2011, a year in review

2011:
A year to Remember and Review

As the snow fell down outside my window this morning, I found myself surprisingly conscious and restless. After pulling myself, shivering, out of bed and shambled to the window I realized there was a serious desire to do two things. I needed to have a smoke, and I needed to have it while enjoying that blissful, heavy, blanket of silence that only comes in a heavy winter snow. This combination of things was one thing, above all things, that paved the way for clear and objective looking.

This combination is much like smoking out in the deep woods, only someone turned the volume down, or those massive  rainstorms that drive everyone off the road in the south. It's like listening to one of your most favorite songs, off an old and battered cassette tape as you barrel down the highway, windows up, cigarette lit, to points and places you haven't even begun to imagine. It's like all those things, but while you're floating inside some private bath of quiet. It is a moment where, if you didn't know better, you could swear the universe had shut itself off, just so you could think.

That's exactly what I did. I sat there, cigarette in mouth, drink in hand, a cloudy haze of sleep deprivation and a head full of uncountable things, all clambering for my attention. What kind of year was the last year of my life? Did I commit to the resolution to live well, and as who I am, rather than continue to water myself down? Did I strive to make my world a better place? Did I stand up and use my voice in all the places I should have? Was I, for the majority, committed to the social obligations and the path I had to take given the strict following of my own creed? Was I the kind of person I wanted to be?

Two Thousand and Eleven was a year wrought with a laundry list of impossibilities, each with degenerate variables and moments that are forever blasted into my consciousness. It was the year I set the shell on fire and blew down the house of cards, it was a year of remarkable perversion and excessive of more debaucherous nature than is fitting or suitable for print. Two Thousand and Eleven saw the rise and fall of a tower that is still mourned, it's saw terrorist leaders grow sideburns and take up eating pies in sequin jumpsuits.

The year had tasted the bitter fruit of deception, saw the unraveling of the fruit and saw its heart collapse. It saw karma come back around, it saw skies set on fire. It found itself lost in France, it found itself listening to Gogol Bordello while taking off to wild destinations with a  car full of gypsy strangers and dogs. It saw unexpected flares and empires crash into the sea. It saw hopes smashed, dreams realized, only after the fact, to be nightmares. The year saw social collisions of cometary caliber and stars blink out of the sky. It felt that warm and comforting hand slide against my back as I dangled my toes over the edge. It was that warm push over the edge that still clings to me when I'm not paying attention.

The January winter through the April stretch set the hallmark for everything that was to come. It was a time where the skin was first beginning to peel back, revealing the shackled beast below. It was a time when teeth gnashed and limbs flung wildly. I'd locked it up for too long, too worried about what it would do if set loose in a place too small to accommodate its impact, and it was not happy with me. The prices were high indeed for the events that transpired in that time, By the end of it I was stumbling drunk, blind, aimlessly shaking around a gas can, and clicking a lighter. Anything, anything was needed as way to dig the bootstraps up and out of the shit pile I'd dumped on then.

I was a fool who let waves of anxiety, of the panic of 'not being good enough', snuff out a candle that promised to rival the sun. I was even dumber to do it hot on the heels of it finally giving me the incentive to jump. It was the type of candle you'd set in the window for a solider who'd gone off to war, or a fishermen who'd gone off despite the storm warnings. It called me to a home I'd forgotten, helped me tear down the shutters and the boards. It shined light inside the deepest and darkest places, it dove in to battle with demons like an ancient Viking Warrior. Brunhilde would have been proud, but the ocean got too weird, too wild, an I didn't hold on enough.

The color of guilt is not a suit I wear often, but neither was the suit of hearts or diamonds, but I wore it for a time. It was a raucous time, a time when the world stood on the edge of a social straight razor, a time when harsh words came spilling out of my mouth to the tune of old music. The house had seen the light of day now, and it was no longer content to lie dormant and forgotten. I had woken the beast, and I wasn't even aware of it, but that wouldn't last long.

The casualties that followed were events of my own design.I'd stared into something that was so bright it's imprint was in front of everything else I saw. It wasn't even an invention of something tangible, but a literal sight, a mirage against the foreground of life. I shut my eyes to try and get a better view but, by then, it was too late. The scavengers and jackals had all started closing in. My world was suddenly populated with sickly junkies, dishonest victims, terminal fools, a band of jackals, and a series of circling buzzards just waiting for that moment when I finally dropped.

