Welcome

Being unemployed gives you time to think. It is a rare opportunity to reflect on who you are, and who you plan to become. Financial difficulty is a life defining experience when faced with homelessness. I have a belief that everything happens for a reason. Having a chance to live outside of and observe a system we strive to be a part of, which will eventually destroy us gives life a new perspective. At times deep in thought I remind myself that the test of success is graded in your ability to face failure. As a young man aspiring to be a rapper I often wrote of my fear of failure, and my desire to succeed. It wasn't until age 30 on a windy October day that I embraced the idea; stagnation is like dying, all successes in life, love, and finance involve risk and accountability for your actions. The fear of failure is the same as the fear of success.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Imagination

The Imagination Story


Sometimes you can go on the greatest journeys simply by closing your eyes. Imagine.

They pull up to your home, plant a flag in your yard and say they found it. You don't know them, they don't speak your language and they look strange. Yet you are kind. You bring them food, they trade you non-winning lottery tickets. You trade expexperiences they sleep in your house you sleep in their car, when you wake you are informed you cannot return back home. Approaching your porch is punishable by death, they pay you for your house with an iPad, a gym membership, a skillet and a bar of soap. Your neighbors are falling for the same tricks, sickness comes and they offer to cure you with packs of cigarettes and bottles of whiskey. Its happening every where soon no one you know will be left.

Your office building employs 2000, every day for weeks 3 less people return from lunch. Life must go on you complain about the increasing workload. One day you are attacked while eating, the last thing you see are the lights on the cafeteria ceiling. You find yourself chained to a factory station, but you've never done manual labor, you are quite untalented. The small Chinese man barks orders but you don't speak Chinese he beats you until you understand. You wonder about your children, your wife, your friends. Is this what happened to your coworkers, is it still happening? The transport truck you came on was to heavy to make it up into the mountains, you remember seeing coworkers thrown from cliffs to lighten the load. You are stuck in this factory, every breath feels like dying you will die here. In our world every death brings new life, there are pregnant women working also. You fear for these children born into your new world.


It has become a world of labor. Children are not strong enough or smart enough to work yet. Progress calls for harder work, longer hours, children fend for themselves. They are forgotten, laws and rights never consider those who have nothing to contribute. Children have nothing to contribute, we don't need children not in the work force. There is no need to teach them teachers should be focused on working. Ignore them, we don't need them, they don't have feelings or opinions they are just kids. Food should be for those who work they need the strength. Darwinism will sort out our youth.

Children have come to hate adults because they are neglected. They resent being forgotten, forced into hardship, never represented. They become strong, cold, they need us less and less until they don't need us at all. Children are born into the factory where they too are forced to work. They dream of escape, one day finding that old office, maybe running their own factory. They despise tyranny, but today's opressed become tomorrows oppressor. Look at how they treat the old. No respect earned certainly none given. You watch your people die off, their legacy fades from memory. You only want to assimilate into a life that allows you to live in a house and work in an office. The scoff at the homeless, you frown upon children, and people who don't do the same or greater work than you are simply less than you.

Destiny is not an idea a hand full of people can decide for the masses. The only thing the great American ideal has manifested is bloodshed. Capitalism is the new age imperialism. Religion is a twisted excuse for war and genocide. And a true democracy is more like a buffet table, I am told to choose between beef, pork and chicken. My opressors have not connsidered that I may not want or be in the mood for meat.

Imagine the hate that could be bred from those circumstances. Imagine the illusions of right and wrong that grow from living like that. Imagine, imagine...imagine. Then accept that this is the life we live, that these are the circumstances native Americans, blacks, and women have had to endure. Imagine if you were poor, homeless, homosexual, uneducated different in anyway that does not fit what was established as the norm. Feel the pain, feel the suffering, face the loss and confusion. Wake up everyday with the inability to trust your surroundings. Is it heartbreaking? How do you find your happiness in this mess?

Now, imagine you are an educated white male.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Progress

What is the cost you are willing to pay for progress? How do you balance the scales of life, answer between time and living?

Material things make the world go round make no mistake of that. If most of us decided to eat on good deeds we've done for others, most of us would die of starvation. Charity has become big business, sacrifice only occurs for the benefit of the ego, and we don't have the time to worry over anything but the here and now. I could be wrong however, perhaps these are just the words of a cynic.

What kind of life are we living? If we took time to truly see ourselves as we are and not what we want to be what would we see? What have you done for the sake of progress and what are you willing to do? We are all Anakin in Revenge of the Sith love and ambition will drive us to error as we are manipulated by some greater power.

To this end I have made mistakes. I have lost more friends than I have gained, offended more than I ingratiated, and abandoned more than I rescued. Looking in the mirror, I seem to have forgotten bridges burn faster than they can be built. I am alone but progress may prove to be another form of attrition. Have you ever watched a comrade die while standing next to you?

This year I've accomplished 75% of my goals, 25% of my goals are shared with others. I am not the same man I was a week before my 31st birthday. I am no longer the man I was at New Years, or March 22nd when my grand mother passed. I am not the same man I was yesterday. Friendships are like clothes, sometimes you outgrow them.

No matter how much you loved that shirt or pair of jeans, they just don't fit you anymore. Sadly when I looked in the mirror this morning I realized I am still in puberty. What did you see in your mirror?