AN EMAIL EXCHANGE or, shaking hands with monday morning

THE NAMES OF THE INNOCENT, OF DEPERATE ACTS, OF BODY PARTS AND SUCH, HAVE BEEN OMITTED OR REPLACED BY xxxx.


ME:
i had a heavenly weekend, because it was kicked off by depravation and repression. once i was liberated from my captors, i was free to bounce back and overindulge in everything i wanted, mostly food and beer and fishing and xxxxx. actually, ONLY food and beer and fishing and xxxxx.

i don't remember much from friday, as the drugs i was on create amnesia, xxxxxx.

i had some interesting thoughts while lying in a hospital cot waiting for the procedure. i realized very very clearly that this is where we all end up. we are all headed for a hospital cot in the middle of some non-descript hospital, waiting to die. it was bone chilling.

my father died in a place like that. i will die in a place like that. an unknown entity, a piece of meat, a distraction to those who are there to earn their paycheque. it was so so cold. but you cannot pay people to actually care, which is the beauty of love - and why it is the loneliest colony.

i discovered a fear of death i had never known before. i have never feared death, because i never saw how it would come. i assumed the best, you know, as people are wont to do - it would be in my sleep in my bed, it would be in the blink of an eye somehow, somewhere far far away. but the truth is, it will feel just like i felt lying there: unimportant. unnecessary. that terrified me. what is this life for? i kept asking myself and never got a concrete answer. my faith in my own beliefs was shaken.

yes, it fades quickly today, the concerns of work, of energy, of friends, of basketball, of duty and responsibility, drowning out the big question. I had no religious epiphany or yearning for god, lying there. i just had the sense that, even if i write the next pedantic novel that changes people's minds for 250 years, even if i have children who learn to fly, even if i make a zillion dollars and cure poverty, i would lie there and wonder the same questions, i would lie there and feel the same way.

so how do i prevent it? temper it? obliterate it? what can i do now to prevent me lying there feeling unnecessary? the world will not stop when i leave it. the world will not be made much different by anything i do to it. the only thing i can do in this life that is of any real value is to love... i think.

i'm on shaky ground. it is uncomfortable to have your foundations rocked. mine are still wobbling. thoughts?


YOU:
some thoughts+
I am chilled by the imagery and thoughts you explore.

When I was 5, i realized that I would one day take the long sleep in the ground and that the world would continue without me... I wept in my mother's lap saying "I don't want to die, I don't want to die". I have been the same person since that day, it's one of the great watershed moments of my development.

That is probably when I grew up, and ever since I've been struggling to unknow that feeling of dread... true that your life's greatest value is to you. the living of it is infinitely greater than the results of it...those who change the world forever still feel pain and die as an individual... life is a gift to the person who is living it... and Love is the essence of feeling, which is the essence of living.

You are such a lover already, too much thought about the inevitable isn't good for anyone. You'll die one day, I'll die one day... a fate that is not negotiable. it feels like it should be, because the details of our lives become SO important to us...but such is the nature of being human.

This life is for living. that's why I hate TV. that's why I love my bicycle... Saturday afternoon I played on my bike at the CNE grounds for an hour... drifting in slow circles around some cement flower beds and flag poles, making a little obstacle course for myself... I was 8 years old, or whenever it was that I could have fun and no worries... I only started doing art when I was 25, so that never makes me feel young, it makes me feel good, but it makes me feel older... the bicycle makes me feel young. I am also wobbly today... "xxxxxxxxxxxxher arms xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx far awayxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"


END

how wonderful to have friends who want to shield you from the world.

"Friend, we are lost in a storm of our own creation! "
"farn, you're standing on my roof, it's february, and you're wearing my robe"
"then what are you wearing?"
"a tea cosy"
"oh, how nice, let's have some tea"
"that's what i said"
"i thought you said jump"
"i did, i said 'jump in the shower if you're cold'"
"so what are we doing up here"
"i am protecting you from yourself"
"am i dreaming?"
"i am flattered, but no"
"good"
"good"

END 2

the curse

i need money for school

my job is making me more miserable than i can imagine

i need money for debts

my job is making me spend money to manage my miserableness

i need money for a house

my job doesn't pay me enough to comfortably shack up in the city

lesson? i need money. i hate my job. welcome to the rat race.

i'm so tired, so depressed when i get home, that i have no energy to do anything other than think about what i would rather be doing if i had the energy.