I knew the bastards, the vultures, were there too and that had been the worst part. I'd seen them staring down at me, their bald heads glistening in the eclipse, their orange, mangled, bills drooling and snapping in starvation. I'd heard their distant crowing even, but I'd done nothing. I just opted to keep going and refuse to slow down. They didn't care. They came down and took pieces out of me anyway. There weren't anything vital, unlike the wave which still left behind some bruising and wounds, an I knew they'd heal quickly. Still, it was then I decided that reloading the gun was an imminent priority. Life was too short to have buzzards flying around.

The late spring and very beginnings of summer, saw the healing process come to a close. One of my wounds had gotten infected and laid me up about a month and left me with little time to do but think and understand. The last remnants of the shell had fallen away and I was remembering the taste of real oxygen again. I stepped out into the ocean again  I scanned the horizon for days on end, hoping to see a glimpse of the great wave I had found, and there was nothing. I searched and searched, but the tsunami had rolled back out into the world. What I did see, however, was a great beast rising out of the deep water. I fetched my spear and my Queequeg and we were off.

The tirades of debauchery began here, where the old an ancient wisdom of a world I was not yet ready to see, still hung like canvases in an art exhibit. I gave no quarter inhibition, I spared none the words of my mind, regardless of how they might have been taken, I destroyed monsters and killed off parasites.  I ran off bears and cracked a couple dreams. I put my fingers to the paper. I tapped into the raw nerve of my world and began chipping away at the cancerous tumors that had taken up residence during my lapse of observation.

It saw wild parties and midnight trips to the ocean for beer or whatever was on hand. It saw summer days spent under the canopy of rayon, drinking Singapore slings and simply enjoying the fruits life had to offer. It was where I rekindled my love for a good smoke and an even better drink. It reminded me that there was no excuse for half-assing life and settling for something that was only vaguely an outline of what you wanted. We all might be playing Go Fish with the universe but, all at once, something very simple occurred to me.

When playing Go Fish, the card game I should imagine most people remember from their childhood, you've got to know who you're playing with and you've got to run the numbers right. You've got to look at numbers you don't have much of, and guess from there. It's simple, but I'd overlooked something. I was playing with the universe. The universe could have any card it damn well pleased and I had every, fucking, right to ask for it. The scales were tipped, forever, in my favor.

So we had a wake, one for new born bar stools that just didn't make it, and to a man who never really did learn to swim. I set my hat against my heart in a brief and pointed farewell and set my feet back down in the world. It was time to get moving, to put things in boxes and get ready to fly away like I knew I was supposed to do. It was time to get on the phone with friends old and new, a time to start looking away from the shore and remembering just what was on the horizon. It was a time to finally go out there and get it back again.

The late summer saw the whirlwind of falling empires, both big and small, and the world start taking up arms against the injustice. Unfortunately, when I set food in the crowd, they looked like co-mingled lemmings, screaming they'd jump, if only they'd be let off the leashes and out of the shackles. Still, there were enough who saw something they were willing to stand against that, so was I, at least for awhile. By the time that was over, November was upon me, an I had a lot of things I needed  to be doing.

November's always a busy month. There's a lot of Birthdays, generally a few deaths. It's when I generally find my own rising sun and step into its house. It's a house of ill repute and strong desire. It's a place of white hot fire and a sense of carnal indulgent that's probably going to be illegal sometime in my life. It's a month when all bets are off and any and every Legendary beast is mine to slay as often as I want - and that's exactly what I did.

I set out stripping down the world around me, I built big piles of garbage and lit them fire. I built rockets to shoot things into the sun. I honed my voice and picked up the weapons off the shelf. I forged the armor, and then set in on a shelf. I stocked up on Spinach and turned my gaze back to the ocean. I'd swim the fucked if I had to this time, but I was sure to let it know: It's days were numbered. Soon, I'd conqueror it and then, just for good measure, I'd stick a fucking flag in it - it was no time to be overlooking the technicalities after all.

December saw the blueprints hit the table time and time again. It was a long process of number crunching, project scrapping, spending late nights in whiskey baths, smoking fancy cigars and cigarettes. It was a time of scrambling to find some semblance of steps that could be taken to find the best way over and through. I built boats and places. I crafted Jesus Slippers and sat down to try them out. Nothing was quite good enough and then, just after midnight on January first, the call came in.

