"I'll be a happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender." The Dark Web is just behind that door, over in the corner. The backside of a filthy curtain, where levers, gears and pulleys lift and load uncivilized packages beneath a cold red neon buzz. A conspicuous color red; At a strange time when Americans lose access to their CCP pacifier, and unpack a fascist. Fucking imbalanced universe! -- C'est la vie, and so long. My fridge also houses the dark web, with three distinct leftovers, but nothing you’d have a taste for. Past its threshold, sin and promiscuity ravage sidelined humanity. The dark web is the whole of the web, a polymer ecosystem of intertwined soul crushing empty spaces, filled with vitriol, takeout containers, amazon boxes, and self-help advice. It is where we pretend things are perfect, because the GIF looks nice. The same dark web lingers in the gasket of my high efficiency washing machine, and in my shower grout. By the middle of January mid-winter hum-drum, fuels the same darkness, while the web sprouts a new hybrid strain. My fridge also houses the dark web with three distinct leftovers, but nothing you’d have a taste for. Suffering the indignity of too many food options, is a killing joke. By mid-January, the darkness covering our hemisphere begins to relent long enough to balance hope with our despair, keeping us in the game a bit longer, perhaps. Hope becomes a quiet blanket of sugary white crystals lit by the long shadows of a golden sun; While Evil remains a bleak smothering damp grey, dripping wet chill into otherwise dry socks. Everyone needs a break from winter, and from devices, from ourselves, boring blogs, and shitty pod-casts. But mid-winter reminds me of how far gone we are into the land of make-believe. Well before the weather broke us, we’d already spent far too much money and time alone, opening strange canned goods, stacking dishes in a full sink, sniffing containers of whatever lines the fridge. Running out of tissues, and lotion, winter’s survival seems to hinge upon the arithmetic ten-to-one imbalance of condiment, to food. None of these seem to have expiration dates. In 2023, 74 percent of U.S. "restaurant traffic came from take-out. Today it's even higher, but those who dine-in, bring both their phones, and friends with phones. Sadly, nobody can order without a phone and nearly as many only accept payment by app. All of us are pretending to dine out, while swiping saucy fingers. Everyone is clicking QR's, re-sorting preferences like recyclables, as cookies probe deeper into the nation’s psyche. Nobody is enjoying their time out, Everyone is posting, nobody is present. Everyone is faking it. Apparently, all of the trained servers who weren’t killed by Covid, now work from home on the software backend. If there were ever an argument that we are living in a simulation, this January moment should prove it. To dine out today requires a phone, but nobody uses their phone to call anyone. "I've been aware of the Time going by They say in the end, it's the wink of an eye." Go ahead and fake it!, because pretense is the mod con. Pretending to enjoy the sanctuary of dining out, in that booth by the window, where delivery drones constantly open doors pouring cold chill over a messy dining room. Here the bar is closed, and stacked with containers, and pre-packed take-out, rolled napkins swaddle bendy plastic ware. Your table runner aimlessly shuffles plates, reluctantly returning a plastic container with your check. Apparently, all of the trained servers who weren’t killed by Covid, now work from home on the software backend. Tonight, nobody will ask what you’d enjoyed, because nobody cares. Desserts and Paper Menus have been replaced with a QR sticker and a breath mint. Since 2023 online reservations for tables of one has increased by 30 percent. We are pretending to participate in an online class as the only student. Going out to dinner has become a correspondence course in dating, rather than a date. It’s deep damp January, and we are on the brink of a vengeful takeover. We are pretending to care about fascism, and we are pretending that Europe is not already at war on a larger scale, while local infrastructure is sabotaged regularly, and planes accidentally fall from the sky. We are pretending we get good service, at places which suck. We are pretending that our food is organic, healthy, while your hands swell, and tummies cramp. January 6th reminds us that America is still pretending not to be embroiled in a nativist crusade for white Christian supremacy. We are all Pretending to take ourselves seriously, take ourselves someplace, while not leaving our desktop, our doorstep. We are adapting, inventing systems, to cope through loneliness, while posting youthful selfies, instead of the stunning old fucks we've become. We are emulating favorable aspects, which we observe of others, hoping something sticks. We imitate our costumes, speech, affect, gait, dress, dance-moves, our hairstyles, our religion, past-times, bad habits, and customs. And we do all of that to belong to a larger organism, which is in decline. I am a pretender, and I am the sum total of the junk I once held sacred, crap that I've eaten, collected, wasted, vomited, tossed out, and waded through for decades. Sometimes I’ll scrap everything, perhaps plagiarizing the better aspects of what I've seen -- What I have become. Imitation is a religion, The hard-disc a temple. Opinions always align with the reviews we’ve read. We simulate a walk, a run, a ride, a row. even golfing can be done from home. We are pretending to laugh, pretending to fit in, pretending to matter, I pretend to care, and frequently I pretend to work. I wonder what my life