Friday, March 14, 2014

The problem is in not wanting to get up out of bed, knowing the shift you're about to face, the eight straight hours on your feet, followed by the unwinding, always pushing you deep into the night's blackness with nothing to do but find entertainment in a screen, the mind dulled down by the painkilling wine, ready for conversations, no one to have them with.  Shift starts at 4:30.   Years there thrown down a rathole.  Nobody likes people who fail, who don't rise above their circumstances,  fall immediately to sleep when they should, get up when they should.  The subject goes through the failure of such things, and it doesn't make him happy about himself.  But quitting is not the America way.  You shrug, sure, we all have to work at something.  Ten years go by.  No savings added up.  Health insurance, yes.  Work until you drop scenario.

Math and sciences is what the new generation needs.  Wasn't a bright idea to be an English major.  What good does it do, as far as economies, is a good point.  To help you understand science better, to peer into the mind of creation as a poet can?   Or, on the other hand, are you just not standing up enough for writing, by actively participating in it, largely because of the job you have, the great settling for something that isn't what you want.  Is there a spiritual core to bar tending, I wonder?  Are you the good samaritan, for offering the ear you do when dust settles?  But there's no chance that keeping such a job will bring you closer to being an adult, able to have a family…  What's the point of it all, then, this non career.

Jesus tells the seventy two to not take anything along with them, for them not to bring any food along, for them not to worry about it, as houses worthy of the teachings will welcome them, otherwise leave and shake off the dust.   Meaning, if we run with this small item so as to invest it with meaning rather than dismiss it as a meaningless part of the poem, that the teaching disciples don't need to engage in pointless side work, don't need to offer to be laborers for their small keep.  Is that not one of the main points of the teachings anyway, not to worry…


"Look, you, middle aged man child white boy, no one is ever going to be interested in what you write, or about your sissy book about the problems of an elite college young fart.  You're  not a minority.  You're just supposed to do your part in society:  be disciplined, be boring, be a lawyer, sell chemicals, live in the suburbs, send kids to private school, basically be something the rest of the world can have as an example to be envious and contemptuous of, to cast mean dismissive looks at.  Even though you've personally proved yourself for being twenty five years in the service industry, humbly waiting on all folks.  Still, it's easier to think of you as a boring responsible thing of contrast to the exciting potent, un restrained minority..."

Thank you.  But I am a minority, even as a numerical majority, that of blood type, blood type O, the oldest, the universal donor, the original top of the food chain human being, who shares a greater metabolic physical resemblance with people of all shades, stripes and colors, who needs aerobic exercise to keep from going nuts, with worries of inflammation in every part of the body…  And because I am an O, I need to write:  it's the only thing that makes me feel decently, on every level you can think of.  I write as a specimen of that kind of humanity, if not all humanity, whether or not I am to be ignored out of the most superficial of reasons, religion, skin color, greying blond hair, skinny bones, etc.  We're all part of the human family, manifesting all its range.  If you're one thing, then subtly, I'm another, and yet even more subtly, we are all the same.  Have I consciously styled myself to be something?  Or did I just be, whatever came naturally...

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