It was listening to ancient echos spoken by some kind of strange, tribal, people - and they'd obviously just come down off some kind of wild hallucinogen. They were suggesting all manner of crazy and radical ideas and I, after  tending a third party migraine without so much as a drop to drink or a wink to sleep, was having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around just what these people were suggesting. Eventually it occurred to me but, like all things even vaguely associated to hallucinations, everything about them still seemed suspect. Still, their solid and constant center assured me this was the way and soon I'd split the sea and ride the white line all the water in warmer days and later sunrises.

So what was Two Thousand and Eleven? It was a year of repeated metamorphosis, of endless changes and understandings, sometimes at impossible costs. It was a year of decisions and a handful of mistakes. It was a year of finding starlight on the side of the road, when your tire had gone flat. It was a year of building and burning. It was a year that Empires rose and generations fell. It was a year when a lot of things were said, and even more were done. It was a year of adventures and understandings, of wild passion and excessive indulgences in living.  It was a microcosm of absolution and damnation, it was a swirling vortex of yin and yang, and it left nothing the same as it was before.

Still, if there's one thing about it that stands out to me, more than anything else, it's this:

Jeg Elsker Deg. Always.

Thanks 2011 - it was fun.

The High Cost of social Pandering

The High Cost of Social Pandering:
And why it just doesn't pay to say something nice, if it also isn't true

In recent years the world has become a place of excessive political correctness. Every social group imaginable has clambered it's way through the proverbial social trench toward equality - or at least done their absolute damnedest to make an honest go at it. Homosexuals are out in the military, every ethnic group has themselves legally covered by a team of jeering money junkies, and each and every subculture has some, new, social policy in place to see to it that they can't be taken down a peg without some kind of swift and immediate retribution.

It's a world where everyone has a right to be respected, everyone has a right to be loved, and everyone is A-o-fucking-k. It's a world where nobody's problems are really all that real and the suggestion of self improvement is, by and large, paramount to treason in terms of friendship It's become the socially accepted and common practice that, when the world turns cold, entire social masses are given rabies and set loose on the offender; right and wrong have become subjective terms of perception and the notion that, just maybe, someone we know did something bad is both insulting and criminal.

These elements, combined the ever growing ease of social networking, has made it increasingly easier for everyone to cry out against the villains from their perspective soapboxes. More and more voices have begun to cry out against bad boyfriends, horrible people, social injustice, mental abuse and anguish, and every other manner of impressionist, surrealist, self-created, bullshit they can find. The landscape of life is starting to look more and more like a Monopoly board. Everyone's building giant towers to climb upon, defending their property from on high and throwing stones at anyone who won't cross over to their side of the line. While I don't think is a bad thing, I've noticed one fatal flaw in the plan - most of these towers don't have mirrors in them.

It's seems to be an every growing trend that what's 'right' isn't found by looking at the question, or the person, but rather by looking at the number of ones friends willing to sign on to keep the ship afloat and keep following the oar master's drum. No longer are we looking at situations and asking ourselves 'Did I really do something wrong?', but rather immediately inviting all our friends to jump on the bandwagon of shitting all over whatever it is that we're angry about. It becomes a giant event, we draw lines in the sand, shout and scream until we're told we're right and it's not our fault, and then we round up the pitchforks and torches - we even took the time to make enough chilli or everyone.

Everybody knows the price of admission now, everybody knows the high cost of friendship and the sacrifices expected of them. You're no longer expected to be there when it might be inconvenient for you, you're no longer expected to pick up the phone when someone calls you in the middle of the night. There's no longer a prerequisite of honesty, but rather only the promise that you will be when the chips are down. Follow through has become a lost cause, so long as your voice can be heard when the screaming starts. Being a friend these days seems more about shouting at all the things your friends hate, and participating in a massive shell game of blame.

It's what's lead the world to start turning to pushers with PhDs and street corner peddlers of Prozac and Xanax. It's what drives many of us to the wine isle of the local supermarket to buy box upon box of cheap white zinfandel - because if everyone we know says we're right, that he's an asshole, that it's not our fault, that things will get better, and we still feel wrong? Well, then the solution is obvious, right? We're clearly making it up and deluding ourselves, so there must be something wrong with us chemically. If all our friends think we're right, if everyone we know validates what we think, and yet we still feel broken and lost well, then, that's just not right at all. It's at this conclusion we realize it's time to start washing down little green pills with peach colored piss water from a cardboard box and hope that everything just goes away in the end.

