Same Old Novelty

I'm still in Baltimore, but I'm going to make it home. I tell myself that, in and from the throes of a barrage of contrary obstacles. It's humiliating, but the net effect is somehow even more destabilizing. I have done everything "right," and everything has responded by malfunctioning grandly.

And I miss my family A GREAT DEAL.

What is the synthesis that is lacking from all of this blasted life-and-living thing? At the risk of drowning in a stale puddle of metaphorical fluid, I will say through my resigned grimace that it's like an arch minus the keystone. So much will seem during these times to be going so well, and as my stride grows more assured and comfortable with that awareness, I encounter a snare that is (or at least appears to have been) designed for people that dare to be that way. Then commences the horrid cascade of thorny consequences, with trite-but-ever-truer results.

(Like, dig this: since we live in a world of cellphones, it is expected that the owner will be available at ALL TIMES. They take umbrage at your lack of complete, drop-everything accessibility. Why? When things happen faster, people become even more impatient? Fools.

And, as if there were somehow an insufficient basis in the miasma du jour for keeping poor people in perpetual states and senses of lack, there's always a line of profiteers that are interested in exploiting any mistakes that could possibly made. No "trust" or any similar liability--merely unmitigated greed. And suspicion! For instance, combatting "abuse of the system" is a central aspect of political lip service [in this country, at least], and finding help in general is a dehumanizing procedure in which the person seeking assistance is subjected to constant monitoring, viewed as being somehow less than an actual adult. Yet, as this happens and happens, there is no accountability for iniquities that bring people to where today finds or has found them.

And for all of the heartless, stratified hogwash about an "ownership" society being bandied about in these last years, I've seen nary a shred of detectable ownership regarding privilege. It's anybody's privilege not to recognize his or her own privilege, but it's a prison that separates a person from people. And does so ever more with the passage of time; as the true consequences of an impropriety reverberate through decades, that betrayal is ever more likely to be dismissed as something from the past [blame for the victim's struggle with residue of the past], and is less likely to be examined authentically [disenfranchisement]. THIS IS A FLAWED SYSTEM. It's dripping with the very privilege that survives in the absence of its acknowledgment, and nobody at all actually benefits.)

That was indeed a lengthy digression.

Anyway, I'm happy with my negative bottom line, but just because that's the way that things have gone lately, and I owe it to every person that cares about me to have a happy life. So, I dedicate my only self to that premise. It won't deter me from looking, but it might enhance the quality of my family's life in this awfully meantime.
I hope that everybody's doing great today.

Love, Benb xoxoxoxoxo

Global Time Is Now

It's a bizarre day, and I'd say that it was something like "curious" if it were over, but it's not. There's that feeling akin to, "Alright. I'm done, and have seen quite enough. Can't we just make tomorrow longer and have the day end RIGHT NOW?"

I'll say that I said that it was good with me. And let us surmise that suddenly it was/is tomorrow. But somehow I've got to signify that, yes?

Why? To whom? To myself? Quoi?

It doesn't have to mean anything, which is just as well, because it doesn't mean anything. Necessarily. Because as "objective" as measures would like and are proclaimed to be, we're still assessing the assessment with imprecise circuitry.

Writing this outrageously stupid post , for instance, is something to which I could attribute signifying status (cf. significance), heralding a proverbial dawn, but the fact that to write this, let alone read this, is so very tedious is a de facto entreaty that it be lumped/clumped/dumped into posts of yore.

But I'm not finished, suddenly, and that's very difficult news for me to accept. So, I'll be concise.

We need to abolish time zones. I mean it. Everywhere'd be the same, operating according to the International Date Line. We would be so much happier with the freedom to generate our own associations. Here in Maine, the sun would rise at noon. But it would aso rise when it rises.


The tsunami of Boxing Day, 2004 happened. On that, we can all agree. But for Molly and me, then residing in Seattle, WA (in PST, which is GMT -0800), it was very much still Christmas. While that is an arbitrary example, it sort of underscores the dissonance germane to having a world that factionalizes simultaneous experience. With all of these foolish e-devices and i-contraptions everywhere, fetishizing immediacy, it's a wonder that the subject has yet to be broached.

When I introduced the concept of time-zone abolition to friends back in 2002, I was met with this response. I'll actually quote my friend, Nicholas Barker: "That is, without a doubt, the stupidest idea that I have EVER heard."

Meanwhile, I even devised a slogan, for promotional purposes: GLOBAL TIME IS NOW. This, sadly, was misinterpreted to have Zen leanings, but the reality is much nerdier, and cooler than that, because the reality is not that it is now; it's that now is flanked by thens, into which others are shoehorned unjustly. So, I humbly suggest that we reset and sychronize our timepieces in favor of something more equitable.

Let us now have a moment of silence, please. Yes. Now. 

The 2012 Time Capsule

Desmond, Ivor, Molly, and I have been attempting all day to construct a time "capsule" in as much of a nod to sadly outdated past predictions of the future as a way to sanctify the mundane in our lives.


Trouble is that we've been mired in this bog/fog/clog all the livelong day. But we'll have something going soon. It's an issue of focus, even though none of us had a drop to drink last nite.


This all started with my rarely (if ever) satiable curiosity about what happens in unseen/unheralded places. This curiosity is what leads to the phone's being answered when, by all probable accounts, it's a telemarketer or some vile Newsmax survey taker on the other end of the line. As we now "own" this house, I've taken to "exploring" it freely, which is not to say that I'll ever do all of the exploring that I would like to do.


There's an area beneath our stairs, for instance, where nothing is, as far as we know, excepting an envelope of space confined by walls. i've been yearning to experience the majesty of that tiny, esoteric nook for quite some time.


Molly has humored me extensively through our 8.3 years together, indulging my off-kilter theories and flights of fancy without judgment. This time, however, required a bit of doing, as our place is a wreck with all of its wallpaper removed and such. In the end, it was our dear friend and next-door neighbor, Maggie Sutton, whose suggestion really optimized the adventure. I'll paraphrase: "It's okay, because no matter what you find, you can leave something behind. Et voila! The Time Capsule. Contents forthcoming.


Here we are:


* 1 compact disc (a mix that I assembled and named "Philomena" as part of a project in which the songs on a disc would define a person's characteristics)


* 1 necktie


* 1 pair toddler's underwear


*1 Lindt Chocolate Bar packaging


*1 Electrical Outlet Cover


*1 Experian Credit Report, vandalized by Desmond


*1 Hot Wheels™ Vehicle


*1 "Feel Good" Card about How to Make Your Life Seem Meaningful


* 1 AA Battery


* 1 Alphabet Block, with letters and shit on it


* 2 DSL Filters


* 1 Family Portrait by Desmond Gallaher (ink on paper)


We deposited these things, sans "capsule," despite having found NOTHING in that "hiding place." And we were thrilled at what these items might convey to their future finders.

Ahh.

Someone Says

I don't know the source of this truism.

(Gosh, well, that itself is a truism, innit.)

Neither do I know the source of the following truism (although I am quite sure that it's from a Goddard College student):

The perception of time within a finite experience is analogous to the lifespan of a toilet-tissue roll. It seems initially to be boundlessly present, and use (let's say a 1-foot segment) does little visibly to diminish its abundance perceptibly. But then, a threshold of sorts is crossed, and that same 1-foot segment means so much more to the girth of the roll, yet nothing can be done about it. The real-life applications of this axiom are both apt and irritating.