D0M3ST1C4T3D 0VRS3LV3S...

domesticated ourselves 
as much as the world around 
us, pretending it’s progress 

SONG OF THE DAY: Young Old Filipino Man

I put birdseed out for the birds because it snowed, and as I was walking down the road enjoying the forced solitude of snow day shutting everybody down to more my speed, I was watching the birds bounce around, looking for scraps, and thinking to myself how they don't have any essential workers. They just forage for life. There are no essential workers in the wild. What a strange thing to be human, where we've somehow conquered our own susceptibility to the natural order, so that we can help humans survive. Originally this would've meant the weak or vulnerable or marginalized, keeping them alive despite the fact in the wild they would've died. Somewhere along the way we factored in economics, and rather than the weak or vulnerable or marginalized not having to ensure their own survival, it turned into the hoarding of abstract wealth, and the wealthy not having to do shit to survive, because they just dole out little pieces of their hoarded abstract wealth for others to do it for them. And it got so unbalanced that now we have hoarding to an extreme level, to where the hoarders of abstract wealth feel its justified for the weak or vulnerable or marginalized to just fucking die rather than spread survival mechanisms and safety nets against death and disease around to all humans. Thus, grocery store workers got considered "essential" because without them, the logistics of food distribution, which is already hugely wasteful, would've fallen apart even further. And it's not that people would've starved, because people are already starving, even though literal tons of food is tossed in the dumpster every day, because people didn't buy it or it was perishing and the stores don't want to risk the litigation of lawsuits if somebody gets sick. But those with the abstraction of wealth hoarded to a high enough degree wouldn't have been able to get their groceries still, without the essential workers. Same with restaurants. Nobody needs to eat in a fucking restaurant during a global pandemic. But they're open, and people are sitting at tables, enjoying their expensive meals, wait staff be damned. "What an absolutely fucked system of existence," I thunk to myself as I walked along in the snow, watching the birds. A pileated woodpecker flew out in front of me at one point, very beautifully, and that reminded me I had like a third of a bag of birdseed in the closet in the laundry room, so when I got home I scattered it. I don't have hoarded abstract wealth, but I had some birdseed, so I threw it out there in the snow, and spent most of the afternoon watching the cardinals and others, but most notably those big fat red cardinals, eating it.

W33D P30PL3, 4LW4YS W4RN3D TH4T...

weed people, always warned that 
we are trespassing upon 
prosperity’s perfection 

N0T10NS 0F HVM4N PR0GR3SS...

notions of human progress

perhaps perverted by too

much material desire

F0LKS 4LW4YS CR0W1NG 4B0VT...

folks always crowing about

how tomorrow's gonna be

another day, for fresh starts

PR0GR3SS SL0WLY CL1MBS VPW4RD...

progress slowly climbs upward;

then you wake up one day and

realize we've long passed our peak

SONG OF THE DAY: The Punishment of Sisyphus

The lesson of the myth of Sisyphus – at least for me personally in recent times – has been that there is no great ultimate point to your individual life, that you won’t ever unlock some boss level and then be free to do nothing the rest of your life except bask in your conquering of all possible dreams. Some people can afford dreams, and others are working too much to ever get a restful enough sleep to even dream. I get this. And as I get older and realize I’m not gonna achieve a lot of things I used to think I would, including some very common things (like owning a house, or having a retirement destination, or maybe even a retirement lol), I’m pretty fine with that. Instead of getting on that “woe is me” tip, you just refocus your energies towards doing all the things you wanna do now, as much as possible. I don’t have a lot of downtime in my personal life. In fact, if I’m just sitting there doing nothing, ever, I get freaked out and feel like I’m wasting the time and will grab a notebook or stack of postcards or notecards or something.

With our larger culture meme’ing it up about the arc of human history more and more, in the context of current geopolitics, the myth of Sisyphus comes to mind as pretty applicable to our collective humanity too. We mostly seem to think that our time as a species has been spent progressing, that we are superior to other species on this planet, and that we’re working towards an ultimate goal. This is part of why climate change has become so distressing to people, because it feels like we’ve failed at pushing that stone called progress up history’s mountain. But there’s no real proof any of that is true, or even necessary. And in fact, it is over-tinkering with shit that caused a lot of problems with overall biosphere balance anyways, so maybe deciding to push harder up the hill is not exactly the way to fix shit, because the stone’s just gonna roll back down to the bottom anyways.

This is not nihilism. A lot of indigenous cultures were way less attuned to achieving shit in the ways most of the dominant cultures on Earth now are into achieving shit. Living in accordance with everything did not require some ultimate goal so much as acceptance of “fuck it, we’re all part of this shit, so let’s be chill about it.” Less forcing of order.

Strangely, I feel like western interference in Africa is good example for climate change/global warming reaction. Western colonialism and slave trade completely fucked up Africa. Even after many nations gained independence, it was colonial borders they existed as, and Africa continued to be exploited and fucked. So many well-to-do charities were organized to gather money to help Africa, but most of them did it with the same superiority complex that colonialism suffered from. But the charities thought they were better. They weren’t necessarily, just a kinder version of colonialism, if such a thing can be said, similar to how there were no “good” slave-owners, because you’re inherently not doing good by most moral codes if you own humans as slaves.

