It’s not scary anymore. The days seem much the same to me. Ms. Rs workweek starts on Thursday, and runs through Wednesday. It has changed since I retired. It’s just another day.
But, not really.
The momentum of a life of showing up to someone else’s business does not dissipate over night. I still dream of the job sometimes. Why wouldn’t I? Spending a lot of time in one place affects your horizon, and it’s hard to look beyond it. My friend Michael, who also owned the business, told me it took 6 months after selling the store to the current owners for him to stop dreaming about it on a nightly basis. Of course, he had more riding on it than me.
I need to become invisible. Not with some bull shale HarryPopMagic bent, but in a image promotion way. I am part way their already: my age, my whiteness, my cis privilege. That nonsense is laughable to me. I want to remove myself from unwanted interactions. I have a lot of work to do. I have accomplished one important part. I don’t take a poll to live my life. I am largely uninterested in people I don’t already know. Sometimes I am curious about spectacles, but I don’t want to go deep. I am comfortable with the surface. I’m training myself to write fiction. I am not interested in the crowd. I strive to be impartial, even though that is a struggle for a person living in “society.”
HEROES
We don’t know any of these people. We hardly know ourselves, in this unreal culture that reflects unreality on it’s inhabitants. The light exists within, and the crowd is a bushel basket that hides the light. We overestimate our abilities, and underestimate our strength. We are a prey animal, and we are the apex predator. Some behave heroically, without accepting what it means. To turn the other cheek. The fear of missing out. The eternal paradox: too much time alone warps you in ways you can’t recognize. Too much time with other people erodes your individuality. “IT A DILEMMA!”1 Please inoculate yourself with 24-7-365 screentime. It’s in the bar, it’s on your wall, IT’S IN THE POCKET.
People worship the heroes, but they are the ones who give them power, they are the power. Belief is everything. Belief moves mountains. Belief destroys towns. And societies. We are not worthy. Fervent belief allows us to tell others what to do.
It’s for your own good.2
Beatles or Stones? Bootsy or Sly? The illusion or the reality? What good does it do you? We mimic what we love, and what we hate. Soon it becomes hard to tell the difference. You are what you eat. What you consume leaves a mark. I carry the echoes of people who were forced off their land so a rich swinging dick could make a profit running sheep on a tenant farm. The largesse granted to the tenement dwellers made them richer than the kings of yore, but everything waxes, everything wanes. Scratchy record.
What use are you?
Heroes fallin’ to the ground
Like Hell’s magnet pulls me
Down
Oh, on my knees
I try to please
His eyes, his idol eyes
Bill Griffith writes my life. “Where kitsch is king, depth is all on the surface.”
https://zippythepinhead.com/media/five.jpg
SOURCE: TRUST ME, BRO.
Canceling out the distractions is proving to be difficult for me, I am trying though with little tiny steps, I think.
"Remove myself from unwanted interactions." Loud and clear.