Nobody wants to say things that will throw salt into a wound. Nobody wants to point out the faults perpetrated by a friend who is clearly already emotional over some event or another, and there's a laundry list of reasons why too. Maybe you're feeling like you're not good enough without the 'friends' you have, maybe you're just as conditioned to this process as everyone else, maybe you even bought the fucking whine, or maybe you just want to be the 'good' friend. You just want to say anything you can to make your friend feel better about whatever their feeling, so you lend your voice to the chorus without much thought, or maybe, just maybe, you're too afraid to be in the firing line yourself so you join in with the precession of wagons and make your way across the social tundra.

What people seem to forget about pandering is that it's actually not a very nice thing to do. You're not being a good friend, in any way, if this is how you treat the people you're closest to in life. It's your civic duty, your personal obligation, to open your mouth when you feel they're not entirely in the right. We're creatures conditioned to accept what the outside stimuli tells us is okay and if you're just joining in to tell your friend that everything's fine? Congratulations, you've fucked them with the book, you've cut their legs out from underneath them and greased the inevitable slide into some kind of self loathing power trip.

Does that make you ultimately responsible for what happens to your 'friend'? Absolutely not. People are responsible, first and foremost, for themselves. The only person you're ever accountable for is you, and how you hold yourself in the social court of the world. That being said, do you really want to be known as some snaked tongue charlatan, who will say anything to anyone regardless of the impact and ramification, so long as it makes the party in question feel better? When you think about it, doesn't it make sense to be known for, and respected, as the good friend; the one who speaks their mind - no matter how loud the shouting gets - and is always there to agree when they actually agree?

In a world where everyone wants to be able to feel good about what they think, who they are, and what they do, it's a grievous insult to lie about things like that. It's never, actually, the end of the world as they know it. You're never, actually, a bad person for disagreeing with anyone in a respectful fashion. Finally, if, for any reason, you're asked to compromise your own values for the sake of your 'friendship', then I strongly caution the reader that they sit down and really think about the choice he or she is about to make. Is it really worth pissing away your integrity for the sake of another person? Is it really worth pretending to be someone's friend? Do you really want to have friends who are only interested in you if your voice cries in union with their own and, is someone like that even your friend?

There are plenty of other lyrebirds out there in the world, plenty of gumtrees for you to sit in, and rather than taking the Matilde Waltz into some tar pit for integrity, I suggest that it's often better to break out the soap, wash your hands of the mess, and come back to it if, and only if, your voice is welcomed as an independent entity.

The two sides of the Coin:

And how being educated is just as dangerous as having an opinion

It's two thousand and twelve. The year is barely in it's infancy, and already it smells like an election year. The NDAA has everyone in an ceremonious uproar, we've got Mormons arguing over who's going to be the next, republican, President, and every last inch of social media is clogged by opinionated people shouting to the heavens. It's caucus day in Iowa, so this feels a little more normal than usual, but still leaves me feeling remarkably sedated. It's like attending a Thanksgiving, where nobody admits they're just thankful for big televisions and being better than everyone else, but rather expects you to swallow several helpings of lies with your instant mashed potatoes. It's the kind of thing that leaves one with a strong desire to get drunk, stare into the heart of the dysfunction, do something drastic, and end up wandering into some house of shame and ill repute to blissfully fuck all the bad vibes out of your skull. I strongly advocate fucking on days like this, because there's really nothing more awakening to the mind than a stiff right hook to the jaw.

There were a lot of things to look at in the world and, like any good Patriot, this got me thinking. It didn't get me thinking about the right and wrong of the NDAA, or the heated passion behind the SOPA arguments. Frankly it didn't make me think about any of the actual issues that seemed to be represented on the social news foods and blogs I tend to follow. Instead I sat back, had a strong drink, and took a good look at just where all this was coming from and that's when the terrible idea came creeping into my brain like some devious beast in the night, seeking to plunder any sense of comfort I might ever feel.

