An Inhuman Condition

The elections are marching military-style to their climax in three days. Americans spent September spending less than they have in a long while. Gasoline is practically being given away at deep-discount, pre-apocalypse rates. World capitalists are handing out $25 billion to keep Hungary, a member of the elite European Union, afloat between paychecks. Like a bunch of broke, blue-collar buddies, they are buying Hungary’s drinks at the bar to get him through the rough times.

All the news reads like the introduction to a long epitaph for Western civilization. A British monetary consultant firm has predicted that the West has five years until the developing powerhouses start to control world capital. Our little exploited children had to grow up eventually. My only question concerns the hell of a nursing home in which they will ultimately hide us away. It was all a wild ride while it lasted. Maybe lucky Americans will be allowed to work in call centers for India and sweatshops manufacturing small toys for Chinese children.

This is not, however, my concern at the moment. I can see myself easily slipping comfortably into my negative niche as the ne’er-do-well naysayer. I know that path leads to a comfy chair, robust cigar and glass of scotch. I know I could be content simply screaming that the end was near on any street corner in this town. While it is apparent to those who are still paying attention as well as those who recently are learning the lessons of mindless consumerism, I have chosen to focus my effort tonight on something positive.

The recently deceased David Foster Wallace said that good writing makes the ugly, abrasive, caustic callous of modern culture apparent – it deals in problematic reality. He said this is no secret, any reader knows this about the world whether or not one is cognizant of it. Sometimes the gritty truths need to be spelled out for the naïve, but for those who can feel the communal pulse, it is all old news. Wallace says the importance of good writing is to keep this imperfect reality, but show how to keep hold of anything, everything that makes one human despite it all.

In the back of my head, I have the prehistoric relative of a thought. It’s something I can’t seem to codify or express in what some may refer to as “people words.” It’s a feeling that lingers in the back of every statement, every question that leaves my lips. It’s the silent partner and operating modus of my lexicon: every word crafted with its elusive influence. It is seemingly unobservable, but I pursue it with a fool’s grace and hunter’s fervor only to remain consistently forlorn.

It has some isolating side-effects and may cause undertones of self-loathing, but it can also instantly lift me into the ether or soothe the pressure, stress, cynical cyanide and duress. It’s something that precedes language and cannot be communicated through simple symbols. It’s the sub-text of sub-text, and I can feel it when I hear or read the thoughts of others. I use it to connect to like-minds and fall madly in love with authors. It’s the one method I use to contact humanity.

I sat with her at the coffee shop. We talked exchanging smiles the whole while. I played my favorite linguistic games; she challenged banal predictability with every syllable. We sipped through the night tumbling through our words to the hum of crowded heartbeats. The alienation inherent in the human condition parted for an eternal instant, individual atoms aligned, and everything was as one. The dank, dark, light and spark united. In that sliver of a moment, I thought I caught a glimpse of my game, and we were humans being.

When I am with her, nothing, especially the parade of pollution passing for news, can diffuse us.

I often say my aesthetics are lacking; I have no empirical proof of their existence. The only thing comparable to my feeling on the matter is faith. I’m not sure what religious people feel, but I know, in the only way one can truly know, that what I’m looking for is out there, somewhere, unobservable as always; I will continue chasing it.

Amor est vitae essentia.