EMPTY...
I woke up this morning feeling incredibly empty and completely devoid of any kind of feeling. I have been going through a numb stage as it is, but things were looking good for me for a hot minute. I thought I may actually be getting over it and go back to feeling normal, or just feeling something. In a way, it's almost like I'm watching a film of what it is going on around me, a film that I'm really into but a film none the less. Seeing it through my eyes but as a separate person would as if I'm wearing someone else's skin. It doesn't seem right to be this way, so I don't know if it really bothers ME, or if I know it SHOULD bother me. Maybe I'll just lie down for a while and hope it all goes away...
GETTING YOUR DOLLARS WORTH…KINDA
We often correlate value with rarity, if something is rare it must be valuable and if something is valuable it must be rare. Rare things are expensive; the first edition of Action Comics (June1938), in which Superman makes his first appearance is said to be worth $440,000, the last record John Lennon ever signed, a copy of Double Fantasy autographed five hours before Lennon was shot, is worth about $525,000.
Counter to this idea, rarely do we equate the things needed for survival with much value.
Is this the best Superman comic and will it most aid your ability to sustain? No, modern comics make this early attempt look like a tofu dog next to a rack of ribs and as far as getting you out of the woods alive one would be better suited with a plastic grocery bag. Is Double Fantasy the best Lennon album? Certainly not (half of the songs were written by Yoko which might actually be a detriment to your survival) but because of humanities desire to detach from the natural world we give irrational value to impractical objects.
In a survival situation two of the most valuable things, things that increase the chances of living exponentially, are not things at all. They are perspectives about the situation that cannot be strapped to a utility belt or bought at REI, a sense of humor and a sense of purpose.
A sense of purpose is manifested most effectively in an injured or near dead member of a group. In all logical terms this makes no sense. It is assumed that the injured should be left for dead. Only the strong survive, survival of the fittest, a bad apple spoils the bunch. But clichés are so cliché. You would never think to strap a martyr to your utility belt, but making a dying person live can make someone believe that their own death is not an option. A sense of purpose is valuable.
A sense of humor is valuable. When you can laugh at the ridiculousness of your situation you no longer are a victim of unreasonable chance and circumstance. It like saying, “Hey, fuck you god, you can take my legs but you can’t take my funny bone.” The heart rate slows and endorphins are released to ease physical pain. Interestingly the active element in your endorphins is morphine, no wonder laughter is so popular in rehab. No one would ever think to pack a whoopee cushion backpacking in the Andes, but the laughter could save your life.
I worked in an insanely high volume Chinese restaurant, with a demanding clientele on a competitive slab of real estate. The pressures of this job can be so intense at times that I regularly have coworkers quit mid shift with a section full of hungry tables frothing out the jaws for an plate of crispy sugar meat. On average I trained two new servers a week. On average about half of them show up for a second day of work.
I would call this a survival situation. Business usually comes all at once and hard, unpredictable, like a levy breaking or an engine failing. Then suddenly, you are free falling, tray loaded, fake smile cemented, running rapidly for the safety of the moment when all drinks are down, all food is rung in and finally when all checks are printed.
This moment usually resolves in what I call a “red light,” something that makes you stop and change your course of action because a weaker server needs your help. Sometimes they ask; usually they are too blindsided to realize that they even need it. In the dash of a salt shaker, suddenly five tables need refills, two tables need to pay, all of the food is taking an unreasonably long time to cook and a party of 15 (the new owner’s family) just went down. When I begin to fall in and help the drowning server all of the responsibilities to my tables no are longer as dramatically important, they become periphery. It becomes more important to save the dying member than to save my own ass.
When in the heat of a rush I mistakenly order a kung pao chicken “PLANE, NO SAUCE,” instead of “PLAIN, NO SAUCE,” and I have to explain this message to Chef who understands very little English. I am able to laugh at myself and in that moment all of the momentum, all of the pressure is put into perspective.
These pauses are so important to my survival I cannot understand why they are not marketed, traded and sold. They are illogical and common, and of great value to me. In my restaurant I honestly believe that my illiteracy is often my Action Comics #1. It is what is valuable to me, because it is what allows me to survive. My signed Double Fantasy is an empty glass on a co-worker’s table, not rare at all but I need it more than anything I can buy on Ebay.
INFLATION AND FALL OF THE U.S FLOWER
Financially, America is starting to resemble a middle-aged ex-homecoming queen trying to squeeze back into her old cheerleading skirt for her wedding anniversary, just praying that she won’t bust a seam. She isn’t fooling anyone, things are bad and now it’s just about how you define it.