Most of the world exists in a world where you're taught to accept everything, in the best way possible. A prime example of this would be the LBGT practices and teachings that are going on in the world. Teaching people to be accepting and tolerant, it's a wonderful thing, but what about the other side of the coin? What impact is this constant demand for acceptance training doing to the world? What kind of people are we really raising in this world? Are we actually teaching people to accept the world around them as right through the process of objective research and opinion forming, or are we just beating them into a semi-state of cowardice where they're too afraid to have an opinion because they don't want to be seen as judgmental?

What if it goes a step further? I admit this one is a stretch, but what if this whole process is encouraging people to remain uneducated because ignorance is more socially acceptable than being seen as some stone thrower or evangelical imposer of a self defined sense of what's right? What if it's becoming a shameful thing to be educated because it forces one into a sense of having an opinion that was uncomfortable in its simple principle of existence? What if we're breeding a world of dullards simply because being uneducated and 'stupid' is something most are willing to overlook rather than paint a bull's-eye on? What if we're fucking our way to 'Idiocracy' because we're teaching people it's just as dangerous to have an opinion as it is to be wrong about the laws of physics when jumping off a building?

There are countless, present, examples where one can see the signs of intelligence be shunned and even more where they stand as an actual sign of mockery. If you're skeptical, check a chat room sometime, or go play a video game with strangers over the internet. When provided with a sense of anonymity the vast populace of these places, which represent a selective but significant demographic of people, are more interested in spitting on those who they feel might threaten their intellectual stasis prison. The dots may be far apart, but connecting them doesn't seem too terribly difficult to me. We're teaching people that they have to accept everything as 'right', so long as it's a personal or cultural choice, and anyone who takes the time to educate themselves and form an independent opinion? Well, those people are cancers to the system and should be purged with a vicious round of anti-social antibiotics.

Assuming that's true, what does it leave in it's wake? If the world is too frightened to form singular opinions for fear of being judged and those who do seek to step outside of that are hit with large rocks, what's left? It seems sensible to me that, and this is again assuming both these ideas are true, it leaves only a partisan sense of bandwagon mentality on any issue. It doesn't matter what the context in question is, what the situation is, or how many possible opinions one could have on it, one is left with only three options: Option 1 is on one side of the line and holds a position on the argument none will admit to having formed on their own, but is more than happy to validate it with the words of others. Option 2 is to take the opposite side of the argument and do the exact same thing. Option 3 is to say 'Fuck This' to the Oregon Trail and avoid the whole damn wagon train altogether, which leaves you cast in some passionless and driveling role, free to be condescended to because, ultimately, it's about picking a side, not having a thought.

You're heads or tails, red or blue, okay with gay people or not. You're a liberal or a conservative, you support the tea party or you support the constitution. You think smoking pot is for losers or people who just like to relax and have a good time. You think monagamy is for people too closed minded to really understand love or that polyamorous people are just selfish nymphos who're going to end up diseased - you pick a side and someone, somewhere, will instantly consider you the enemy. Someone will see you as wrong. Someone will brand you a closed minded, narrow viewing, dimwit mongoloid who subsists on drool and keeps the company of scabs and vermin, and there's nothing worse than that, is there?

I say have an opinion and be informed. Read your laws. Use your internet. We live in a world where nearly anything you want sits at your fingertips, whether you want it to be there or not. I say find something that motivates you to look at the coin, but actually look at it. Look at what's in front of you and think practically about it. Look at the heads, because that's the side that does all the talking, but be weary of silver tongues selling things that sound exactly what you want them to be in the end. Look at the tails, because this is where the heart of your opinion will truly lie. It's not about what you agree with, but ultimately in why you disagree with what's on the other side of the coin. If you can't find hard facts and sound reasoning as they you think the way you do about something, then you choice is simple: Keep looking. Keep digging, it's out there and you will find it.

Treat every argument like you're buying a used car. The salesmen for it, no matter which car you're looking at, will always tell you everything you want to hear about the car to make you buy it. If you look around for a second opinion, you'll be told that everyone else you talked to is just partial, biased and lying to you. The only way you're going to know absolutely is to get behind the wheel yourself and drive it. Pay no attention to patrons of the road, don't listen to the voices that tell you it's a bad car for you, simply get in and drive. Listen to the engine, feel the road under your tires, test the suspension, give it a full field test and then decide if it's the right car for you. If it's not? Take it back and state firmly your lack of interest 

And never, ever, forget that you're not limited to having just a car, there's always a motorcycle.