No Country, No Courtship. The Noble State.

I don't understand this country. At all. It's not my country. It's goals aren't my goals. It's means aren't my means. It's ends aren't my ends. I suppose "ends" are also covered by "goals", but bear with.

I had a bad day. Everyone has those. Tuning my bicycle has been first and foremost, most recently, because it is the gateway drug to planes of existence I cannot reach and enjoy without it. Tuning the bicycle has been very important. At first tuning it was important because, as hobbies and fascinations go, playing with and exploring the machines performance is a risk/reward, work in/pleasure out, formula that is so often reserved for lesser and greater intellectual pursuits. What you put in is what you get out. What you risk is proportional to how far and away from the initial investment you will potentially succeed. The nice thing about the tuning is being able to feel and play in that sand box with your hands instead of just your head.

Well the bad day ended, or maybe continues to roll beneath the surface like wave functions through deep water, when I realized the tuning was important for other reasons. A machine powered by, and linked so tightly to, your body has to be properly tuned or one or the other will suffer damage at the interface. Well I damaged myself and didn't realize it until taking a shower and swiping at my nether regions to find I was raw as hell, but didn't realize it thanks to how hard I ride and all the adrenaline soaked hours I put in. Seat post is about half an inch too high. High enough to max out my strokes and stride, but too high and high pressured for my nuts. And the gear shifts for the drive sprockets are about a quarter inch to tensed, hence several agonized seconds spent trying to lock in high drive and pull away from a bus that ended with me having to bail and pull the bike up on the sidewalk after stripping the skin of my knuckle trying to engage the shifter. After that I didn't try to do anything else above the call of duty. The requirements of the moment. So maybe the bad beat is over. Maybe the adjustments will work. Maybe I'm just not making any sudden moves so I can't really know if things are tacking the right way or not.

The whole day was a lot like getting ripped out of hyper space with the boards lit up red and having no reason to believe anything should be that wrong. What the hell happened. Why are we stationary? Why now? We haven't gotten to the next destination. Not even close. And all the why trying to remember the lines and lines and lines of information in the manuals that tell you what all the little lights mean and how to fix them and they're related, but it's all over whelming when it strikes thirty at a time. So we troubleshoot and wait, dead in space.

The concept of the noble state struck me today. We are all familiar with solid state being, as I am absolutely obsessed with it. The phase of existence that is pure beingness. Zero wetware. Pure production. Pure interaction. Zero latency. Zero sleep. Zero diversion. This bad day has brought to my table another state. A state with much in common with the noble gases. A state of zero sleep, latency, diversion, and interaction whose mode is one hundred percent wet with zero production. A mode of existence predicated on pure focus to the maintenance requirements of the wetware to keep it functioning and spinning in place and whose pured focus requires the abandonment of all production, whose main symptom is not the decision to interact or not, but the incapability to do so. In the same way noble gases cannot react. A natural cross terminal reaction to the remediation of solid state existence. The "one step too far."

I have been gripped by the noble state recently and I'm trying to break out of it to that happy middle ground of balance. Which brings me back, in circuit, to the titular object. This is a place I cannot understand. Here's why (or at least the most recent example):

My work ethic got my friend promoted. I was happy to be part of it, but I didn't realize until now how large a part I played. My ability to do my job is par infinity. The intensity and strength and focus I brought to my work place is without equal. Literally. There is not a single person in the building who can do what I do, as well as I do it, as often as I do it, to be found anywhere. The manager who is getting deposed, failed to take advantage of what I do. The coworker who is being appointed successfully ascribed his name to what I do and is getting appointed to a higher position that pays double and more. I am, easily, more capable than both of them combined. However, the organization that staffs my place of work prizes seniority, and so my coworker who is half as capable as me but more senior by six months will reap all of the benefits of my toil. Which I was okay with, until the true degree of the leap frogging came to light.

I applied to the program to train managers; an opportunity to enter a phase of employment that would evaluate my ability to manage through an 8 week process. I was denied what amounts to an opportunity to participate in an opportunity to possibly enjoy greater success and use my skills to better the organization as a whole. Because, and as a direct result of my work, my coworker, six months my senior and half as capable, has been called in to fill out paperwork that will assign him to managerial status at another store. So what's wrong with that?

One: he did as little work as the current, temporarily deposed, interim manager. Two: he was the keyholder for the store when the falling temporary manager was not available and I still fulfilled all of the duties with greater fidelity than he did. Three: it was my ridiculous work ethic that got shit done in the face of call offs and short staffing and heavy (1000+ case orders) that made the store immaculate each day. Four: I had to actively manage his incompetence on a regular basis to make sure things ran relatively smoothly (the guy didn't even know how to turn on his two way radio). Five: when the shit hit the fan and there were four people available to put up one thousand cases, more than ten thousand individual items, to shelves, I was the one governing and delegating and executing the processing of the order so that when the peons came to work everything would be laid out correctly for them to do their jobs.

