Academics
Fear interests me.
Anxiety and panic.
People cutting themselves.
Jogging their asses off.
Depression and of course mania.
Hording, tattoos, body piercings.
Dread locks and hair style.
Stock car racing and hotdog
eating contests.
I can trade opinions on climate
change, presidential politics,
wars in the mid-east, socialism
& entitlement, women problems,
school lunches, Kardashians,
technology, of course gas prices
them bastards.
But mostly, I confess, fear is
what has my attention efficiency.
Anxiety and panic. What the hell….?
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Fear, anxiety, panic, cutting, jogging asses off: it’s all indicative of what individuals think is best for them, points to what they perceive to be viable. Whereas what I know and what consciously interests me: that’s Kardashian crap.
ReplyDeleteLast semester I started going to Al-Anon. To Sexaholics Anonymous, called into Social Phobics Anonymous conference calls but damn was that a boring, mostly-silent static two hour period of my weeks for weeks. I lied in all of them: I don’t have alcoholic folks or a sex addiction. What the hell’s just it! I like all that weird and discomfort; wondered why people got into those positions and why they thought sitting in a church basement talking about their porno films would make them feel better.
I have tattoos and body piercings, much to my parents’ discomfort, worse for my grandparents: they didn’t grow up in that environment. Sam: I’ve heard you say it before; folks used to go out and get crew cuts and penny loafers, no one ever woke up and said I think I’ll pay someone fifty bucks to stick a piece of metal through my nipples today so I can keep it there.
Fear is perfect for attention efficiency! Go check out those nipples!
Instead of going to more meetings with sexaholics and social phobes, I decided to do my thesis on internal representations of the environment. It got more TO the point, why and how these weird options appear as options, let alone as good ones. It was a little more structure for me (shows a lot about how I perceive the world, what I appears as productive; why didn’t I start going to Compulsive Hoarder's Anonymous, too? There’s a chapter near my house).
I believe that individuals, in developing their perceptual picture for internal use of the external world, necessarily find things they can reckon on. Unconsciously, necessarily, and the process is transparent in that I can realize what I find fundamental but I can’t consciously locate the locus of that, can’t just carve it out if I don’t like it. The anorexic thinks, If I was skinnier I’d be happy, because they’re reckoning on personal appearance as something more socially exchangeable, with more currency, than how they act. Don’t do personality push ups, just live off cabbage for a week.
Wars in the middle east, women problems, school lunches and technology... that’s small potatoes.
MAY
I meant to say, my initials are not N whatever-you-said.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter's dance instructor tapped her on the fanny and said "lose it" and it was cabbage and pushups forever. All of a sudden, mid-70's: the phenomena of over achieving girls and eating disorder. Amazing. Like Postits. Now you don't see-em, now you do. These fashions. Then Valley Girl which still hasn't quite faded out. ADD and upgraded: ADHD. Environmentalism. That's where it's at. Not steep slope construction, clean air and water, warming... But environed mentalism. What is IT that makes me wake up in the morning and decide to tattoo a tree rising out of my butt? Jog my ass off. Nothing but bottle water? Or drink the Kool Aid?. It's beyond me, my old man would say, his final years. The Media is the Message, not the message, Marshal McLuhan would say back in the 60's when folks were griping about lousy tv programming (a wasteland): Hell with the programming issues. Small potatoes. Consider the fact that there's a TV in every household! Imagine! a TV in every house hold. Don't that blow your mind? The implications? Always a pleasure May.
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