Stay Positive, Opposite Day, Detours, and Paper

How funny would it be to wake up in your own car in the middle of the early morning after accidentally blowing your steering wheel airbag into your face the night before tinkering with the switches and wiring around the wheel?

The thought crossed my mind, walking home from the local store to buy smokes and chips.  Almost as good as chips and ice cream.  When I feel horrible, I prefer cigarettes because they make me feel a little less horrible without making me wish I felt an unsustainable joy derived from ice creams sweet and cooling goodness.  If only anyone could always be that smooth, creamy, and soothing all the way down to the belly.  The thought crossed my mind after walking away from my truck to go buy some comfit after I noticed my fuel gauge was malfunctioning and realizing the problem's solution was going to cost me at least $120 and 10 to 20 hours of labor at worst and 20 to 40 hours of labor, learning, trial and error, and no dollars at best.

I kept chuckling thinking about how angry I felt.  I kept chuckling thinking about reaching under the seat for my hatchet, letting out a bloody war cry, and smashing the wheel to pieces.  Only then, ditching the hatchet, pulling and tearing wires out of it with my bare hands until the airbag exploded and shoved one of my closed fistful of wires straight into my face and I basically ended up knocking myself out cold with a rocket powered fist to the dome.  Then waking up the next day with a deployed airbag, swollen knuckles, one hell of a headache, and one hell of a fist shaped bruise between my eyes.

Part of the reason for the rage is that I finished fixing another small problem with a steep learning curve and dozens of hours of labor and learning rolled inside only days before.  The truck is not falling apart around me, though it feels that way sometimes.  The problems are routine problems and I wish I could take it in for routine maintenance instead of d.i.y. desperation weekends.  The other part of the reason for the anger is that if I were paid more in line with my actual skills and level of higher learning, I could shrug, say "okay", and rent a car tomorrow while my truck sat in a shop for an afternoon.

Living near the bottom of the middle class is deceptive.  Bottom of the middle class, top of the lower class.  Living in the region can be deceptive if you have some imagination, some confidence, some helpful friends, and some ingenuity.  I have a one bedroom apartment with a closet bath/shower and mini kitchen.  If I take away all of the furniture a friend gave, all of the furniture I built, and all of the furniture I found on curbs or being given away by strangers, I have cinder blocks, two folding chairs, one of those university lobby lounge chairs, a sheet of particle board, and an end table.  Remove every worldly possession, so to speak, and there'd be a truck parked outside, a few pots and pans and plates, a desktop and pair of monitors, a console, a found tv, a few books and magazines, some shoes and goodwill clothes and multipack tees, some mechanical gadgets, some home and auto repair tools, and a printer and phone.

Imagination allows me to see what can be and holds the hand of ingenuity to find ways to make it happen.  Call it humility or call it living within your means or call it mining gold or a hobby, thrift stores are one of the keys to forgetting that you are part of the working poor.  The cream of the lower class.  Keeping good friendships is a huge part of the puzzle.  Without them, my life easily fits inside a 10' by 10' cell with a hole in the ground to eliminate and a spigot somewhere to drink and bathe.  Part of the anger stems from those parameters.

I have been heavily detoured.  Charging along the roads as quickly as possible in an effort to get back on some kind of track while wasting as few years as possible is frightening.  I ask myself what will happen if I miss a black on orange florescent sign letting me know my next turn is coming three turns from now and the sign at the third turn was never erected so commit this one to memory.  First and final warning.  The reason why it does not feel fair to me is because it is not fair.

I continue to consider the many branches not followed that have lead here, fighting for time to write.  I began to believe my father was trying to teach me a lesson about his pain all along and I am finally beginning to understand it, but I will not be able to understand until I am 48 or 50 or whatever his age was when I stopped talking to him.  Before that thought grew too large, I remembered he hasn't the subtlety or emotional imagination to allow him to pull that off.  I can see where some of his resentment stemmed from.  Losing all of the prime years of life and talent at the cutting edge of art, design, and martial arts bad-ass-ery to childcare.  Who wouldn't be a lot angry all of the time.  Though extremely dissimilar in their divination (did you see what I did there), the results are similar.  Cut away opportunities, trim an effective gesture here, clip a nudge there, ....

... I don't know.  I do not know why I never got the same support.  It would not have taken much.  Some days I am alright never knowing.  Some days it all comes to a head staring at your broken fuel gauge and doing the right thing and getting the hell out of the car without slamming the door and spinning 180 degrees to put your fist through the window and slash your own tires.  The world could've been miles from now.

I could be writing about my third year working as a librarian somewhere and moaning about coding database systems and dealing with angry patrons and making time for dates between writing short stories and working on my two part novel about warfare and keeping up to date on my space opera hopeful crown jewel I'm still searching out an editor for, however the third poetry anthology is going pretty great.  I'm tearing out the kitchen in parts on my down time when I get tired of writing and it should be finished in another week or two.

