Namaste.
Neurotica taught me what may honestly be the most impressive word I've ever encountered. Alright, so it's in sanskrit (away with the myriad of Animal House quotes that could be inserted here), but it means that which has kept me going since I first let down my guard and permitted the idea of kindness.
It means: "I bow to the divine in you." At least according to Mar.
I couldn't care if I'm using it incorrectly (unless someone with far more patience than I for things long gone might take the time to explain it without keeping me from ever using it again - I'm all for syntax, but only after content, remember? ;) but every time I use the word, which I haven't done all that often yet, something stirs within me.
Today it seems as if the subtle grinding of the earth were stirring with me. I am Browning's Duchess (as I've iterated oft before) - I "have a heart too soon made glad, too easily impressed..." and all it took to get the ball rolling and call that "spot of joy" to my cheek this morning was yet another angst-ridden e-mail from the blacklist. (My other great theft of bandwidth aside from the venerable STUFFlist)
Matt and Steff (Korning) have been reminding me of the "whys" so often recently. Steff's reaction to a poem I'd sent to the list, string upon string of litanies against this corporate culture, calling for more, begging for more, with every word stunning me into wide-eyed, passive perusal, as to just how NOT alone I should be feeling right now.
Y'know that feeling of "disjointedness"? I get it more often at times, less often lately because there's been no room, no room, no time, no time.
But that crazed aching that something JUST DOESN'T FIT RIGHT, that tilts the concrete beasts of buildings in the streets into dizzying postures, that turns the hurrying grey-garbed figures into preposterous caricatures of icons that were never meant to exist, let alone permeate the all-important "norm"...
That aching is part of what sent me, teeth and talons, at the throat of the entertainment industry yesterday.
It's just all so fucking preposterous... The way we live, the way, as a whole, we've chosen to live, the sacrifices we've made for "creature comforts" that no creature true to itself would ever allow itself to believe in more wholly than the pope and his eternal soul...
And yet we do.
And for some reason we'll protect this maximalist existence with fangs bared at poets and philosophers.
For some reason that I'm too alien to understand, the urge to be more than the mewling bundles of brittle flesh that we could realistically have remained, has manifested itself as 9-5 rythms and salary hunts and the subsequent need for passive entertainment to subdue what little time we haven't already emptied into the hands of men-with-more-expensive-ties.
And then, just as I was beginning to choke on those sinister silk swaths, Matt broke the sky to pieces and painted a new horizon.
Matt, weren't you the one, who when we all went to see "1984" at the Sci-Fi fest last year, told me I looked too damn happy for such a depressing movie?
Aren't you the one that gets exasperated with the fact that I smile all the doggamn time?
Matt, who started off my morning with luddite proposals to globally cut down work-weeks to 4 days and send the white-collars off to plant trees on Mondays.
Not only would this benefit us physically and make us happier as a whole, but...
The very notion of changing something so ingrained in our lives as a five-day workweek, brings pouring down so many implications...
So many fucking beautiful implications.
Imagine what could happen to castes (right, so we pretend they don't exist), to lifestyles, to the uselessness of sitcoms...
Then again, forcing people to plant trees is still a little big-brotherish.
But it's a start.
And my only serious need this morning is to bow to the divine in you, and come up with a serious plan.
It's all well and good to write science fiction stories together, but when do we start altering this reality?
Where, and more importantly, WHEN, do we start?