Screw the Democratic Party, I'm joining al Qaeda

My grandmother is physically freezing up & apparently it's my fault for not getting her to exercise more, & then not doing full extensions when I did help her with her exercises.

There's some other crap I don't really want to talk about.

And I have pretty much lost faith in democracy. I see all these stupid people who refuse to understand the math, the economics, or the basic principle of providing services through government that the private sector can't.

And I can't convince anyone, & if I say anything I just get an ad hominem attack about how if I were a better person, I could be contributing, I could be fixing all this in the private sector as a private citizen.

Well, I'm not a better person. I'm just a flawed, daft, planks-in-the-eyes-you-could-use-as-tentpoles person who realizes that private initiative can't really do everything.

(There is no cost-benefit analysis that makes government look perfectly "worth it" to the sort of person who wants every tax dollar to mean a benefit to the taxpayer. Think of it like loss of energy to heat in physics: Government, like any machine, operates at less than 100% efficiency. All machines lose energy; that doesn't mean they're not worth building.)

But I'm just so sick of it all. I'm feeling too depressed & worn down to try to campaign, to try to fight. I can't change anyone's mind, I just don't want to deal with it anymore.

(Despite the title of this post, I'm not actually joining al Qaeda. I don't really have the energy.)

And that's what I have to fight through.

Today I watched Drew Barrymore's movie of Whip It, & that cheered me up. Then I got into a stupid argument on the internet, & got even lower.

(no subject)

Once in a great while, when I am hip-deep in emotional crisis, I head down the viaduct.

Tonight I went to invoke Ares & dedicate myself to war against democracy. This has been building for a while.

I have grown more & disgusted with the conservative social order that excuses W. Bush's kidnappings & secret prisons; that delights in long prison terms & permanent disenfranchisement for the supposed sin of being a junkie; while screeching at the ostensible offense of being forced to buy health insurance. In the end, democracy is another form of entitled, aristocratic privilege, just with a very large aristocracy. I have been in a spitting rage for months.

In a case of my general irrational emotional overreaction, I decided I was done. Clearly democracy is mad--or perhaps it's really conservatism & privilege. Surely autocracy is better; one man with absolute power, absolute freedom, absolute control. I decided I believed in the Genghis Khan (not the historical Temujin, but the Universal Overlord in principle) & wanted to make him real.

This emotional state required me to go somewhere outside my usual routine.

So I walked down to Main Street, I walked past a high retaining wall & a low field, & passed through a well-lit stretch of road to the relative darkness of the viaduct. I looked at the streetlights, at the highway, at what man has built. I got to the viaduct, stood at its high point, & looked out over the railway toward the woods. I thought, would I really throw everything away for the few small things that upset me?

If it's me, yes, I would do it in a heartbeat. I have burned opportunities, ruined my life, over the length of my hair. I would. But I'm crazy.

Invoke Ares? I've always been more into Apollo. I need a better direction. I looked to the stars. Some people speak metaphorically of the North Star as a guide, but to me Polaris is just marking a physical axis. I looked around. I hadn't even noticed Sister Moon in conjunction with Jove; they'd been behind me. "Guide me, Phoebe. Guide me, Father Jove. Guide me, Apollo." I walked back the way I'd come. I added, "Guide me, Skiron. Guide me, Trismegistus." Wait, Trismegistus? Really?

I got across the first street north of the viaduct. I looked up again. The planet Jove is really just a big ol' ball of stuff, right? Is this really something I can pray to? OK, Sister Moon has meant something to me since I was a youth, but ... I suppose these gods they are not real. No more than the Genghis (or the Devil Genghis). I have no Apollo to guide me, not really. Just me.

I let the anthropomorphic dreams of gods, fantasies of god-emperors, & the mental landscape of powers & false realities that only exist in human imagination, be stripped away. And in that moment I felt myself very real, with the smell of the grass around me, a tiny being on the great curve of the Earth, a man.

I walked home. And this time I decided to clear off the noise, to deny it. "I am not the Genghis. I am not the living end. I am not the apocalypse, I am not Apokolips, I am not Apocalypse." That sort of thing. Names, mostly, I shall spare you the list, they only mean something to me. "I am not foolsguinea." (beat) "Well, actually, I kind of am foolsguinea." I chose that name & have used it a long time now. But yeah, even the name my mother gave me, "I am not." (I can always reclaim a useful name I suppose, but I needed to clear off this bizarre rage & mania, & the magic of names seemed a thing.)

As I got back up the hill, I moved on to, "I am," statements. (I hit, "I am not a number, I am a free man.")

I am free.

I am alive.

I am able to seek ... joy is a difficult word for me; contentment.

I am able to pursue fury. (Even if I am trying to calm down now.)

I am not the hammer, but I may wield the hammer.

I can seek peace, I can make war.

...

Some men are beset by avarice or lust or envy. I am largely jerked about by wrath & sloth. And sometimes I think wrath is better, sometimes I think sloth is better. But I need something better. I need to temper my anger with something other than lassitude.

Oh, the fury is still there. But perhaps a calm fury can be weaponized with some gained competence.

I think it's time I took a stand against the drug war. Among other things.