would be like if I were more genuine. If I were, instead of the tapestry of germs and junk I drag around -- Valued for some intrinsic quality unique to me alone. Perhaps, I’d have been a contender. Nothing borrowed, nothing stolen, nothing soft peddled, nothing synthetic to myself. Native and raw, I'd still likely suck. Truth and pretense don’t cancel each other out, they only postpone a reconciliation of the self to a larger organism, which we are actively dismantling now. No rush, they are already breaking down the show by the time you begin your search for tickets. Secular America is reconstituting itself at the mega-church. Tonight, the makeover of American religious freedoms applies its orange toner in the mirror of a wrathful god, and I'm pretending he's not real. We are about to be appalled every waking moment for the next 1460 days by the most fake human ever., and I am pretending not to care about evangelical marauders as I write this. I am pretending to enjoy one-in-four meals with close friends while I keep my ideas to myself. I pretend to give a shit about obscure, even remote events, where empathy is warranted. I'm pretending that two of the five books I'm reading concurrently are decent. I've pretended to belong to book-clubs, groups, gyms, teams, and I fake-it rather well in crowds. I'm holding a plastic cup right now waiting for someone on-stage to awaken me. I join the audience, anxious, hopeful, mouth parted, awaiting my queue to clap. If you've not yet taken a meaningful moment for yourself or for someone else today, or perhaps yet this year -- Amidst the kinetic swirl of Santa-Ana Winds, Wild-Fires, Volcanos, School Drop-offs, Funerals, Dog-Grooming, Final Exams, Yoga Injuries, Hangovers, Missed Deadlines, Tax Bills, Snow-Storms, Power-Outages, Confessions, Car-Wrecks, Snow-Shoveling and Migraines, and a high of twelve degrees... And if your holiday vacation wasn't exactly what you'd saved up for. You can always fake it. And... You'd be in good company. If you didn't unwrap the thing you'd prayed to Santa-Jesus for, you'll likely order it anyway, and a dynamic web-page will have decided which brand you buy. What may be missing this second week post-apocalypse, is to contemplate what you still have to be grateful for, just before our country goes to shit (again). You may think you need some alone time, or a new pair of shoes. You may believe that your best remedy involves a good book, some solitude, a walk in the park, a punk show..., a vinyl record. Perhaps it is silence. But, most likely it's some human contact. "Where the Ad's take aim, and lay their claim To the heart and the soul of the spender." Because we all fuck up our best holiday plans, to some extent and we still get up and do it again. January 15th is the International Day of "The Pretender". Where we listen more than we talk, and read more than we flick, Give more than we take... And 'Giving a shit' this early in the year, I suppose, may qualify us to be human again. To claw back from a filthy sub-stack of winter’s dark web. Today is the day that we'll let go of having to suck it in, while we suck it up. Perhaps we are pretending to be nice for everyone else's sake. Today we'll trash malingering leftovers. Perhaps we'll leave the TV off, 'til we toss-out those take-out containers. Today, I told the kid at the coffee shop that, "We'd only just met", [and that] "I gave your tip to my Garbage man, my Mail Man, and my Dog Groomer, who always come through for me". Today, I brought dinner to my neighbor’s house, and drove 250 miles to visit elderly friends just to check in on them. I wrote a few letters to newly minted strangers and spun my chair around to jet them off to the letter box. I remember this estranged feeling of being human, and being part of a larger organism, well before I'd taken the shape of some bleak winter island. In seclusion, I'd forgotten about so many things, & the fragile lattice of people who'd shaped me, whom I've (perhaps) taken for granted. Fair weather friends, never call mid-January, unless their TV breaks, their internet goes down, or someone dies. There was a spike in deaths when they certified the certifiable. Good people left the game simply to quash its unrelenting background noise. Far less people sing in their cars... Nearly nobody owns a legitimate home stereo. A portable web speaker sits on the counter, like the speaker phone from Charlie's Angels, lonely uninspired, we await musical instruction from a non-randomized algorithmic playlist. Then more thumbing through phones for the song’s meaning. I try to contextualize how any person from outside our culture, perhaps aliens, would observe billions of people at dinner, driving, jogging, cycling, and sunning themselves on a beach-holiday staring deeply into tiny screens for wisdom, for company. How we must appear from outside the bubble. Swiping for food -- Posture stooped and slouchy. A four-top with three lost to a 3" screen. I'm pretending it wont be quite so bad. Make-believe sketches in the season’s margins, establishing the time scale for Winter's cruel work. To get clean of the blahs, I’ll begin by tossing those tiny hot sauce containers I’ve been keeping for some reason, and throw away a dozen flimsy plastic sporks, cheap chopsticks, soy packets, tiny tubs of parmesan, single serving chili-flakes, and 6 condiments of unknown origin. Perhaps I’ll bake something, embarrass myself at Karaoke, and then hit that 4 AM Punk Bar. If I make it ‘til spring, I'll need to pretend to really enjoy winter. Man! this Jackson Brown Track is Magic.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AGE & TREACHERY WILL BEAT YOUTH & SKILL Archives
January 2025
Categories |
Proudly powered by Weebly