09 June 2018

All thots on topic A stay on topic A

But first, here’s the marker that helps me navigate library items.

Dear diary,

My confessions here have recently been either… Let me start over:

I neither want to write nor not to write right now, but I’m writing cuz I need to do something different from the work that I’ve been doing, and I have no cares or interests beyond THOT. But I also like the world and everything in it. Now you ask: What work have I been doing? —I’ve been slaving in the circle of hell called house repair. Like all the frumpy homeowners in the Midwest. Except I’m not engaging in this activity to please my own taste: I’m not renovating my palace because my kids are all finally out on their own and I just retired from my job as a government defense contractor (read: offense contractor) and the wife wants dolphin-patterned wallpaper on every reachable surface plus Greek columns made out of genuine vinyl; no, I’m FORCED to do these overhauls, to get out of jail. And by jail I mean my apartment. For, as I’ve explained in every entry that I’ve written since the beginning of last month, I can’t sell this place without fixing it up. (It was good enough for ME to live in, for twenty years or more, but I am not human.) Or maybe I could just sell it as-is and become penniless and then die staring at a mall. That’s a tempting alternative.

(In the above paragraph, near the end, I changed “wall” to “mall”, because the latter is basically the former with an upside-down double-you; but the nod is still to “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, a tale by Melville.)

So, for the multitudes among my readership who are keeping tally with my home-repair progress, I’ll update our accomplishments. The things that, to date, have got done, are as follows:

I replaced the countertops, which were yellow and dated, with new countertops, which are earth-toned and soon-to-be-dated. I installed a wheat-hued granite sink, and a silver swan faucet. (Actually I installed none of this stuff myself—I just paced to & fro nearby while professionals did the work—but I believe I added a cubit to my stature in the process.) And the neck of the silver swan faucet is extendable – it’s an extension hose – so you can aim its face at tough stains on your plates and press the button on the side to make it hiss. And I replaced all the carpet. The trick to installing carpet is to attach it to the stairs (using a staple gun) so that one leg of the staple is in the wood while the other metal leg is pointing upwards, sharp as a knife – then you can step on it. Also make sure that, during any install, you scuff all the white walls with your black boot – do this “on accident”; otherwise the walls will look too clean. And here is the reason:

Any country whose homes are uniformly immaculate will lose its artists in a hurry. Artists prefer slightly shabby environs. Dilapidation, to them, equals character. I took a trip to Europe, back in my college days when I was a baby-boomer, just to amble around and figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and, tho I intended to stay there for six months, I ended up leaving after just three days, because the place was too clean. There’s another lesson in this: If your country gets ravished by warfare, DON’T make the mistake of rebuilding. If you clean up the damage, the result will look fresh and new—which is to say, hygienic—and this will scare away the artists. Artists yearn for tradition, for they are creatures of habit; and tradition is a slummy affair: thus artists prefer worldwide war; they also enjoy starvation, hence the byword “starving artists”.

Lastly (I’m now returning to our list of completed house projects), I had to snap together more fake wood for the landing. (I call our dump’s vestibule “the landing”.) And today or tomorrow—sometime this weekend, or maybe Monday or Tuesday—we’re getting our bathroom neutered. Right now our bathroom looks like modern art. I yanked the light fixture out of its socket, so its wires are splayed like a stick figure’s evil claw; and the vanity and sink has been torn from the bosom of its mother—by which I mean the surrounding drywall—so all that’s left is a frozen ooze of old paint and stain, with copper antennas for eyes, like a robotic snail, terminating in two shiny hexagonal shut-off valves. My bathroom is a Willem de Kooning masterwork. I’ll sell it to you for seventy-seven dollars, if you can manage to take it away while leaving the rest of the house intact. It would be worth it to have an apartment with a massless void in place of a water closet. That would be sure to attract the artists. Then we could gentrify this neighborhood.

Now I imagine a reporter whose name is Rebecca speaking to me: “Dear Bryan, how do you feel about your moving experience? What are your emotions, what is your inward reaction to this upheaval? Being a dilettante, you aspire to embrace the chaos and dirt that artists are rumored to love – have you found yourself successful in this respect?”

Well, Becky…

“Don’t call me Becky. I am NOT your familiar.”

Well, Ms. K—, I feel scared about this moving experience. So scared that I can’t even sleep at night. I can only sleep during the day. I can only sleep after I’ve woken up, when I’m at my day job. (I love sleeping at my day job. I also love playing the game Solitaire on the computer when my boss thinks I’m maximizing his profits.) And my “emotions” with regard to this “moving experience” are primarily anger and sadness. But mostly fear. They’re all the same buzz – my emotions, I mean. What happens is this:

I mull over the possibilities of my near-future, and I see nothing but mischance, so I begin to feel terror: excess energy, cold and bracing. Now, at the first sign of this dread, I instinctively bristle—my soul’s fight-function upsurges and aims to dispel the unwanted energy like a firecat. And by “dispel” I mean either “fend off” or “intimidate” or something. (It is a battle wholly internalized.) And I use the terms “bristle” and “firecat” because I’m thinking of a poem by Wallace Stevens—the one that begins his first volume Harmonium—called “Earthy Anectode”; here’s the first lines:

Every time the bucks went clattering
Over Oklahoma
A firecat bristled in the way.