A recession, as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research, is a “significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP.” I define it as a period of time when daisies wilt in flower shops before people buy them.
In the month of May, inflation raised at a rate of .8%. That is the biggest monthly leap since 1981. Over the last three months the president gave $77.9 billion to (get this) normal people. Regulars in the restaurant I use to work are sharing $10 salads and drinking tap water.
National unemployment has been rising for the past seven months leaving us at a four year high of 5.7% California is currently at a 12 year high of 7.3% unemployment because of the gaping wound on the side of the housing/real-estate/const ruction beast. In the last two months I was working at the restaurant my work had fired 10 servers.
Record stores are closing. Outlets like Ross and Marshal’s are reporting huge sales because people are not buying what they really want, just what they need. Socioeconomically, we are about a month away from drawing an eyeliner seam down the back of America’s legs and calling them a healthy economy.
In the years when people still bought things and hand-to-hand CD sales still had an impact on a band’s relevance, my band (at the time) spent a lot of time standing in front of hardcore shows on the Sunset Strip. My hands usually full with stacks of hot Kinko’s flyers and CDs, I would wait until the shows let out into the streets, spewing bodies like a broken hydrant. Desperately we would compete with the flashing freak show of the strip for a moment of attention. It was hard and frustrating then. I can’t imagine what it would be like now.
Some of our biggest competitors were a small group of Spanish speaking ladies carrying bundles of fresh flowers for five dollars a piece. They could burn through a bundle in about three clubs.
It was impressive to say the least.
I remember waiting tables in a little restaurant on Sunset Strip, about a mile east from where I used to hawk CDs. I have come to know one of these flower ladies, Anna, relatively well. She is patient and kind. Anna tells me we are in a recession, not because of the GDP, but because of the flowers.
Sunset is a silly selfish pleasure for most people; A tourist destination for burnt out, sobered up butt rockers with bad tattoos and no coffee shops to go to. Flowers are things of temporary luxury, the impact of which only lasts a few days.
Flower wholesalers have been cutting staff due to a rapid decline in demand. Anna who has been in the business since I was 4 (she worked(s) at a flower shop in Culver City five days a week) used to spend Tuesday through Saturday nights from eight to three in the morning trolling the strip empting bundle after bundle of roses, now can hardly get through one a night.
Shipping of flowers by air cargo is down in some places 17% from this time last year. Anna has started scaling back her time in front of rock clubs and spends more time in restaurant patios.
“There is no one here anymore,” Anna tells me. “The money is bad, the people are cheap, and most of the other girls don’t want to try anymore.”
We had a game, I see her walking up to our patio at about a block’s distance I move to one of my tables, usually an affluent tourist couple looking for a chunk of 1989 rock nostalgia or at least a photo of the two of them wearing Guns and Roses shirts in front of the Whiskey. I bring up the topic of chivalry to the lady and ask her if she can remember the last time she met a true gentleman. At this point Anna is usually behind me. I then give a look to the prospective gentleman letting him know that this is all a set up for his benefit. I then turn to Anna, wink, point and watch her go in for the kill.
We can usually go through at least a half a bundle this way, but lately, gentlemen are hard to find. Anna sold a whole bundle last Wednesday to one guy for half of what she gets
selling them by flower. Chivalry is now more dead than ever and that is how Anna and I define a recession.
Now that I think of it, I haven’t been into the whole flower thing. I miss that. I think it’s time to get back into the game don’t you think?
I KINDA HAVE SOMETHING THAT MIGHT KIND OF MAY BE LIKE A DREAM / I HOPE NO ONE IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD READS THIS OR I COULD GET SHOT
In the post-college world it is becoming increasingly absurd to want to devote one’s life to a creative field of work. According to the Princeton Review of the top ten highest paying college majors, only one if them (Marketing/Marketing Management/Marketing Research) is remotely creative, half of them include the word “engineering,&rdquo ; and only one of the ten most popular majors is in the top ten highest paying. Dreaming for a living is dying in America.
Without perspective between what we have, what we want and the foresight to reach unreasonably far into the future for an intangible (a dream), we are essentially purposeless. Guitar Hero, The White Album, Cirque de Soleil, the Internet and this moment of journalistic insight are all results of a faithful devotion to a creative dream. These things give us purpose and make a life worth living.
