weather means less influenza. Got me thinking, if the sun went away, there wouldn't be so much skin cancer... not bad, eh? Here's the line before the curtain falls on this gem of denial:

Still, when one considers those who are most likely to die from influenza, often with shocking swiftness — children, the elderly, cancer and H.I.V. patients, pregnant women — the weather this winter comes to seem like a very cheerful development indeed. Even the loss of a season’s sledding, you might say, is a small price to pay.

Shocking swiftness! Hear me out on this one, shitbirds: there are 7 billion humans on this planet. And last year-ish, 2010, the global population grew by 1.1%. Through the wonders of simple math, if that 1.1% were to hold steady — neither rising or falling, there would be 14 billion people on the planet in 63 years, or 2075. We all seem to "get" that 14 billion isn't happening, so growth will collapse, meaning death will reign supreme... and yet... the best thing about global warming

But at least people with cancer aren't going to die from the flu. New York City will cease to be a home for millions of people, as they'll all be dead or fleeing... but fuck if I hate the idea of being stuck in bed battling a sickness that is related to temperature.

This fuck actually wrote: giving up sledding isn't so bad because people with HIV won't die from the flu quite so much. People with HIV... won't die... from the flu... quite so much.

Please, my goodness please... end the intern[m]e[n]t.

I'll quote Nietzsche, I think:

Something that has failed should be all the more honored just because it has failed — this agrees much better with my morality. — "God"

Does anyone has any... uh... ideas regarding how I might destroy the internet from, you know, outside the internet... I did put "The Martix" in my library queue, but if memory serves me, that movie was more of an inspirational bit than a how-to.

Seriously, the internet is awful. Go away.

David Graeber is Funny

Stinkin' thrilled the Sun God is keeping longer hours (my normal not-so-stable ways are tailspun by 8 hours of daylight), the chickens are ostensibly responding to the extra bits of lightlove, as eggs are back in regular creation. I've been reading Debt: The First 5,000 Years and much like a clump of essays bundled under the title Revolution in Reverse, Graeber is amusing, especially in the notes section — the polite (or not) take-down being his forte, this one cracked me up:

As I remarked earlier, both Adam Smith and Nietzsche thus anticipate Levi-Strauss's famous argument that language is the "exchange of words." The remarkable thing here is that so many have managed to convince themselves that in all this, Nietzsche is providing a radical alternative to bourgeois ideology, even to the logic of exchange. Deleuze and Guattari, most embarrassingly, insist that "the great book of modern ethnology is not so much Mauss' The Gift as Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals. At least it should be," since, they say, Nietzsche succeeds in interpreting "primitive society" in terms of debt, where Mauss still hesitates to break with the logic of exchange. On their inspiration, Sarthou-Lajus has written philosophy of debt as an alternative to bourgeois ideologies of exchange, that, she claims, assume the prior autonomy of the person. Of course what Nietzsche proposes is not an alternative at all. It's another aspect of the same thing. All this is a vivid reminder of how easy it is to mistake radicalized forms of our own bourgeois tradition as alternatives to it (Bataille [1993], who Deleuze and Guttari praise as another alternative to Mauss in the same passage, is another notorious example of this sort of thing).

Perhaps not a passage that will cause you to run to the bookstore (maybe crab-walk) so here's another I just enjoyed:

Similar ideas have become the basis of that most basic, dominant institution of our present economic life: wage labor, which is, effectively, the renting of our freedom in the same way that slavery can be conceived as its sale. It's not only our freedoms that we own; the same logic has come to be applied even to our own bodies, which are treated, in such formulations, as really no different than houses, cars, or furniture. We own ourselves, therefore outsiders have no right to trespass on us. Again, this might seem an innocuous, even a positive notion, but it looks rather different when we take into consideration the Roman tradition of property on which it is based. To say that we own ourselves is, oddly enough, to cast ourselves as both master and slave simultaneously. "We" are both owners (exerting absolute power over our property) and yet somehow, at the same time, the things being owned (being the object of absolute power). The ancient Roman household, far from having been forgotten in the mists of history, is preserved in our most basic conception of ourselves—and, once again, just as in property law, the result is so strangely incoherent that it spins off into endless paradoxes the moment one tries to figure out what it would actually mean in practice. Just as lawyers have spent a thousand years trying to make sense of Roman property concepts, so have philosophers spent centuries trying to understand how it could be possible for us to have a relation of domination over ourselves. The most popular solution—to say that each of us has something called a "mind" and that this is completely separate from something else, which we can call "the body," and that the first thing holds natural dominion over the second—flies in the face of just about everything we know about cognitive science. It's obviously untrue, but we continue to hold onto it anyway, for the simple reason that none of our everyday assumptions about property, law, and freedom would make any sense without it.

See, kinda funny, right? Not more than a few pages go by without him making light of us confused you-mans.

I want to share the terrifying response to a infrastructural breakdown in town yesterday, real quick: the local grocery store shut-down, resulting from this problem (which will most certainly be more regular and longer lasting in the near future). After being turned away, very politely by a store-worker, I hung out for a minute to see how my neighbors would respond. Rage. Angry fucks. Shock. I can't choose from almost-everything-I-can-imagine-eating!?!? Ahhhh!!! If this was enough to get folk all riled up, a chilling scene, for those of us who see various "disruptions" as the mode of the future times.