a post then a letter then a post: Talcott and Leeds

I am down in engineering. This machine is not where I work, but the place where the internet comes in, which means the movies, the music, the email—contact in a way—the teletype. Meanwhile, I don’t have much idea of what is going on—what ever that means. I felt strange, here felt strange, like the sky was stealing breaths, taking long greedy inhalations and not letting go. So I looked into it. The barometer was falling. A storm was on its way. I been thinking today, yes. After reading P's post I wanted to be involved—what ever that means. I have opinions, know things, know what I don’t know about others, and part of me (that is part of me) has a belief that the information is out there and behind a veil all will be revealed. That other part of me thinks that this revelation is made through the inquiry. Only one thing I don’t like, and can smell it like a hound—an absolute.

P, I started this as a post. I don’t know if it has its place there, except to say I am warming-up my cultural criticism on your lead. First, it seems there is a problem; I mean, you know, something wrong. It’s like a question, that wrongness it seems. And the answer, or remedy is made out of materials at hand. It's some sort of push and pull, action reaction. I can’t see things as right, see. I got something that says, "no". I imagine this as ethics. There is this book. Well, there are lots. Even, there is Shaw…but, anyway. Not that I have read Shaw, only some of his words. This first book I didn’t mention says something along these lines—and it is about the idealist, how they want to realize their vision, and how it is different from what they see around them. The idealist's opposite is not the realist, but the mediocre.


There is a great word in Spanish. And imagine, it is a compliment. It was used for me once. I remember it like a ribbon. The word is inquieto. It means, in its most course translation, restless. But like I said it is a compliment. It means unsatisfied. A compliment. How is this possible? Only if you take the state of a man, not as a pathological aberration (see Du Bois, "how does it feel to be a problem"), or something to be medicated or theraputed away—but having a cause. And then having a cause, inquieto has a purpose, something to realize. Passion has received blows like a rusty nail, easier to smash flat than pull out—that is, when there is some interest in recycling the board. Bless the Spanish language, if for nothing more than that.

And bless the French, and I will explain why, and based on the particulars of personal experience too. When I went there and people talked they asked each other 'why' they thought what they thought, what ever that might be. Sometimes the question was 'how.' There was a level of seriousness--in its personal application: respect. Let’s flip it in an exposure by contrast with the factory touched barrios we know; the response would be this: “You’re crazy.” And crazy, like 'different' or pissing the right people off becomes a nuanced divination, an aspiration. At least that’s how I see it. There when someone took someone seriously, it was not an attention to identity in the way we might think, but by thoughts—that stuff going on in there. Trust based on observations and evidence with the possibility of agreement, not conformity.

Simply said, for what ever reason, and comprehensible I believe, the American seeks a label (a sumation in the name of quarantine, not the process that is personality). Why? Because the American is terrified that value is in someone else's hands, built between people that knows us naked, not on a sham facade--just to have arrived, not the getting there. To the myth of the self-made memory is the enemy. Like a rabbit, always a rabbit, even when hiding under a predators hide--Pets or Meat. "Give me your tired, your poor, your humble masses." This country cultivates weakness and dependence for its own esteem, i.e. power--the big house, known just the same to a passing stranger and can be shown in a picture--to become an icon. There is a moat of blood. Conscience is subdued by calling the world a savage place. And just like that, back to the Middle-ages.


Limits comfort, same as dogs are by orders. I heard this guy talking to his dog while out for a walk. And it wasn’t so different from how I hear people talking to each other--posturing to save face. Status, pure status. Dogs and Americans, for that matter Americans and children are getting closer together, just trying to establish who will wipe whose ass. Order is the ideal—preserve childhood! And so well done with bickering over absolutes (on what to agree) like officialy trying to pronounce a cause of death (to be read over democracy long since gone). I know there is talk of narcissism, perhaps. The way I understand it narcissism is a response to a crisis—the crisis has become terminal. In limiting grief (like all other passions) this culture has gone catatonic. Notice the hunger for the cool—holding-up to off screen tribulations. Emotions are public, meant to be--not the mark of weakness, but engagement; without expression, without a responsibility to thier expression what can there be of freedom? Instead of the bold individual standing alone, a better discription would be insulated; and with one common result—apathy and impotence; and one extraodinary--rage. The nail sends sparks through the machine or is quietly diss-membered.


I have been thinking, wondering about something—safety glasses, masks, that sort of thing; and how men, the brusque ones supposed to have guts scoff at them. There’s something here, I thought, something is going on. What kind of statement is this? What kind of rebellion is this? Courage? And then, let’s just for a second flash back to something I heard in the Army how you could get an Article 15 (an Article 15 is like a misdemeanor); well you could get one for a sunburn—abuse of government property. The indignity of slavery never went away, just lost its color line. What rebellion is left besides self-abuse to demonstrate one’s power when not even your body is your own? Wounds become pride. Obesity dissent. Ignorance protest. People are left with a singular battle, with their own appetites--John Henry against himself, a patron of a most backwardly modern sophistication.

r