Tho this poem means something entirely different, I wrench it from its context and use it however I please, because…

Well anyway, to answer your question, my “inward reaction” about this attempted move is primarily worry, fear, anxiety… because I’m sure that I won’t do a proper job fixing up this house, and then the potential buyer will hire a home inspector to march thru and judge my apartment’s hairstyle, and she’ll find that it’s not sufficiently bouncy, that it doesn’t have the right amount of shine and wave, and that it’s not sensual enough: it’s not motion-picture ready.

Now, to the last part of your inquiry, about whether I have attained my goal of embracing “the chaos and dirt that artists are rumored to love” – I must say: No, I have not found myself successful in this respect. I like beautiful things. I don’t enjoy living in squalor. (The key of “v” on modern English typewriters is positioned directly above the “spacebar” key, so when I typed that last short sentence, it came out “I don’t like to li e in squalor” – just so you know… also, in typing this here parenthetical aside, I spelled spacebar “spacepar”. Is God trying to tell me something?) (No, you’re just clumsy.) Moreover, I don’t agree with this notion that artists DESIRE poverty and starvation, just because they’re often obliged to make the best of such things.

But what is humankind’s objective? It rankles me that Jesus is still relevant. After a couple thousand years of digesting his teachings, shouldn’t we have mastered them by now? They’re not too hard to grasp: Love your enemies; renounce wealth; forgive everyone… Instead of allowing this guidance to make society bloom into paradise, we…

Alright, I told myself before I began this entry: No more whining about perpetual war and the dog-eat-dog casino-culture of snatch more money for ME alone! me! me! me! …oh & also snatch money for my children if they’re still young & cute… —So I won’t go there.

But how do we know WHICH decisions money is good at making? People shout “Remove all protections and regulations from the marketplace, because money knows best: money will make the best decisions for our world.” But then sometimes the very same people shout “Do not pay money for love: prostitution is wrong!” or “Get money out of politics, because it’s ruining democracy!” —First of all, what democracy? When has any country ever had a democracy! Even those little island-states populating the expanse where ships end up after they vanish into the Devil’s Triangle: those tiny fragmented resorts try to implement democracy, and what happens? Some money-worshipping super-culture bombs them into submission: “Give our transnational corporations your natural resources, cuz hard work pays off: you gotta study in school and apply yourself to your career; only then will you deserve to join us in pillaging you. This advice that we offer is freedom: Not a fish but a fishing pole.” MORAL: Democracy is a good word but a bad practice because the populace usually votes against puppet regimes.

The main problem with our culture, by the way, is that artists do not have the discipline to perform a mass strike, or a mass boycott. All artists of the world should belong to one big union, so that they can say “If you, O society, continue to make us live in subpar conditions—sub spacepar AND sub timepar—then we will refuse to create our fun magical shit. That means no more television miniseries, no more blockbuster films, no more fantasy & romance novels, no more jewelry, no more glam rock, no more video games, no more sports jerseys, no more photos of couples fornicating, and no more stories being told via two-way walkie-talkies or C.B. radios (‘citizens band’ short-distance communicating devices). All you get is the mainstream news on your portable phone. Corporate stranglehold.”

The Artist Union’s hope is that Earth’s population will prove unable to tolerate such a dire existence (for who can stomach the mainstream news without washing it down with a couple superhero movies?) and thus a contract will be established guaranteeing every artist affordable access to fishing supplies.

But what’ll happen is this: the strike will backfire. People will adapt to their art-deprived surroundings. And consider this also: there is no such thing as art-deprived surroundings. Art is everywhere, and every act, no matter how remote, is essentially artistic. Even banksters are, on a certain level, fine artists. Politicians are artists. So-called smart phones produce and display their own art, which people will learn to lap up in place of their customary fare. Even the mainstream corporate news media conglomerate is one vast artist, having the form of a seven-headed sea-beast (Revelation 13:1). And war is art: destruction is creation. Poverty is art: for God kicked us out of his garden…

But the current fad is to throw tantrums about fascism. “O my gosh the U.S.A. is turning fascist!” What does this mean? How can a democracy turn fascist without the permission of its voting populace? Well let’s just say: Who cares what fascism really means, and don’t worry about how a true, direct democracy could simply “turn fascist” overnight – as far as I understand, the U.S. is a democratic republic, anyway – it’s more interesting to let the mental experiment play out… So how are things different, under fascism? We don’t like the pattern on the drapes anymore. We want to change it to dolphins. OK, done. Here’s what I’m trying to get at: What if Jesus is the fascist? Is fascism permissible then? Because, if fascism means “bad government that nobody likes” then God seems pretty fascistic to me; and if Jesus is God’s son, or God’s brother or double or spokesperson or antitype – whether he’s God in the flesh, or not God at all but a God-substitute – if he ends his strike and agrees to star in his sequel, then what system should Jesus choose to rule the world? You sure don’t want a direct democracy in heaven, otherwise all saints will unanimously re-elect Satan.

. . . Hey, why am I writing an entry when I could be sleeping!?

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