Tic Tacs, Etc

Tic Tac on his tongue replaces the sandy taste of bad news. That others have told, that he has told others. Scented sanitizer on his fingers sterilizes the corrosive grip of handshakes. People disappointing him, him disappointing people. Sound impressive, smile, peacock, sound impressive. Run it back, run it back, run it back.

He grabs his baseball hat, glances down at his dress shirt and khakis. Casual Friday. The emblem on the hat reminds him of his college days, back when six shots of vodka was a good thing. The “inspirational talk” the Company had required employees to attend earlier that day was still swimming around in his head. Quite detrimental to the productivity.

“Be grateful for what you have.”

He knew he was privileged. He was indeed going to an all-inclusive beach resort next weekend, where he could blow all the money that he stacked up working the long hours, where sand and sea and sunburn could remind him how lucky he was. But his wife was in love with someone else. She hadn’t actually done anything incriminating, but she was. And that type of dull ache wasn’t the kind of thing that would go away with a miniature umbrella and a squeeze of lime. That type of ache was the type that would choke a person out, if focused on too intently. Best to let it fester, rationalize the best narrative of the situation, and think about work.

And what was the best narrative of the situation, exactly? Feelings are hard to concretely describe, with no set patterns governing their existence, and therefore dumb. People shouldn’t feel them. Women are wild creatures with no control over not feeling their feelings. They often give into them. Therefore, women are also dumb. Shame that he was attracted to them, and that humanity seemed to benefit from their existence. He didn’t quite know how to grapple with those thoughts yet. Best to ignore them.

“Stay mindful of what you are contributing to society. Help those less fortunate than yourself.”

Yes, the world seemed to be going to hell in a handbasket, if you looked at it for too long. He had no doubt that people were suffering and animals were dying and future generations were getting screwed over. No doubt at all.

But was any of this his problem? No. Because who could prove that he could change anything about it? Nobody. He probably couldn’t. Might as well not waste effort trying. The system was unfair. Truth of life. Survival of the fittest (and the luckiest). So be it.

Plus, his life was no piece of cake, either. And his priority should be to help himself out before helping others. Kind of like the oxygen mask instructions on a plane. Maybe one of these days he’d find the energy to “do something good.” Though if he never got around to physically helping people, he had his food drive donations to point to, and his socially-liberal-fiscally-conservative vote. 

“Live to your absolute fullest potential.”

Inspirational people were always getting off on shit like this. Wasn’t everyone living to their fullest potential? It seemed strange that anyone would be purposely causing themselves suffering. Maybe this was everyone’s best effort at contributing to the world. At “being themselves.” At “showing affection.” Maybe humans are just really shit at all of this stuff and have too much self awareness for our own good. Did you ever think of that, man? 

He stops by the men’s room to splash some water on his face and walks out through the manicured lobby to the Subway stop. Hitting legs at the gym really quick, tossling the hair of his boys, maybe helping with math homework, and then kicking back with some football. It was a decent life, in the everyday motions of it all. No need to complicate everything with overanalyses. You have your hand, and you play it. Simple as that.

Language x2

Kettle squeal, about to boil
Too-sweet candy from tin foil
Weight on flapping wings

Sophisticated drawling, languish
Often can be quite contagious
Buries vital things

But
Buzzing, hot, electric coil
Roots pull history from the soil
Onto pieces cling

Leaps and bounds and escalations
Way less lonely ruminations
Help a soul to sing

Perspective

Chasing the feeling of illumination. Of truth. The same feeling as from a mountaintop. When you can presumably see everything, all the many people going about their many lives zoomed out into some glittering specks on the landscape. Trying to soak it all in, to understand the layers of complexity and yet the overarching simplicity, so as not to forget by the time you start the walk down. But, of course, you can never fully internalize everything, not least because that same everything looks different from the next mountaintop over, and the next. All you can settle for is the temporary illusion that you see everything. Of knowing everything one can possibly know at one moment in thought. And then to carry that everything along inside of you to help you interpret future everythings. An explorer of viewpoints, an adventurer of ideas, into perpetuity.

Leafie

Slight whoosh, wind gust
Leafy quiver, air quake
Ground calls, stem breaks
Leafy flutter, caught in muck
Slight stumble, then is stuck
Was it always predisposed
To flutter here and decompose
Into soil, into land
To feed the tree above like planned
The tree will grow to scrape the clouds
Then crash back to the ground
And was it worth the leaves
And ideas are the leaves
Ideas are the leaves

Me.

Cliffs dropping away suddenly remind of the center of the Earth; mountains overlooking wandering rivers of the slow, steady rolling of time. Infinite star clusters overhead showcase our myopic self-perception. And tumultuous oceans, simultaneously filled with chaos and calm, reconcile the spirits and motivations within ourselves.

I was raised in the mountains of Utah, with the kindest, most supportive family there ever could be. I learned of the bonds that humans can have between each other, the bonds that we have with simple things like music and clothes and ballgames, and the bonds that we have with the natural world that we sprouted from.

I then went to Princeton, which I thought would be filled with smart people. And it is. But there’s a catch. Many Princetonians are disconnected from the lives they’re living. They throw everything they have at glittering interfaces and detailed archives. They strive to be successful, rather than content, and the culture incentivizes this pursuit of prestige with no underlying meaning. These are the people, though, who are going to get things done. They’re the ones with leverage, who can send ripples of influence across the interconnected realms of finance and technology and politics in order to change the status quo of the people living for the simple things.

And the status quo and choice architecture of the people living for the simple things is what has to change. It has always been changing, but the challenge now is greater than ever. The external costs of things like fossil fuels and poor labor conditions must be internalized into our global economic system before we completely lose ourselves in tech and prestige. And the cool part is that this very tech and prestige can be used to internalize them. Ideals like sustainability and equality and freedom don’t grow exponentially in the same way as technology and money and globalization, so they’re difficult to prioritize. But we exist in a time characterized by threats that require this prioritization. I have no doubt that we can figure out how to alter our industrial system so that it allows for consumption and competition while also factoring in the well-being of current and future populations. But in order to do this, there has to be more communication between different sectors of society and between different groups of people.

Humanity is inherently lazy, stubborn, defensive. We cling to our biases and flawed beliefs with the strength of someone holding to a cliff with only fingertips, as if changing our minds will cause gravity to pull us down into chaos. But the amazing part is that humanity is also moral. We change individually, and then choose to steer future generations further in that direction in a miracle of deliberate goodness. And issue by issue, we teach ourselves to defy this gravity. To fly. And the cliffs that used to be the only things that we had left shrink into the surrounding landscape as we find ourselves amongst the clouds. This is why it’s all worth it.

Dandelions

Dandelions droop, dim streetlight
Someone's future wish
For now they quiver through the night
Weedlot's damp mash mish

Layers of parallel progress
'der the guise of continuity
You never know the moment
When you've fully shed your skin

And wind would do it for you
But still you blow the dandelion
Cause how else would you ever
Face the uniqueness within

Clouds scoot in, obscure the moon
Shines now like a lamp
Sweet weeds and grass and smokey skies
Life's wild round the camp