Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Just Dont Be Numb: Part I

I'm trying to keep track of those ephemeral anxieties that ebb and flow
throughout the day at the lowest order of consciousness and then randomly
emerge, clear as still ponds, to be recognized for what they are.
My new fear is becoming one of those middle-aged men who live in a fashion that prioritizes stability over everything else and who cringe at other people pursuing happiness in ways they do not understand. Also I fear the possibility that
you all have some privileged piece of information pertaining to navigating reality, which piece of information I threw out with the broken down microwave and the
first pamphlet my high school counselor handed to me on the Select Service act.
I do not fear the Pekinese on the corner of Carleton Ave. that descends the
eight stairs from the deck to shout at me and launch a faux attack. One day
I will pick it up and punt that little rat bastard into the street.


Someone should do a history of terror-stricken moments when you realize you've
just done or said something you swore, at some point in the past, you would
never do. Those moments tend to be incisive slashes through the day-to-day
illusion that life can be managed. To work well, it would have to be like guerrilla
attack-style, with a camera crew and a close acquaintance of the person who's
just done the thing they'd never do appearing just after the act was done. Maybe the Real World style confessional plus an anchor as easily indignant as, say, John Stossel (who I loathe with Old Country vehemence). It might not work if it's too enmeshed in the lives of vile people who abandon ideals for selfish motives freely followed because there are only so many of those people; the interesting (and possibly heart-wrenching) version would be instances where people offer up their own accounts of abandoning ideals in the face of necessity (like maybe that pro-choice
advocate whose teenage daughter/son is involved in pregnancy and who can't bear the thought of his/her daughter/son being involved in abortion or switch the situation and make it pro-life - I don't know why abortion is always the fallback dramatic situation but it seems to be). Maybe this is all too much . . .

What else? A history of awkward conversation between supervisors and the people they've just fired, with lots of primary evidence, would also be a welcome addition to that category of art which exists on the margins of being art or just stuff that makes you uncomfortable. "Afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted" and so on.
Just don't be numb. That's the new credo: just don't be numb.

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