I had a mid-life crisis and bought a car… a really
fucking boring basic ass Corolla, but new. This is the most basic cheap ass
Toyota you could possibly buy, and yet somehow due to my familial conditioning
I feel like I’ve completely fucked up. We were raised to think people who had
things were lesser, or people who bought new cars were fucked up humans, even a
simple ass no frills Corolla. And I guess this is my mid-life crisis. Not a
convertible, not a fancy car, a budget ass hopefully reliable and not breaking
down all the fucking time tiny sedan. And somehow I feel fucked up about it
because of the way my family is.
This generation is the first in the American
Empire’s history to have less than the one before it. The concept of
generational wealth has come up a lot in my goings on lately, in how some have
access to down payments for cars, or access to family money to start a business
or go back to school, or to fund their dreams and wishes. And while I lack
that, I also recognize how good I have it too. As I was riding the bus to
Pantops to walk from the Roses to the Toyota dealer to start the process of
being ripped off by capitalist greed, I thought about how this was a week in my
life without a car, instead of constant reality, juggling bus schedules (and
bus passes) and slowing your day down to get around without a fast way to get
around. I have a steady job which allows me the numerical data that financial
overlords are willing to squeeze more blood out of me, because more is still
there to be squeezed, until the cards all fall and they begin fighting with
each other to see who gets the last remaining drops of my blood. But the
American mythology of “working hard and saving up and retiring” is not a
reality any more. I’m lucky enough to work, but there’s no saving and there’s
no retirement. And I’m actually pretty far up the giant pyramid scam that is
American economics, meaning there’s a lot of people who have it worse than me,
far worse.
I feel old. This is a fucked up system we live in,
and it’s going to break. I am starting to feel too old to do the physical work
of participating in the violence that is ahead, but I’ll likely have to, to
protect those who have importance to me, both those I know and those I don’t
know. What I’m doing personally, and we’re doing collectively is not
sustainable, and in fact that lack of sustainability is creating violent
reactions from the nature of things itself. It’s gonna get ugly. But also it’s
gonna get beautiful afterwards. And like I always tell my children when they
freak out about the future, even if the population of the Earth cataclysmically
shrunk where 90% of humans died in the next three decades, that’s still like
750 million humans still alive, making new things happen. Why not you? The whole
foundation of generations is generating, continuing, surviving. So fuck it.
Blow my fake number cards over, repo everything and throw me into the streets.
I’ll still be alive, perhaps even more so in some ways. This shit’s all fake
and unsustainable and it makes us stress out in ways that aren’t helpful for
survival or our intestinal health. So fuck it.
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