Today felt like opposite day.  Loading my truck up with bale after bale of carpet, a refridgerator door, water logged drywall, a cane and broken umbrella, armfuls of empty paint cans, a screen door, and three dozen other pieces of jetsam from the home I'm renovating's previous occupants, it was opposite day.  What I was doing should be my hobby.  I should be putting that sweat and blood and cuss into my own home, not someone else's.  When I go home I should be thinking about what I am going to tear down and visit the hardware store to work on next.  When I go home I should not be thinking about what I can write next that can be packed into the time it takes to shut my body down to hit the hammers and brushes and trash bags and saws again.

As much as I love working with my hands, I could find a way to work with my body in the face of an occupation that demanded I not.

"You're poor!  You're poor!  You're poor!  You're poor!  Do not be deceived; you're poor!"

Independent life is a horror show and funhouse of mirrors broken and whole.  I am staying positive.

What brought me back to a semblance of balance is remembering that the day is still young.  Independent life is 5 years old.  Five.  Five years ago you started stepping outside of your cell.  A year or two later you walked down a hallway and into a cafeteria.  A few months later you learned there was a yard and no time restrictions.  A few months later you found a gate into another yard.  It's getting larger and larger as long as you do not screw it all up and have your privileges revoked.  All of the time you lost will be compounded by the time you spent finding a way back out.

No one pays you what you're worth unless you have the paper to create the market.  Or the portfolio and charisma, in lieu of paper.  Portfolio and charisma is an absolute "and" statement.  The one and not the other turns into a luck base number system.  I will never know my actual value.  Maybe that is the worst of it?  I will never know if I am being over paid or under paid, valued appropriately or not.  The optimist inside, the petitioner, tells me that if and only if we suffer for as much time as we spent pursuing the degree, our penance will be met with paper if and only if we are gracious through our turbulent era.  The eros inside whispers about penance through joyful degradation,   The musician adds another kick drum, knocking over cymbal stands.  The child snaps crayons in half so both hands can draw at once inside the same lines.

It is difficult not to fantasize about getting my degree in the mail, tearing it in half, driving to their house, and suffocating them to death in turn, each by half, with a wad of paper.  That would be thoroughly satisfying.

What are you supposed to do when the toys you want to play with are above the grade you are licensed for?  What are you supposed to do when what you are allowed to do you can do very well, but the ceiling is opaque and the sounds coming through it are not in a language you can or maybe will ever understand?  Maybe I am paid exactly what I am worth.  If I have reached my ceiling and given no indication that I am prepared for or understand in the slightest or am equipped for beyond that ceiling, I am paid exactly what I am worth.

That's frightening.  Also true.  Harrowing.

Sometimes I understand that I'm getting too fixated on true freedom.  I get a taste of working something I can enjoy to support the writing habit and expect everything else to fall in line. There's a luck element to it, that I cannot unlock through work or optimism or faith or trust.  That operates on its own time table.  If I do win the lottery, I will take out full page ads in major cities for the hell of it, but only once.

Part of me continues to say it is not supposed to be this hard to make massive uncertainty and day to day, week to week, at best month to month living a thing of the past.  My state is, however, that fragile.  At the ripe old age of at least 1/3 dead the best I can do for myself is knowing I have at least a month to figure out a new lowline.  Fear the high lines because you know a low line is around the corner... ....what to do when you are following low lines?   High lines have to be engaged.  My spider sense is not tingling.  Shake the wrong tree and a warship mine may fall out of it, let alone a tank or soldier sized one.  The other story of America.  Every body wants to be a cat.  If you have enough money you can do whatever you want to.  Not that much money.  I mean enough money to swap cars, or pick up and move, or add and subtract clothing, or change lighting, or paint colors, flip what you walk on, change shoes when you feel like it, add and subtract channels, modify whatever you want to when the moment strikes you, eat out, order drinks for other people, pay for other peoples gas, buy extra fresh fruit.  It's nice.

I am still going to try to brew my own beer this summer.  Do not give me that horseshit "God works in mysterious ways" because chance does too.  The only thing better than chance is ingenuity, and the only thing more important and better than ingenuity is imagination.

I am trying to stay positive with some success.  Frustration and rage are part of being us.  Born here?  Sure.  From here?  No.  I've missed you.  Don't lose touch.  If you ever need to talk, do not forget my ear.                 I love you.                    I love you.       I love you.  I love you. I love you.I love you.Iluvu.Ilvu.Iu.U.I.

We'll get this thing sorted out.  We have a lot of time ahead of us, like it or not, we do.

Do not quit.

You have the rest of your life to make that decision.

It is opposite day, okay?

It is not wasted time.

Opposite day.

Time becomes more valuable as it accumulates.

Okay.  I am
with you.  Agreeing to never throw hands up in frustration.  Agreeing to ride it as long as there is still track in front.  Agreeing to dance as long as there is a beat to dance to, be it from within or without.  I am okay with you as long as your are
okay.  With me.





///Aesop Rock - (Gun for the Whole Family) ~ i've missed you for a very long time.  things got bad.  things were getting bad.  i had to remember that they weren't as bad as they'd been.  we're working toward a utopia of coexistence.  we're not there yet, but damn sure we're going to keep on trying while helping lay the ground works and maps and blue prints for the next iteration of our being.




/
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///Alanis Morissette - (Thank You) ~ passive mobile adaptable armor.