Think I'll use this post to address a couple items of a somewhat (though not overly) personal nature. I got a Friday afternoon to kill and it's about time I put this blog to some use, even if this comes across as slightly ostentatious. So without further ado, I bring you:
2 ITEMS OF IMPORTANCE!
1) Item 1: Tense of Thought:
I've been noticing a disturbing mental trend lately [cue the ominous music, let it build a little bit, your heartbeat is slowly accelerating, this tension is building, even the actors are holding their breaths . . . and then BAM]: my thoughts have been increasingly forming themselves in the future tense. It's beginning to worry me. I'll try to explain why.
Here are some vague examples of the phenomenon: Next year I'll have enough money to move out of this dingy apartment . . . Soon I'll be able to start paying back these student loans that have been hanging over my head . . . Hopefully Jasmine will drop by tonight . . . I'll start running again when the weather gets nicer . . . When I . . . If things . . . Later . . . etc.
Basically, I seem to be engaging in a battle against the present, armed rather sparsely with these generalized and suppositious hopes that the "hereafter" will be a better place, a more productive and fulfilling time than the now . . . but I've lived long enough to know that the "hereafter" is a mad beast, always threatening my dreams with claws bared like knives sharp and glinting with unpredictability as the beast fosters it's perpetual momentum, while I'm usually (almost paradoxically) bracing myself against it, turning away from it, trying to keep my balance as it rushes all around me and, as I'm swaying (teetering if you will), I'm thinking about all those opportunities that the future is tearing away from me.
I don't know if I'm putting this into words well (if you haven't noticed, I'm feeling a bit melodramatic, must have something to do with the overcast skies today, this cabin fever, the lingering smell of the mac & cheese I cooked for lunch . . . which is subtly turning to the smell of fart) . . . I guess (you'll have to excuse this bromidic metaphor) it feels like I'm trying to gain satisfaction by painting these grandiose, idealistic visions of the Tomorrow. The thing is, every time I embellish the future with these hopes (as humble as they are), the now inevitably turns uglier in contrast. I find myself more complexly trapped and restricted by what is happening, bogged down by these things of the moment and perpetually frustrated by the evanescent nature of possibility . . . I'm a full-fledged sucker when it comes to this potent and addictive drug of abstract potential that keeps me among the ranks of the lotophagi.
Not to make this more serious than it really is, but if I were the detective assigned to this case, I would bet a pretty penny that the culprit behind this outburst of future tense mischief is Mr. Discontent himself, that unfortunate shadow permanently hinged to existence. And, of course, this is unsettling to me. I'm twenty-six years old. I have more than two thirds of my life ahead of me [knock on wood], I can afford to let the future be for a little bit, try to enjoy the simple, yet mind blowing fact of my existence (I rejoice, therefore I am). I mean, if you think about it, the future is like a politician, full of absurd promise and always trying to win your trust. And, of course, it's tempting to believe that he's not simply trying to manipulate you, that he actually means to make these things come true if you hand him your vote, but let's face it, politics (just like law, fortune-telling, and slam poetry) is substantiated by the art of bullshit.
Anyway, continuing down this path (which is really a trajectory defined by a complete immotility, a spellbound stasis, an illusion of motion as time moves things around the dopey-eyed, unwavering disciple of Future) is going to eventually turn me into a laudator temporis acti (which is Latin for a person who's been effectively hollowed out, gutted, by the future they inhabit).
So, with the god that is the Internet as my witness, I hereby declare that for now on I will make an honest effort to believe in the future only so much as the present moment may craft it, to recognize the limitations of the future tense, and strive to kindly return the immediacy with which the world addresses me.
Didn't mean for that issue to turn so long-winded, but hey, how do I know what I think until I see what I write? I gotta work these things out. So on to the second item.
2) Item 2: Am I loser?
I currently have the honor of being an employee of a software company called Yillitech (which you've never heard of before), and the job pretty much consists of sitting in front of a computer typing for at least eight hours a day , though I usually put in overtime and try to get a healthy eleven hours of work in a day (since my salary's basically equivalent to that of a dishwasher and I have bills to pay and I can guarantee you this living ain't cheap these days). Because all I need is internet access for me to work, I'm rarely obligated to leave my apartment. In fact, leaving my apartment sometimes even makes me feel unproductive.
When I was hired for the position a year ago, it seemed like a godsend (I was previously working IT over at John Dewey High School, which is pretty much the south end of the borough, right next to Brighton Beach, meaning a five o'clock (a.m.) wake up, nearly two and a half hours of bus commute a day, and I even had to teach a typing class, which the kids actually resented me for, so being hired by a web-based company like Yillitech seemed analogous to being given a permanently paid vacation. I could work wherever I wanted . . . which made the weeks following my hiring perhaps the most thrilling portion of my professional life to date). But, as I just tried to communicate in that rant above, the future has a way of turning things on their head. The cutest dogs smell the most repugnant . . . or, as Jasmine would say, the drugs are too good to be true. As of right now, my social network is limited to e-mail with co-workers, a once a month visit to my mum who lives over on Long Island (a place I've never been shy of voicing my qualms about), my nephew stopping by my apartment on his way home from school, or Jasmine dropping in whenever she feels like it (this feeling of hers usually having something to do with being high on something).
The weird thing is I don't know if I'm complaining about my life or not. To be honest, I don't know how I ended up in this situation, but it seemed to happen naturally enough. I just kind of started to let most my relationships with people dwindle, grow stale, more or less fall apart from neglect until I reached my current status: an ascetic with a computer. I've even started to feel a bit like a stranger when I'm out in the neighborhood and I can't tell if I prefer it this way or not -> hence the question -> "Am I a loser?" (notice how I used data pointers " -> " to construct that statement).
It's a funny question. My conception of the word loser was a very concrete, easily defined noun in high school and, even in college, I could tell you (quite objectively) whether or not someone was a loser within half an hour of having met them (granted that I had the opportunity to ask the right questions). Now, I dunno . . . so much. The older I get, the more obvious it is that if life is a game, it's one can't be won.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mean for that to be a pessimistic assertion, it's just seems clear to me that there are no set rules to human affairs, that we're making it up as we go along, and the more people trying to "win" the game, the more messy things end up getting. And, still, despite my making the argument against life being a game, it's impossible to deny that there's a desire to win, to triumph, to overcome in life (at life), no matter how atavistic a notion that it seems to be.
Anyway, I'm gonna wrap this up (the longevity of this post seems to put me in the loser schema by default). What I'm trying to get at is that if life is a game, or more aptly a competition (which would make winners and losers possible), then I can't take the competition any more seriously than a game of Monopoly. Which might seem to create some tension with the ideas I was throwing around while addressing item one, but the basic point is this:
I am mad confused. Which is awesome. I feel like I could take on the world right now. And if you think my clumsy vocabulary and stuttering presentation is funny, I'll knock the teeth out of your mouth, because I'm a big boy and, loser or not, I know how to hold my own. I slice the paper to confetti with my commas; I won't think twice about ending a sentence's journey with the violent smackdown of a period (die motherfucker! die!); I dole out apostrophes as if they were cheaper thing on the planet; I make a sentence go schizophrenic crazy with semicolons; and I won't hesitate to get up in your face with an exclamation mark! And, through all this chaos, I somehow manage to keep my head balanced and lucid. Hyah! [High kick to your mind like the karate kid]
Mad confused yo, whoo, I'm dizzy . . . this is wonderful!
Peace.
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