i was talking with Leo tonight about the film "Death in Venice"… he was commenting on the costumes being so authentic… some offhanded mention of how uncomfortable the upper classes were back then…
and i thought of the struggle of civilization
ah-hem: "Civilization".
pulling ourselves up by our boot-straps…
what does it take?
it think of the finery
the ceremony
the tutelage
the binding
the corsets
the britches…
oh, inane suffering, it might be said
all those ruffs and endless dance lessons
coupled with piano lessons
and etiquette lessons
but how much more inane than lives filled with
eating, fighting, fucking, dancing, drinking
as the 99% have always #occupied their times
civilization is silly
but what we take for granted now…
what we ache to unmake
was rent from the sloppy wild beast that is Man
by the horrible crucible of repression that is Culture
with that we get all of our clever gadgets
such wonderful magical toys of distraction
and magnified self importance (Hello!)
our credit cards ( who came up with that idea? and with what exploitive potentials? and with what advantages for the suckers who use them? legion! )
i don't know
they get all this Wealth
"we" want distribution of Wealth
but we always forget what price we all pay to keep this story going
what roles we agree to
the 99% is the medium of history
the great story of humanity is being told through them
all the passions, the graspings and aversions
the wars and terrors, plagues and epidemics
love stories and murders, addictions, victories
yes, yes, the 1% enjoys and suffers these just the same
but with terrible mirrors surrounding all of their actions
awful amplifications of their agency in the archetypes they represent
that are stereotyped out infinitely into the world
such immense responsibilities!
such weight…
like the chinese children who spend their entire lives
, whatever lives those may be, never seeing sun, playing free, losing limbs
and their parents killing themselves regularly
so we might buy $15 sweaters
and $10 white shoes
some nice $400 laptops we can throw away in a year
while we complain about our mounding debts…
… before we get washed away in the flood
and those horribly neurotic, repressed, idiotic geniuses are doomed to carry on this story
reduced to the refined aspects of human personalities
glimmers of poets in their beady little eyes
dreams of lovers in their atrophied hearts…
so when their lot returns to what we accept as "poverty"
(which may also be known as "natural living")
they can people again the planet with beings capable of such luxuries of self delusion
to care about brand new shoes and finding their true soul mate…
plight or duty
we all have our burden to bear
… i'm not so much about putting things in their place
as to looking properly to understand the places that all of the ten thousand things already #occupy