I would consider myself a flight risk. Not for any crime-related reasons, but from society. This is something I have written about before - the desire to just get in the car and drive away into the sunset, never looking back....Alexandria Supertramping this nonsense we call "modern living." But I have a child and a family and financial obligations, so it's likely too late in the game for me to really get away from the trappings of what I find stifling about the "norms" of life. To quell that desire to ascend up a mountain and become the ultimate introvert, I read or write. I never wanted to be a writer - the desire to write is more of an exercise in exorcising my mind of thoughts and feelings that plague it. It helps because I have some difficulty expressing my emotions to someone face to face - partially it's my temperament as being someone who's a bit more reserved but there's also a fear (...of rejection or embarrassment) that makes me clam up in regards to oral, face-to-face expression. When I do have the ability to express myself in writing, the thoughts and emotions that flow from me are very honest. There's a degree of vulnerability that does not always come through in person.
Thus, in my compulsion to write and purge, therein lies a limitation and a pattern of being unable to write fiction. The labels of "embellished narrative" or "gonzo" - however fictional they may seem - reflect whatever it is you'd call these pieces on my blog. The "narrative" style of my thoughts have occurred since I can remember - through play with toys when very young or idle contemplation about my surroundings, the world and my place in them. In high school, outside of school or work, I spent a lot of time alone. When my students today ask me whether or not I partied, was wild, etc, and I simply laugh. The hours in which I could have been loitering at the mall or drinking in the woods or whatever was popular teen culture in the late 90s were instead spent in my room. We didn't have a computer in my house until I was a junior in high school, and even then, it was still a tool primarily used for typing rather than distraction. Most of my formative years were spent being with myself for long stretches of time -listening to music, drawing, studying. My inner self is rich with desires and curiosity about the world around. So it would seem as though a degree of that would be satiated by interacting with the outside world, and especially with other people. Yet, paradoxically, as someone who takes a long time to ever become "real" with someone else, any sort of shared experience looms much larger in my memory bank than theirs likely. Whether positive or negative, its impact seems to hit me harder than it would others.
Locations are easier for me to be "real" with, however. Exploring a new area stimulates the mind without the same degree of socio-emotional investment that I sometimes find to be scary. There are a few places I've become completely fascinated by how old they are. Like Florence, Italy - OLD. Rome - OLDER. Oldest fucking place I have even been. That oldness is something Americans shy away from. American culture blows when it comes to preservation. I don't mean keeping the shitty aspects of days gone by - like racism and misogyny. Rather I am referring to the passing down of a recipe or a holiday tradition- something that makes your family unique, discernible and perhaps, compared to wider American culture, folksy. But those sorts of practices are, to an extent, shameful, shunned in this country. I'm not trying to placate conservatives here either; there are benefits to having a history, maintaining tradition and recognizing the importance of identity as part of a lineage, but only if it can evolve. That's the key - the evolution of that identity. Allowing something to be non-exclusionary and open, but still retaining a thread of what came before. It's the attitude -that's what makes people, things, practices, last. When attitudes include a nod to the past but an acceptance of the future, well, then why not? New is marketed as better, but is that true or does it reflect a marketing scheme more than a necessity? Progress-minded people aren't always progressively-minded people. That is to say (beyond any political terminology that might have just been activated in the reader's mind by the previous sentence), a progress-minded person is interested in moving on, getting to an end point. A progressively-minded person is interested in the development of something as much as more even more than the end point. To make a musical analogy, playing a number of chords in a practice set achieves the goal of having gained finger dexterity or speed whereas a pleasing chord progression takes you on a sonic journey.
On a wider, more metaphysical level, the topic of maintaining a piece of the past and its role in the present and beyond opens up ideas surrounding what it means "to be." The human conception of “being” is one of consciousness and yes, technically that is also included in the “being” I’m referencing. But for me, that’s one small aspect of the full extent of “being” as I refer. That “being” encompasses all and any degree of consciousness, but also all that is not directly revealed to our minds. We are the universe in some material configuration that connects with and interacts with other material configurations. Though separate, we come together to produce more of each other – literally grown out of each other’s cells. And yet, I have to consistently explain that we are truly not separate in any real or long-term sense – clearly we’re all made of the same building blocks – which goes through all humans as well as literally any other carbon-based life-form and the surrounding environment. When we don’t exist in these current manifestations with (seemingly) separate consciousnesses, it also doesn’t mean we don’t exist on other material levels. Whether a plastic bag that will take 10,000 years to disintegrate or the average human that’ll be dust in a century or two, there are a finite number of possibilities for configuration. That should not be taken as: come into consciousness, fuck shit up and destroy the ride, but rather, enjoy the ride so that others can too. From an empathetic perspective, imagine having to wait until you get to experience some consciousness again – maybe never – do you want to leave everything a damn mess so that someone else who has one shot to drink clean water and eat fresh fruit has to instead pick through a wasteland of nuclear detritus just because you couldn’t turn lights off when you left a room? The universe is so vast, one may be the only time around.
When I think about how that could be translated into a livable system,that's where I get both super hopeful and existentially depressed all at once. When I am explaining for the fiftieth time that no, I don't think any one person should have the right, regardless of ability, to accrue as much as possible while any one other person has nothing to eat, the mountain hermit retreat begins to call to me in my mind. At this point, we’re advanced enough to automate most of our needs and we literally have stockpiles of shit in warehouses to last us generations, but if and only if everyone is willing to wear trends from 20 years ago so we can finally get rid of all of those fucking pairs of JNCO jeans.