my new job just expanded my hours, from 7-5.

so far i have worked from 7-6:15, and from 7-5. who knows what tomorrow holds!

forget about making plans! because you'll never know when you'll be done!

forget about having nerd monday with your friends! mondays will generally have me leaving work at 8, as I found out today i'm in charge of the metals and mining weekly (a report that goes to print every monday)!

forget about playing basketball, i can barely think, let alone play a sport for 3 hours.

forget about doing anything during the week, because i've become a moron: i have no wit left, no energy for kindness, no energy for compassion, i'm dead. i have to be in bed by 10:30 at the latest, to repeat the cycle. come friday night, i'm dead, so i get saturday. come sunday, i'm already thinking about monday. one 'free' day.

what kind of life is this...
how have we locked ourselves into this?

i saw a homeless man sleeping in the park after work and saw only freedom.

fuck this

So I have been given a raise. I accepted it, along with heaps of praise, because to not accept it would arouse suspicions. While I fully believe in arousal, I prefer my suspicions to be had before and after work, much like bowel movements.

As much as editing business material can be dull, I did have a rather interesting discussion with a man I believe I would be correct in calling a genius.

We’ll call him Peter. Peter is a legend in the financial world for writing engaging, thought provoking pieces on global events and how these events are interrelated, their ramifications, and how to predict various fallouts and benefits to be had by tracking them. Then he deciphers their meaning. He is a serious man, but engaging and pleasant, a very strong twinkle in his ‘glad to be alive’ eyes. The kind of man you want to have at your salon (no, I don’t cut hair or do nails).

He wrote a piece on how ‘the Princess Bride’ was really a treatise on the benefits of the gold standard. It was incredibly convincing and I do not doubt for a moment that the fairy tale (condensed in the film version) was indeed about money.

Peter is an artist with a gift for making money, or making others money by predicting changes and trends in world markets. And he makes a lot of people a lot of money by doing what he does.

Some of the junior Peter’s in my office were reading Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’, a large treatise on the benefits of godless capitalism, or individualism. This book is standard reading at my office. Not only is it read by all, but the philosophy established by Rand in this book (objectivism) is their religion, and I don’t use that term lightly. They are objectivists to the same degree that there are Christians.

As an example, one of the discussions to evolve from the book was the idea that people in wheelchairs who do not-much and watch television are worthless. (I countered that, without them, the creative people that are making television for wheelchair-bound watchers aren’t able to make a living, but the objectivists were not to be deterred, so I countered with, what if you send the non-creative, non-contributing members of society to a place where they are left to fend for themselves, or to labour camps (it’s a slippery slope), and then one of them has an idea that will forever alter our world for the good, but the opportunity is gone? – they, again, were not to be deterred from their belief that selfishness is the way to cure mankind’s ills).

So we were discussing this book (read: me arguing with them), and I was saying that, in our society, as in most on earth, we value human life above all other rights (I will not enter an abortion debate here, however). So, if that is the case, and we live in a free market economy, why do doctors make less than your standard CEO? Do we value doctors less?

This is where Peter walked into the conversation. He said, ‘I have always wondered why doctors make less than investment advisors. Is it simply a matter of time before the market corrects itself?’.

To paraphrase some more, Peter felt that money is pure, that it has no bias, that it finds its own level, and that therefore, either doctors will end up getting paid more eventually, or the market IS accurate, and investment advisors are worth more.

I suggested that, perhaps because investment advisors help to create wealth, they also save lives indirectly, ie – a family comes to Canada, invests their savings, and sends their children off to university, and they have families, and they invest, and they raise their family lineage out of poverty and into comfort and health, via wealth (the correlation between the standard of living and quality of life, life expectancy, and infant mortality rates is irrefutable, but refute if you feel like it).

Perhaps the investment advisors along the way have saved the lives of generations of this family. Perhaps this is why they are rewarded more than doctors. Peter thought that this was a fair assessment and probably explains the discrepancy between salaries.

Upon reflection, I’m sure that there are examples of investment advisors who err, who make mistakes, who cost lives indirectly… but I couldn’t shake Peter’s notion that money is pure – it does not play favourites.

The doctor makes less than the advisor because the large scale effects of their efforts are different. No, not on an individual basis if a doctor has saved you or a family member’s life, but on a macro view (and money is both macro and micro, although we’re dealing with its aggregate cumulative effect and resulting compensation/valuation) advisors do more good than doctors.