In order to trust an idea/creative thought/dream you have got to be a little mad. Essentially all creative ideas, regardless of how practical, are based in faith. In order to commit to a dream you have to first believe in it. The dreamer must conceptualize an intangible, yet to be conceived thing. A writer sits down to start a script trusting that the script can exist, their task then becomes translating the script into tangible terms.
Perhaps this is all a little too ephemeral and reeking of patchouli to make sense of. Take for example my Ex Ex landlord’s son. This 19-year-old runs drugs out of my ex-apartment building as a full time job. Up until about six months ago, he had a part time job as a sales associate for a large commercial retail establishment and he had a dream. The stress and labor of his part time job was offering him little sense of reward or accomplishment. In order to deal with the stress he often came home and self-medicated with copious amounts of beer and weed. With a little foresight and a lot of faith, he began scaling back his hours at his job and devoting more of his time to achieving his dream. His logic was simple; he found something that brought him joy, so he decided to devote his life to it, regardless of feasibility.
He had to trust in the existence of a way of life that had yet to exist for him in reality.
This is still a bit abstract, so let’s take one more example involving the same individual. In order for my Ex Ex landlord’s son to get out of plain view of police, competing drug dealers and unwanted clients he must be able to move quickly from the stop in front of the apartment to behind the cast iron gate protecting it. This is a complicated task because the automated lock system is broken and will most likely remain so until God gives up and lets Satan get hammered off of communion wine. The keyhole is also quite difficult to maneuver and requires a good two minuets of feverish manipulating and handle shaking. If one wants fast access between the inside and outside some creativity is essential.
Many have devised intricate systems of folding of magazines, cigarette butts and coat hangers but none have been able to create a consistently successful method. The gate is heavy, and while logically many of these doorstoppers should work, it is nearly impossible to slow its momentum as it swings closed. The landlord’s son however had a creative dream. He discovered that crumpled up newspaper not only keeps the gate from fully closing it also works as a shock absorber killing the momentum rendering a space between the gates latch and the door frame.
Before he decided to try his method of door stopping he had to have faith that it would work. He had to have faith in an abstract concept, a dream. It is this faith in dreams that is responsible for society’s accomplishments. It is also this faith that is becoming increasingly rare.
Interestingly, only three of the ten highest paying majors appear on Princeton Review’s top ten recommended majors. The others are all open to dreaming. The point: Guitar Hero beats accounting, and dreaming beats running around in endless circles regardless of the paycheck. At least that’s what I’m banking on.
THOUGHTS
Hey guys...Long time no post. So here we are again giving you an update on my life. Here we go.
Lately I have been questioning everything in life. I guess you could compare it to Descartes' method in The Meditations. Similarly, I have decided to start from scratch, developing new ideas as to what reality (perhaps mine in particular) really is.
"Is" is a funny word. It denotes an even funnier concept: being. If reality truly has being, then shouldn't we be capable of perceiving it? Often times, we do not. Instead of acknowledging reality for what it is, we get caught up in what we feel reality should be. We spend too much time dwelling on the past and/or envisioning what the future should look like. That's where we go wrong. The shoulders, could as, would as hold no true being in the now. It's simply not reality. Same goes for ideas about the future. I will allow that ideas concerning the future have somewhat of a role in the now, however, there is a very fine line where the ideas become more destructive than motivational. Sometimes life throws us curves, shattering our most precious dreams for the future. If we cannot adapt to the inevitable changes that will no doubt occur, then we have not succeeded in living. Getting stuck in life typically is a result of living in the past or the future, rather than the now.
With all this in mind, I pledge to quit dwelling on the past and to worry a little less about the future. As cliché as it sounds, I am choosing to believe that everything that's meant to be, will be. I will simply have faith in myself and my ability to make the best life for myself. Of course, there comes the reevaluation of everything I had perceived my life to be. But ultimately, it comes down to my pledge to choose my own reality, which happens to be the now. I no longer want to surround myself with superficial people who cannot grasp what it is to control their own reality. When we live under a mask of superficiality, we are not living in reality. However, despite this vow of choosing better company, I'll need to be careful to not judge too quickly. Judging itself can prove to be detrimental. I do not want to plead guilty to any more mistakes in life. Of course, I realize that error cannot be completely avoided but I do want to live my life in as pure a way as possible. I guess it really is simple after all: be true to myself. If I immerse myself in what I view as my reality-namely love, positivity, and truth- then I will have no choice but to smile and feel true happiness.