Fungible Dirigible

I know that I keep revisiting this issue, but I think I am finally coming to terms with it. I was raised to be contemptuous of the average, the commonplace, the ordinary. I needed to expect more and strive to be more than just a survivor, but now I realize that this egotism was out of perspective. Copland wrote the Fanfare for the common Man for a reason, and all the artists I respect created their works for everyone to enjoy. All of the millions of everyday people, going to work as shopkeepers, clerks, laborers, tradesmen, etc., they are the bastion of civilization, that is ordinary life. They have families and they had dreams, maybe they didn't get the training, the breaks to make a career as a writer, a musician, an actor or skater. Maybe when they come home, they pull out the guitar, take a deep breath, set finger to string and out comes Bach. Or Greensleeves. Or Smoke on the Water. For a moment, they are a star, they touch the transcendant mystery beyond language.
It's not as easy as it seems to be a waiter, to hang a door correctly, to prepare a really good meal or teach other people's spoiled kids all day. It is an achievement to just 'make it', especially in this day and age. Its not wrong to strive, to have ambitions, but I cannot lose sight of what it means to be just happy to be alive. It is an achievement to be a good husband, a good father, a good employee. There is no shame in it. The extraordinary is the extraordinary for a reason, if everyone could run a sub-5 minute mile, the record would be 2:10. In our media saturated-age, its common to see advertisements for luxury vehicles with payments larger than my combined car payment, rent and food expenses. This is making it? This is a good deal for me?

So what if someone never climbed Everest, or had a hit record. Sometimes, I have done extraordinary things in the past and it hasn't made much of a difference. I still fear my government, still feel I could've done more, still feel that powerless emptiness in the face of unnamed, half-imagined fear, the unknown machinations at work around me in their backroom dealings. Here's to the everyday person, the neighbor, the daughter, the father. Here is appreciation of the employee, the friend just doing their job and looking for enjoyment in their spare time, who pays taxes and votes and mows their lawn. It's out of line, that old 60's attitude of contemt for Pleasant Valley and its tract-house suburban sameness. This is the background, the fabric of the world and society.

Fucking it just lost my goddam post. If I wanted to delete, I can do that without logging in or signing up or registering. Oh, well, can't expect much for free. Now I have to cut and paste until it works. Thought they had fixed it.

Yikes....
Oh. OK.

Well, I thought I'd go back and read some of previous posts objectively, wondering if they seem utterly insane or threatening. Wondering if they seem like someone who would climb the Texas Tower and start smoking folks. Honestly, to review myself, it doesn't seem that way in retrospect. If anything, maybe some of them are too sane. Any sniping looks like it would be done safely within the proper areas, and my (jargon here) schema seems congruent with my perception, for the most part. Still, it would be good for me to do hypergnostics ASAP. It's all good.

Information in the form of ideas are the force that drives the evolution of human consciousness. Ideas cannot be jailed, tortured or killed. Once out in the public realm, they can spread like a virus or like fire, and cannot be stopped or recalled. If people choose to preserve ideas and to act on them, to stand up for what they believe and do the hard thing, the right thing, then this is the Revolution, the only one there is.

I just read this fucking outrageous insanity here: Roe V Wade and I had to write something down quick before I forgot it. This is an insight which has not been given near enough thought or attention, and that is basically to look at RVW on a strictly legal basis, examining the consequences of each argument. In seeking to have her verdict overturned, McCorvey seems to be saying that women are 1) not capable of making their own reproductive choices and need the law to circumscribe their decisions. And 2) that criminalizing abortion will solve the problem. The ideal solution is to have the State not having any role at all in the decision to reproduce or not. This is not a realm in which the State should have one iota of say-so whatsoever. To have laws regarding abortion means that the State has defacto legal control over the uterus, and that a woman's own body is not her property. This opens the door to the legal status of chattel or slavery, where a woman is basically denied full control of her body and what happens to it. This is undoubtedly the same legal status as the slaves had, where the Master of the plantation had say-so, de facto legal control over the bodies of the slaves that belonged to them. I am really shocked that people don't see how, when abortion is criminalized, that when women are deprived of ANYTHING that they can do to their own body, they are no longer the full owners of their own physical bodies. Why is this not obvious to anyone but me? Why aren't all women across this country rising up in arms over this- if this outrageous overreaching of the Feds doesn't start driving people to the voting booth, the shooting range, the computer and the printing presses, absolutely nothing will. Mc Corvey, in saying she was wrong, is basically saying that she is not responsible for her own body and needs certain actions barred from her legal purview. As if the threat of criminal sanction is enough to prevent unplanned pregnancy. Shit.