I did, however, come across a glitch that Peter didn’t mention: perhaps money isn’t pure, but it carries with it the bias of those who agree to trade it.

Perhaps we value our collective amount of money more than we value our collective of people, and that is why the advisor earns more than a doctor, a teacher earns less than a street car driver, a marketer more than an airline pilot. I can't get, save, spend, earn your life, but i can get, save, spend, and earn your money. the person affects the outcome.

Meaning: money ends up valuing money. That is the inherent bias. Money is alive, possessing the same self-replicating desires as humans, the evolutionary process completed by humans in its quest to make more of itself. it is alive because it does not die without you, it has a symbiotic relationship with you, it needs you like you need it. in the collective pysche, it will be kept alive. you cannot stop it.

In this sense, Money acts as a virus.

And so a human infected by money ends up valuing money more than humans because the money, as a concept, is a commonly understood means of survival - the seflish human needs the pure money. the selfish human needs to help money replicate. those who help money replicate are worth more than other people because they keep me alive longer.

money is the doctor to my time on earth.

A stretch?

Perhaps. But it would explain why we pay Peter C$1,700,000 every 12 months, whereas we pay a heart surgeon less than 1/3 of that amount to literally take your life in her hands in a way that Peter never ever ever will.

I’m not sure either way. Both argument are compelling, and I’m sure there are more. But as it stands right now, it seems that our society views individual wealth creation more than anything else because it keeps us alive

And Ayn Rand, the destroyer, the selfish, is laughing all the way to her godless rotting hell.

there are songs that move me to tears.

many of them reflect what i believe about myself to be romantic and tragic and courageous and heroic and doomed. i view myself as a tragically misunderstood genius. i cry at a part in a song that says: "yeah there's an undertow, but it ain't got me" because i feel that's me—precariously, dangerously dancing on the edge of my demise. bouyed by nothing but courage and destiny and lies and tears.

and when others don't agree, don't see this truth, it just makes me believe even more in my tragic genius-trapped-in-a-world-that-doesn't-understand persona. it's a win-win situation for me. i get to feel like a genius, no matter what is thrown my way. no matter how many times i prove my stupidity, i fumble for words, i don't remember the root of a word, or the name of a play, or the line from a film, or what 12 plus 89 is, i will always know that it is simply that i am misunderstood.

today, when talking to a guy at work, basically begging him to get his boss to open his door to sign an edited ready-to-go piece, i said "help us obi-wan-kenobi, you're our only hope". there were two ladies in the room at the time, my office mate, and my boss. they both laughed outrageously. later, my boss commented on how funny it was that obi-wan's name is ben, and the guy i was asking for the favour's name was ben. they had assumed i did this on purpose. i had no idea. but i shortly realized that, of course, it was my inner secret genius operating through my often stupid outer-facing consciousness. that sneaky genius in there! slipping out when i least expect it.

i'm not this way all the time. i'm not smug. i can be arrogant. i'm generally not. i would rather laugh than insult. would rather laugh than many things. am not generally concerned with genius. am more concerned with eating. with playing basketball and not smoking and not blowing up like a blimp, and finding a place to call home, to call my own, to have a family or a dog or a beer. wine works better, but is harder to drink on patios in the summer.

courage.

is it courageous to do what must be done?
to sing out loud on your bike on the way to work?
to have a tube seeking cancer shoved up your rectum until you want to throw up?
to have a tube seeking cancer shoved down your throat until you throw up?

i have considered these things.
it's courageous to do what must be done. to not admit that survival is an act of courage is to discredit all those who fight so hard to stay alive, so that others might be blessed with their presence, comforted by their voices, made happy by their laughter.

life is fleeting, and we don't sing enough, but we sing when we can, where we're comfortable. we sing to make ourselves happy, to make the world a better place, to make our friends giggle, our lovers love, our fighters fight.

i sing on my way to work because i'm happy to be biking, to see the CN tower, to have the wind in my face, to not smoke, to have love at home sleeping, to make a little money to survive another day, to make my friends proud, my family, to see my mom, to go to newfoundland again, to eat delicious food.

i sing because i'm a cheeky little misunderstood genius whose greatest gift is that i can't stop smiling.

yes, i'm impetuous and a nuisance, and arrogant and immature. and so are we all! this big rambling ball of shit is our playground. let's play. by brave. sing.