It is just massively aggravating that, in the face of everything that transpired he is instantly appointed, through a few moments of paperwork to a position HE DID NOT EVEN APPLY FOR. I did the paperwork, I went through the three stage interview process. It was something I wanted. I was denied for having "interpersonal issues" that "once resolved and signed off on" would allow me to reapply and be re-evaluated on. He gets to skip all that. Despite constant video surveillance and consistent day to day review of the tapes by the head honcho he still gets credit for "motivating" me? Despite the fact that even with incompetence of the interim manager and the steady output, the steady, ridiculous high numbers I put out, with no direct supervision ever, he gets credit for somehow working magic when it was that morons incompetence that failed to complete the days order after I left?

I don't understand the courtship dance that I'm not doing. I don't know where the "i"s are that I'm not dotting and the "t"s I'm not crossing. Just tired of getting passed up. I would be less jaded if the person skipping all the bullshit I had to go through to get the door close on my foot wasn't white. I would be less jaded if he wasn't ten years older than me. Less jaded if he wasn't six months longer in the bullshit of a union we're forced to join by accepting employment. Less jaded if I didn't do both of their jobs better than them. Less jaded if the only knock on me was having "interpersonal issues". Less jaded if we hadn't been written up the exact same number of times. Less jaded if the videotape, supposedly reviewed daily, didn't show I did twice the amount of work of them both combined. So, I am jaded and disappointed, despite myself.

It was a bad day. Capped off by a lack of harmony between myself and my machine. I don't understand what it is that I have to do to court America. What it is that I have to do to make it a more perfect union. As far as I can tell it is a thing imperfected and continuing on specifically because it is such. Because if the right people are selected to the right posts all the time, capitalism fails because everyone succeeds and in order for it to succeed very talented people have to be made to fail, not because of their talent or their offerings, but because someone can capitalize on their talent and their offerings at cut rates and generate a psuedo free market, a market free of close evaluation for its emulation of its own ideals warped just here and so to generate enough complacency that the end result is the best possible outcome at minimal costs and subterfuge.

I don't know where that last part came from, but it sounds like the start of a fine and provable thesis. Continuity, profit, and production ahead of ability, common sense, and equitable consideration. In the grand scheme, the scheme of things larger than myself I would probably accept that with huzzahs and go get 'ems and fuck yeah Americas. On the scheme of things in which I exist, however, I the words stick in my mouth in favor of "there has to be a better way." So I settle back into a noble state. And preserve myself. Tooth and nail.



///Muse - "Falling Away With You" I think our lives have just begun. You can feel the guitar climb and claw with the vocals and a scissor dogfight for superiority and it is beautiful. Beautiful in the way the fight for conscious can sometimes be.

Po Mo Meta Strikes Again and Lost Keys

I've been busy. Trying to keep up my end of 7 straight days of growing pains and metallurgy and using my brain hard enough to make it cry uncle and develop traumatic locker room bully memories of its own. This is not to say that I haven't had a few moments of quiet and also a few moments of utter emotional seizure that sent me running for cover to ball up under my blanket and rock myself to sleep. Yeah, that happened. But it's okay. We can't all be that bad ass from that one movie all the time. Or even some of the time. I have my flashes.

In one of those moments I was out in the park with a friend (good company is one of the few things that can get me out of my apartment. That and having nothing edible. And even then, that's enough to get me like 150 yards away. Just far enough to nab some eggs and cheese from the store. Good company is rare though. I'll go far for that. Sometimes run. Well we were talking and what I've realized is that the bubble is very large. No wait. The world outside the bubble is very large. I was referencing college and the sheer massiveness of the world outside of a campus and the interlocking experiences and attendant frameworks of interpersonal exchange.

12 hours later was when the brick I threw up came back down and broke my skull open and the idea came running down the side of my face. I'm not free. Still not free. Not even close. In fact I am so deeply chained, what I have understood to be freedom has practically blinded me. I'm not talking about the retarded discussion of citizen's rights, or what it means to be an American, or the bondage of physiological death marching on, or determinism, or fatalism, or any of that super global ridiculously wide in scope stuff. I mean in terms of things as simple as "I want to go to X place at Y time to do Z. So I will." I guess it's been so long since I even had the space to collect and exercise free will at all I lost sight of the scope ... not the scope... the spectrum of freedoms.

It's a different kind of bubble. I'm still learning what I can do. It's like when I have to figure out how to walk again some days except it's a bit bigger than that. Like learning how to make a fist or teaching your left hand to do things to make your right hand's life easier. No, it's not even that. A little bit bigger. When that thought hit I realized that I'm still interned. Still incarcerated. It's just that I'm out of the torture and modification wing of the center and I've broken a window (with a little help) and now I'm in the yard, but there's still a massive gate and fence around the yard and on the other side of that fence are more cells and then a visitors yard. Now I can get access to that visitors yard and its nice to see familiar faces, but I've got so long to go.

