Raskolnikov's Blues '21

 On many days i wake up to a dark house, flip on the coffeemaker which i have prepared the night before, then slip off into a quiet room and read a few pages of one Eduardo Galeano, more than a cup of coffee Eduardo is an excellent catalyst to kickstart the brain, to get me thinking early in the morning so that i do not spend the rest of my lumpen-prole work day like a mindless drone thinking about nothing more than consuming, instead i wander the world of the gig economy pondering just how fucked we are as a species and even more so as a culture and society here in the land of milk and honey. 

Over the last few years my reading in certain subject areas has become more intense and while i was always one to question the hegemony now one could say i'm openly defiant (in truth i've problably always have been). Not of course when it comes to things like science, i'm not a fucking idiot, and while i understand that mankind has used science for some rather nefarious purposes over the years it's also used science to advance and save as many people as possible. Hence why i laugh at the ones bamboozled by certain dis-information outlets who prey on the stupid and weak-minded, those to lazy or apathetic to read and research on their own. If one stands back and looks at the number of things people do that are in direct opposition to their own well-being, in direct opposition to their own interests, then one might choose to opine to their chosen deity for that giant space rock to come flying in and do the business like it did to the dinosaurs we now pump frantically out of the ground. The fact that more people put their trust and faith in ghosts and myths than in the science is fucking frightening. It seems theses same fools only seem to trust science when it appears that said illness has given them a grade A chance to meet that chosen deity up close and personal. You'd think that with all the prattling on these muppets do they'd be more than happy to not clog up the ERs and ICUs of the world while skipping happily into oblivion which they believe means playing lutes on fluffy clouds. 

I'll be the first one to admit that sometimes i am overwhelmed by the pointlessness and inanity of modern existence. All this knowledge and ability to create, to invent, to solve problems yet most of humanity is too busy just trying to survive, to busy scraping and clawing for food and shelter while a miniscule percentage hoard money and build rocket ships, when i sit back and think of all the brilliance that has been wasted because our culture doesn't cultivate or encourage it, it doesn't want citizens critically thinking and asking difficult questions, it doesn't want a populace to be actively engaged, it wants one to be engaged when told to be, it wants proper serfs who do what they're told when they're told. The Masters like to dangle carrots, they want you running around in the few spare "free" hours you have off work searching for a PS5 and not dwelling on the fact a bunch of "elected" officials act like children and believe their wealth and power is some divine right and that we should just go about our business as they line their pockets and those of their uber-wealthy masters while fucking the lumpen-proles squarely in the ass. The Masters use chaos to sow division in order to keep the minions distracted. If i have to suffer through one more news clip of a Karen or Carlson bleating on about freedom because someone asked them (or their children) to put a mask on my fucking head's going to explode. They wouldn't understand the responsibility of a free populace if it was a gigantic fucking cheeseburger that fell out of the sky and clocked them in the head. Their idea of freedom is they get to do whatever they want when they want and fuck you if you don't like it. They confuse freedom with being a selfish asshole. 

And so i read Galeano... i read James Baldwin and Henry Miller... i read Fromm and Watts and Arendt... i read Huxley and Wilson and McKenna ... i read Chris Hedges and Timothy Snyder... and i read Vonnegut and Carson McCullers and Steinbeck. I read to try and understand, i read to remember humanity is capable of brilliant and beautiful things that don't involve the accumulation of wealth. I read because i'm ultimately interested in the stories we tell and the things we feel in a society and culture which increasingly devalues those very things while trying to sell you those very things... i mean why actually feel and think organically when you can buy a facsimile of the same thing and it's much easier? It's like liposuction for the soul, feel good without all the hard work and thinking, will that be cash or charge? 

As i skip towards the void i realize i know less now than i ever did... i understand i have to navigate the world with an artist's eyes and as Mr. Baldwin says the artist is in perpetual exile and nowhere more than in good old America...  and like Buk once eloquently stated i have a bluebird in my soul and i keep him there to remind me of the beauty, i don't let people know because we all must wear protective armor in the land of milk and honey, a cultivated facade of toughness to ward off the barbaric hoards of idiocy and indifference to knowledge and the natural world. I'll eat my mushrooms and lay in the dark. I'll imbibe the cannabis plant in various ways in order to ponder the meaning of things. I'll watch the grass grow and listen to the leaves twist in the breeze, i'll gaze on the night stars as they sparkle and understand just how vast the universe is and how insignificant i am in the grander scheme of things... i'll do my best to love the boyos and those i know unconditionally and to the best of my ability knowing that that's all there really is to this existence thing, the rest is a dog and pony show financed by the the masters of war, the chemical and industrial complex, those who value power and greed more than beauty and love. 

There are times when i feel this weight of an incredible sadness... and then one of the boyos will walk by and hug me or sit down and talk and i understand that what matters is an attempt to live a decent and compassionate existence and hopefully instill that into the boyos. The sadness is always lingering because deep down i know as a species we're fucked. We won't solve the important problems (like saving the planet we live on) because that would cut into profits and profits are more important to the masters than anything else. If you kick the can down the road far enough sooner or later you kick it right off a cliff and then we are proper fucked... we may be there already. Most of us will be gone by the time the shit really comes down but it will be a sad state to say that one species on a planet of millions of species put itself ahead of all others and did a fine job of destroying everything in it's wake. Any advancement or knowledge will be lost but then again no intelligent life would ever look at this place as a blueprint for success. I mean what type of animal willfully drives itself towards it's own extinction? 

In the end all these little words will disintegrate like everything else in the universe... they will collapse in on themselves and be washed into the void along with me and everyone i know and love. It's as it should be. These words are nothing more than a way to get through a day or month or year, they are a history of a common and unremarkable man trying to make sense of things and will be lost to eternity as soon as the power grid fails... and why shouldn't they be? In the meantime i'll continue puttering away in my little corner of the interweb universe... for whatever it may be worth... which is most likely nothing... which is just how it should be.