“To all my little Hulkamaniacs, say your prayers, take your vitamins and you will never go wrong.” Hulk Hogan
The main reason for my writing this time is because it is very important for me to do it. It is not automatically linked with having something I feel the need to share. The truth is, I have recently been having a very hard time on a number of levels and for a number of reasons.
I certainly hope I am never being read, because of some perception that I have something of value to impart, because I don’t. More than anything else, I always try to be honest with you and maybe it is that effort that ends up mattering, more so than the subject matter. I think to myself, “If I don’t write this shit, who the else is going to do it?” Please understand it has nothing to do with some distorted sense of self-importance, because it ain’t there.
I am here with you every fucken day, trying to offer some comfort, because you are not alone. I guess if this was a tag team, wrestling match, with two opponents, it would be me versus the universe. It is so easy to feel small, a part of something so much bigger than myself. In those moments, I feel I have no business writing at all.
After having already written so many stories, I am running out of theories. I always get a laugh when I read about the Buddha. Apparently, this guy had so much to say, there are endless stories and books and they’re still coming. Thinking about that, makes me want to write in a confessional style, spending more time with my little world, as opposed to a world, so large and confusing.
Each day, we get out of bed and board our private train, with its own track. It doesn’t take much to unconsciously relinquish our job as chief engineer and end up being a passenger on the ride. Maybe, I have been feeling that way recently, so caught up in the external view that I don’t even feel the changing tracks. As you can likely tell, I am really laboring over where I am and how to talk to you. I know I am stuck with my style, if you could call it that. I am a shitty ventriloquist, using my own voice, moving my lips when I write.
I remember when I first started going to the movies and watching foreign films as I got older. Hollywood loved and still loves happy endings. Foreign films could care less about such trivia. They looked for the undistorted truth and wanted their audiences to question what they had just experienced. I can remember being shocked, not understanding what just happened. I actually had to think about it.
I am looking for a way to introduce a very difficult subject for me and the movie thing kind of hit me. I am not sure when it became fashionable for us to have such a high opinion of ourselves and I am talking about the entire audience of humanity. We are like some super production, with unlimited sequels and pretty much the same damn plot each time.
Over the millennia, anger has ruled as the prevailing feeling, pitting us against each other. MAGA didn’t event it and our vulgar president is like the long, dead canary in the coal mine for overdosing on it . What we are witnessing is a veritable showcase of human beings at their worst, doing what we have always done, just doing it better. Anger is the quintessential, stupid feeling, easy to develop an expertise in its perpetuation. It is absent even an ounce of thought, either inherited or inculcated.
This history of our species has always been defined in terms of conquests. Don’t think for a minute this has just been an affliction of our contemporaries. Some native tribes would skin their opponents alive. I think it was the Inca, who did their version of bowling with human heads. All conquests were romanticized by the conquerors, victims consistently suffering unimaginable punishment. Very often, these victims only had an oral language, so records are sparse. Victories were celebrated, but the stories of loss and deprivation died with the silencing of those voices.
We are incredibly creative creatures. Our goal is to always get better at whatever we are doing. The Nazis created the poison shower to kill as many Jews as possible. The “science” of eugenics created a false justification to establish the superiority of some over others. The atom bomb was only months old and we dropped it on a people we put in our very own internment camps during the second world war. I am sure it didn’t take long for spears to be used on each other, along with a new way to secure dinner.
You know, it is not like we have fallen from grace, which is part of what I don’t really get. Our entire history is a desert of ethics. I am not sure how we got to be called human beings and I am not going to look it up, because I don’t care about the when, rather I am interested in the why. Somewhere in the word humane, there is clear reference to kindness, separating us from the vicious animal kingdom. Care takers are humane and human beings are not. We are better. I will let you touch my spear.
Technology has been like a megaphone, but it hasn’t changed the game, just stripping it naked for all to see. Today, we get to witness and be impacted by a rampantly fascist society. While Trump is marching to Hitler’s playbook, he did not invent it either. Chiefs and kings and fascists have been breathing the same air for millennia. They have never seen us as part of the world, we are separate and above it.
Just like so many of us today, our forefathers were an optimistic bunch. They were better than the selfish monarchy that repulsed them. This new country could never grow a Trump, but of course it would, because it has always been what we do. History offers no exceptions. I don’t think they imagined that it would be so easy to turn this place into one they would want to leave.
I don’t want to get so busy writing that I forget about my morning train. While it only has room for one, there is a train for each of us. I have a union card that says I am the chief engineer. I don’t care about looking out the window. I am looking for the track that runs inside every single one of us. I got one word on my ticket and it has four letters: L-O-V-E. You gotta really concentrate on this destination, because you just can’t sit on your ass and expect to get there.
Anger and hatred are easy, but LOVE is a bitch, because it demands effort. In spite of the best intentions of most religions, it is not our innate nature. Gods did not invent the name, human being, we did. I am not into photoshopping our history or this moment. We live in a world of chocolate, trying to steal our love. In that wrestling match I was talking about, there is only room for me in the ring. I am my only opponent, me and Goliath. LOVE is the slingshot that will always bring me home and back to the page.
All aboard.
PS: I don’t know why I chose to include the photograph of a 400 year old shark, swimming off the coast of Greenland. Hopefully, it is a slight antidote for our myopia, when it comes to seeing the way things are.
LISTEN TO IT HERE:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1292459/episodes/17678145-jump-the-shark