I need to think about how I want my life to look if everything was exactly right, more or less. If everything was exactly perfect. I will do myself a service by being precise and clear about that as an end goal, then I think that level of clarity will allow me to move forward, inexorably in that direction. The idea i am playing with right now, the common element, the baseline is this: All survival-type of bills (rent/mortgage, food, health ins., transportation) are all paid for by investment income such as interest, renting space, capital gain, etc. I dream of waking up in the morning and being able to do as I please, when I please. To not leave the house if I don't want to. To not have to come to work if I don't want to. I am not talking about the lap of luxury either. The idea is to be able to survive no matter what happens job-wise, to have food and shelter regardless of what someone else thinks of my performance, etc. To not have to answer to anyone. My cousin put this eloquently as "Fuck-You Money". Part of the solution is to baseline these survival costs and say- 1000 per month will do it, or 500/month will do it. Maybe 200 a month and living in the car will do it. Perhaps 500 a month interest income and 500/month part time job plus student insurance, NOW I am thinking in the right direction.

I think that Olney is going to work out. There is only one fly in the ointment, and it is handle-able. **Deep Breath** **Sigh** Piano is going well, I picked up a new student. If I had 10 more, I'd be able to do it full-time. Provided nobody ever cancelled. I'm getting there in my playing also, I think in another year or two, I might be decent.

I am in the market for a cheap, fixer-upper house too. I am going to live in one room and rent out another. Right now, I am investigating a listing I saw for 7900. I think it was a typo. Usually people pay in the entirety in cash for these and apparently they go fast. Mobile home is right out, ground rent is out also. More later on that.

I think it is time for me to experiment with an undirected consciousness, free and clear of past and future. Free and clear of large goals, quests, striving, ego-related identity questions. Just the present moment is all there is. Nothing has to be, nothing is lacking, nothing to change. No enemy, no threat and above all, no conditioning. If I see this as a stage in my development, does it mean that I have shaken all of my conditioning? Or have I merely gotten enough success to be comfortable with myself, or not feel too underachieving. I should just say fuck it and smoke a bowl. This could be, other than my work obligations, a lengthy vacation perhaps..... I guess I just have enough obligation right now, and I don't want to feel like i hafta this or hafta that or gotta be better, gotta be enlightened, wealthy, skinny, getting plenty nooky. Gotta save the world, drive a nice car, crush the Bilderbergers. And I gotta have good hair while I am doing that, or points off or something. I am determined to work hard at letting all that shit just go. I've been working hard at it, a slave to that deranged mentality for 30 years, I think I deserve a vacation from whatever it is I think I'm supposed to be. I am sick to death of needing and wanting to be better, of chasing and attaining goals when all they seem to get me is just broke. I am declaring my freedom to not live up to anything, I am declaring my freedom that the only thing I have to do is live and die, not only that, but try to enjoy my life as best I can.

I don't like it down here.

"Kinda like cloud, I was up
Way up in the sky,
And i was feeling some feelings you wouldn't believe
Just then a little tiny dot caught my eye
I watched it way too long
It was pulling me down-

I was up above it-!
NOW I"M DOWN IN IT"

----------Trent Reznor, Nine inch nails
"Down in it" from Pretty Hate Machine