Sunday, November 21, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
The Death of Glory
Atticus Freyr understood the concept of disillusionment fairly early, long before he experienced it. He thought he was disillusioned when he was 10 because he knew about poverty and disease and genocide, but these things did not corrupt his fundamental view of the world. His belief in the power of will to change reality, his sense that all humans had freedom, had an unlimited range of motion - these things remained intact. And so he thought that, though he was trapped by the power of parents over children and by law in the bureaucracy and unrelenting schedule of his prison-school, someday he could be happy.
Real disillusionment forced itself on him in the form of gray files in a gray cubicle in a gray office. After college he got a job doing the filing for the company that makes the labels for soda cans, and became intensely unhappy.
What Atticus wanted was to experience the whole world, dig into it and scrape himself on it, come back up gloriously grimy and grinning ear to ear, to write a new creation story, to start a revolution. The ever-present necessities of food, water, and shelter thwarted his plans. He supposed he had always known these condemning necessities existed but had never really believed in them until he felt hunger in his belly and could not pay rent.
That was when he discovered that he hated work - a genuine, deep-rooted hatred that filled his body first with anger and then with despair. Every fiber of his being rebelled against necessity, and for a while he tried to ignore it, to let himself slowly die in order to be happy in life. But base animal pains overcame his will and, feeling the shameful weight of his weakness, he crawled back to work.
That was when he became deeply unhappy. Realizing his degrading emotional state, he sat down in his dim living room/kitchen/bedroom and retreated so far into his mind that the traffic noise could not reach him. Why was he unhappy? The answer came in stages, which he let build and evolve until he was presented with a final, certain answer.
He had, in fact, a severely limited range of motion. Atticus had inherited a bureaucracy just as bad as public school. It became apparent to him that the structure and form society took was made for one thing, and it did that one thing reasonably well: it provided for the longest lives for the most people. The problem was that in the process it destroyed everything else. As the child to the parent, he was a dependent who had to conform. Most people, he realized, lived their whole lives this way, doing work they despised, waiting out the dreary days. And for what? What could be the purpose if not happiness? Atticus knew that civilization's response to necessity made everyone it infected fundamentally unhappy. This was his disillusionment. Not the tragedy of death and destruction, but the slavery, the quiet desperation, of an office job.
Real disillusionment forced itself on him in the form of gray files in a gray cubicle in a gray office. After college he got a job doing the filing for the company that makes the labels for soda cans, and became intensely unhappy.
What Atticus wanted was to experience the whole world, dig into it and scrape himself on it, come back up gloriously grimy and grinning ear to ear, to write a new creation story, to start a revolution. The ever-present necessities of food, water, and shelter thwarted his plans. He supposed he had always known these condemning necessities existed but had never really believed in them until he felt hunger in his belly and could not pay rent.
That was when he discovered that he hated work - a genuine, deep-rooted hatred that filled his body first with anger and then with despair. Every fiber of his being rebelled against necessity, and for a while he tried to ignore it, to let himself slowly die in order to be happy in life. But base animal pains overcame his will and, feeling the shameful weight of his weakness, he crawled back to work.
That was when he became deeply unhappy. Realizing his degrading emotional state, he sat down in his dim living room/kitchen/bedroom and retreated so far into his mind that the traffic noise could not reach him. Why was he unhappy? The answer came in stages, which he let build and evolve until he was presented with a final, certain answer.
He had, in fact, a severely limited range of motion. Atticus had inherited a bureaucracy just as bad as public school. It became apparent to him that the structure and form society took was made for one thing, and it did that one thing reasonably well: it provided for the longest lives for the most people. The problem was that in the process it destroyed everything else. As the child to the parent, he was a dependent who had to conform. Most people, he realized, lived their whole lives this way, doing work they despised, waiting out the dreary days. And for what? What could be the purpose if not happiness? Atticus knew that civilization's response to necessity made everyone it infected fundamentally unhappy. This was his disillusionment. Not the tragedy of death and destruction, but the slavery, the quiet desperation, of an office job.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Alexander Wept (in progress)
These are the practice hands I drew before putting any pen on my actual drawing. As you can see from my first failed attempts, this was a very good idea.
Monday, May 31, 2010
The World is Worth my Time
I always wanted to be somewhere else, although when I got there I didn't want to be there either. It was like the air was pushing in on me. I shouldn't have been able to exist because the air itself didn't want me. That was how I knew that what I was waiting for could never come.
The truth is I don't know how to write about being happy. I've never had a need.
Aiming high has always been my thing. The difference is now there are good things in this world for me. I credit Wellbutrin; I credit therapy. You I credit most of all. You make these sun-bleached sterile streets tolerable. In fact you make them shine. I always knew I would strive for greatness. You make it worth my time.
The truth is I don't know how to write about being happy. I've never had a need.
Aiming high has always been my thing. The difference is now there are good things in this world for me. I credit Wellbutrin; I credit therapy. You I credit most of all. You make these sun-bleached sterile streets tolerable. In fact you make them shine. I always knew I would strive for greatness. You make it worth my time.
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