Same is true of the entirety of Earth. Humans kinda fucked it up. But now we’re going to scramble to immediately push through all sorts of tinkering advances to fix shit (if we are progressive about it). Or we’re gonna just double down on fucking it all up (if we keep trying to make America great again). Ultimately, as weird as it sounds, maybe doing less is the answer – stop pushing order and form up the mountain, only to have that shit tumble back down. Maybe quitting these taxing lifestyles that require so much travel and expense of natural resource, which don’t really seem to make our lives any less stressful at all, is the best answer. Or not even best answer, because that also has that superlative tinge of progress. Maybe we just need to quit doing so much fucking shit, because not only is it not making anything better, but it’s fucking pointless. I don’t know. I feel like mushrooms might help with all of this though.

SONG OF THE DAY: Ol Morning

Older than I’ve ever been, and it keeps getting worse (if you work from the assumption old equals worse). I wrecked myself a lot, and didn’t change the oil regularly, have rarely slept the manufacturer’s suggestion for sleep, and stubbornly force myself to exist in ways that’s probably not the best, even after sobriety from drink. And yet, I’m in surprisingly decent enough shape, I guess. I started swinging the kettlebell around the living room last night, because I’ve been slack as fuck since the holidays. Bumpy Knuckles expresses all this in song though, and it got me to laughing about people being hyped to share workout music. What a strange beast man is, lacking physical activity in his civilized life, feeling slothful and not wanting it, so making a business of flinging weights around to keep fit in the ways a life of hard physicality in order to survive would have done automatically. And not only does man make a business and huge theater of this working out, he becomes compelled to create music mixes to sink earbuds into his own ears, detach further from physical life, and focus intensely on simulating a physical life. What a fucked up animal we are.

SONG OF THE DAY: Don't Believe the Hype

Progress is always hyped up as a bold new step towards the collective Sisyphian ascent to peak humanity. It’s a fucking myth. Stop thinking you can reform or amend or fix this shit. Return to the source. Fuck all future bosses, fuck people who think electing the right people somehow fixes a wrong way of existing. The political boils that have appeared on the superficial face of our existence in such ugly ways go way deeper than the surface. You can’t apply some blue or even green ointment and be healed.

And yet, we are not doomed. I mean, many of us individually might be, but as a whole, we are never doomed. Even if we do nothing, and 90% of the human population is obliterated a three-decade disaster epoch, gonna be some hearty/hardy souls still stumbling around, stacking rocks into altars and building shelter from the storms together. La ilaha illallah, thirty three times in a row, for eternity.

SVNR1S3 0V3R F4LS3 PR0GR3SS...

sunrise over false progress,

another day walking to

unfulfilling cubicle

SONG OF THE DAY: Feet Start Walking

Walking away from some shit often times is just as satisfying as walking towards something. I mean, we like to apply this deluded notion of individual and collective progress, that man somehow either spiritually or scientifically has an unrealized destination as supreme being doing supreme shit, but lolol c’mon that ain’t true. I mean we can try to be better, that’s a good and noble practice, but there’s nothing scientific or religiously destined about our trajectory as a species. So you don’t always have to be moving towards something necessarily. A lot of times, shit is fucked up, and ugly, and stupid, and stifling, and life feels a little too much like death, a lot too much like you can’t breathe fully, and it makes good and perfect sense to be like “fuck this shit” and walk away from it. You don’t have to give an explanation or notice either. Fuck it. Life’s not a movie – you don’t have to make up with everybody, or tie up all the loose ends, or treat your parents with respect if they never did that to you, or be cool with friends who displayed hypocritical flaws. Walk the fuck away. Sometimes being a better person means leaving behind the metaphysical albatrosses.

F1B3RGL4SS D0N'T RVST, WH1CH S0M3...

fiberglass don't rust, which some

see as progress, but junkyards

show to be false improvement

M4NH0L3 C0V3RS R4R3LY G0N3...

manhole covers rarely gone

into by actual mens;

we've lost our ways us people

C0MBVST1BL3 3NG1N3S TH3N...

combustible engines then

tunnels under the water

then expensive "vacation"

W3ST3RN C1V1L1Z4T10N'S...

western civilization's

peak masterpiece - the simple

yet most effective milk crate

freestyle sonnet #074: DEDICATION TO WALKING

Innate desire to experience slow travel
of secular pilgrimage, ancient simple act
of walking - single step watching world unravel
its complexities in real time. One can't extract

full picture from flyover - A to B is A
to Z with alphabetic oblivion, seen
only small fraction of scenery along way
yet considering self well-traveled. Our routine

is rushed, skipping minutes that could've been better
spent more deeply immersed in moment. Life is short,
and covering mapped stars as rapid pacesetter
does not give depth of knowing world, plus no passport

necessary to walk simple steps in same ways
of the ancients, making most of limited days.