It's post modern slavery. Or maybe just meta jail. Kind of like super jail except nothing hilarious or awesome happens. Everyone starts out in meta jail. That's why kids hate being kids. I'm sure part of them knows they're basically post pre modern slaves. The original slave. The adolescent. But eventually as they get older their parents give them the keys, sometimes right off the bat (and then they run out and do a shit load of meth and die and self correct the problem... haha no, just kidding. that's awful. and also not self correcting), to the cell doors and then the yard and then the rec rooms and the visitor center and the white trailer with the rose tinted curtains and the kids keep the keys. I never received my keys. They're lost. Permanently. So by the time I'm supposed to be 40 and in possession of all the sets of keys a 40 year old should have, I will instead have a pair of bolt cutters and a cloth wrapped shiv and maybe a few pilfered i.d. badges and a square of carpet to throw over barbed wire. I'm still in fucking meta jail and I didn't even realize it.



It was a depressing thought. A depressing realization. But that's what industry is for. I just have to keep digging and cutting. Maybe if I do gain actual freedom before this is over I won't shut myself down. I don't know yet. I still have a ways to go on this record before it's complete anyway. Plenty of time to think about it while I work. I thought about people that get to enjoy the luxury of doing what they love so much that they end up hating it some days. That must feel nice. Better than doing what they could care less about so much that that... I just wish I had my fucking keys. It's not that I think things would be different. It's that I know they would.



///Bjork - "Domestica" ... where have I put my keys? Beautiful song. Beautiful lyric. Beautiful time to get some rest and try not to worry too much. The mirrored mirror of po meta anything can be quite claustrophobic sometimes. Which is why you should always keep a brick in your back pocket.

Take it Down a Notch and Classroom Politics

Does the word "it" get capitalized in that title. I'm not totally sure, but I don't think so. So what's new today that was not news yesterday? Not a whole lot. Trying to keep the language clean as a habit. The F word was mingled in there two sentences ago, one sentence before this one, and I had to perform a mental edit. I guess the thing about the mental editing is that while I may be making myself more readable I feel like I am nailing doilies to walls that I have clearly punched holes in to hide the fact that there was an extremely violent outburst and it feels stupid to do. Almost as stupid as dancing with myself in a tutu in the mirror and pretending that I, outside of the mirror, am not wearing one. That was too much.

So the poetry has gotten a little out of hand this week. This is true and entirely my own fault. Or actually, I should say, entirely my chemistry's fault. I had nothing to do with it. I should be so fortunate as to be able to assemble and plan days of literary vomit, and the thing is some of it really is just vomit, but the best thing about throwing up is that the only thing left when your bled out is the thing that matters the most. The thing that giving up in words takes away from your interior and is thus valuable beyond price tags or comparisons or in any other way that value can be assigned except in time and energy lost (the purest value).

I was thinking the other day about models of punishment and something occurred to me (I hate spelling that word). Do you remember in elementary school when the teacher would hold the entire class responsible for some little shits antics? Do you remember how no amount of collective loathing changed his ways and more often than not had the opposite effect on the little shits reasoning? I still do. I still remember not being allowed to line up for recess until everyone shut the hell up and there was always that one bastard who just would not shut his mouth and the teacher would let us go after half of the recess was gone out of sheer pity for what he/she thought the repercussions might be. Sometimes, thinking about that, I wonder if he/she would have ever let us go if she knew that unlike the 40s or 50s or whatever older and more violent and more liberal years he/she grew up in (in terms of acceptable violations of the myth of personal space) the little bastard did not receive any sort of mobocratic beat down. Sometimes the world today feels that way.

Somehow it seems that everyone should be holding someone responsible for their behavior that is damaging everyone's ability to go to recess on time, but no one does. I don't know why that it is. I guess the thing about it might be that "how far is to far" comes into play. If someone bullies you but they never make you cry and then you eventually take the time out of your day to beat the hell out of them and kick their limp body into a puddle of mud is that too far? Your cumulative suffering is still probably greater than their momentary shaming. Isn't that not going far enough. Sorry Brian. I still fucking hate you. If I ever build a time machine rest assured one of my stops will be 6th grade, Maryland, south Bowie, 12:15, my fist, your fucking face. Sorry. I just hate how that whole idea of every member of the group is responsible for every other member of the group has been and continues to be twisted in on itself in perverted ways that make the workplace hell and how it starts at so young an age that it's difficult to imagine any other way for things to be.

I'm taking the poetry down a notch from this week. I basically doubled my output in one night as a result of ... I'm not sure. It happens from time to time. Things just blow out of me like a shotgun to the back at point black range and I actually do apologize. Stability is the cornerstone of something. Just nothing I make. Here's a one liner for your next cocktail party: stability needs capitalism like capitalism needs classim. Haw. Get it? Do you see what I did there? Okay, bye :)

///Aphex Twin - "Bucephalus Bouncing Ball" I am playful tonight in ways I wish I could feel every single night of my life and share with the universe and it's bastard long faced serious denizens who think so much of .... wow that turned really angry. I am playful tonight. Stop. Love you, Aphex.

p.s. I'll draw you a picture next time.