Herr Pidde

It was check-in time, boarding is not due for another two hours. Travelling during the pandemic will always be harrowing, all the what ifs and possible outcomes fill your head like an avalanche. It was supposed to be overweight, it was predicted disaster. “Save your money for your wife” said Herr Pidde.

As we waited to pay for the overweight charge he coincidentally was there also, reporting to the supervisor, he came up and asked if this was in fact my wife, and he introduced himself apologizing that there had to be an overweight charge, “I need to be strict or I will get in trouble” Herr Pidde said with a jolly smile. You see, he had helped me shift the weight from my overweight luggage to my carry-on bag, two kilograms worth, which made the carry-on even more heavy than allowed. “Its overweight” I said matter-of-factly referring to the carry-on bag, Herr Pidde just winked to me and said, “No, I think its fine.” He printed the baggage check for my carry-on giving it the all clear and reuttered the words, “Save your money for your wife.”

Chaos and grief is rampant at the time of writing, those of you who were there would relate. Herr Pidde is the epitome of resisting that grief, resisting for our animal urges to turn us into assholes, resisting hopelessness and fear, ressisting our ever common air grasping in a position of power. That making other’s lives easier should be the default, genuine service to your fellow creature.

A smile, some tears, and a reminder for my future self in respect to Herr S. Pidde.

The 8th Floor, At This Age

Nine Years ago but in hindsight the feeling has not change, it wasn’t adulthood or age that was the problem. Toxic environments are toxic, and it does not matter how old you have become, it still can get to you. Even when the issue is no longer financial, the gargantuan weight of understanding the reality of office politics is enough to collapse your faith in living organisms. The realization that the degree of egotistic self can reach levels unfathomable to human understanding. Self determination is tertiary to the institution that is the self contained circle jerk that is the department. Illusions are created in the most unconvincing, cheap polystyrene foam and rusted wires all painted in the colour of pale neon orange. Incompetence is obvious, clear to see, bureaucratic blinders shade the easiest options. Chaos ensues, in the name of competition, in the name of who could care less. The masterfully crafted ideas of banality and stupidity, holding up the foundation of status quo. It’ll be over soon now they keep saying, but soon is a fallible concept. Time relativity only hold true to reality, a fog wall of facade does not bend to the physics of tangible senses. It will continue, if not there, then somewhere else. This is reality, this is the idea that we will never learn, that people survive by this thread of determination. A hair-thin line of demanding their wants, entitlement to the universe that they have given their fair share, that they have sacrificed enough to get what is just. Which can be debated, as the concept of just is self serving. Just in the fundamental sense only observes the subject that claims what is just to itself. It does not care if the just for it can be harmful to others, others only can claim their own just. A contestation between self determined just between actors, the winners are those with the ability to care less about others. The ego serving the id is the most powerful tool for any living organism to control and conquer.  The pinnacle of this is to reach the point where others ego can be used to serve one’s id. It is life’s highest form of rule.

On Change

Your body tightens, heart beats faster, your head filled with helium, and your stomach bloats like a corpse. Too much change is devastating, too much unspeculated factors that physically boils your body. The unknown is still a threat, no matter how far in life you are. There is no amount of experience that readies you to switch mental gears in an instant; like gears too much friction can colapse itself. There’s an idea behind your head trying to balance all of the inevitable, to keep perspective, to hold on to logic. But everything fails once the painful train of thought lunges in at full speed whipping the wind out of your sanity.

This too shall pass, as is everything, but at that moment it feels so heavy that its like trying to hold up a fridge on quicksand. But, yeah, this too shall pass as it has always been; you’ve been through this, you know this, but still it never feels familiar. How many times has change passed here? In all of life how many times has it always been for the better? The trick is to exploit change, to mold it into what you need. Because change itself only comes when it needs to be and probably now it needs to be.

It never feels familiar, despite its familiarity. The twisted joke our brain and body plays panning in and out between fight and flight between fear and indifference. I chose indifference, but they have other plans.

Inertia

This … is inertia, a sudden halt from mechanical movement, a speed bump in the exceedingly fast paced rat race that is the natural environment. Instead of rats, we are but perfectly spherical metal balls rolling without friction, without boundaries, in constant chaotic motion until we stop and hit these metaphoric speed bumps. Then… inertia. In this state, we mellow, we wait, we change. As absurd and as obscure as the transformation of Gregor Samsa we change without us knowing how or why, without even believing that we actually do, in constant denial and simultaneously adapting we redefine our thoughts of what was and convert those into what should be. As masochistic as slicing fresh onions with the same aim to add taste and colour to what equates as bland. The phenomenon of procrastination and the impacts they mould. The constant dialectics of learn and unlearn until  much learnt comes off as useless, obsolete pieces of scrap, wrecked by the ever constant expansion, and shrinkage, of time and space perceived objectively only to those without sanity in which sanity is the final barrier to experiencing living truly and naturally. The mind tricks ourselves into the constant wants perceived as needs perceived as importance, of high priority. Yet, the mind yearns for an end, an end of existence, an end of repetition, a permanent inertia. 

And so, inertia, in need of a push to reach a state of motion. At least, averting the gutters that might cause the perfect spherical metal ball to halt in its motion. Unto its final state of inertia until immobility ensnaring it permanently.

The Unsoluble Dichotomy

He visualizes his own end: death. Never is he free from the dichotomy of existence: he cannot rid himself of his mind, even if he should want to; he cannot rid himself of his body as long as he is alive — and his body makes him want to be alive. Reason, man’s blessing, is also his curse; it forces him to cope everlastingly with the task of solving an insoluble dichotomy. Human existence is different in this respect from that of all other organisms; it is in a state of constant and unavoidable disequilibrium. Man’s life cannot “be lived’ by repeating the pattern of his species; he must live. Man is the only animal than can be bored, that can feel evicted from paradise. Man is the only animal who finds hos own existence a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape. He cannot go back to the pre-human state of harmony with nature; he must proceed to develop his reason until he becomes the master of nature, and of himself. But man’s birth ontogenetically as well as phylogenetically is essentially a negative effect. He lacks the instinctive adaptation to nature, he lacks physical strength, he is the most helpless of all animals at birth, and in need of protection for a much longer period of time than any of them.

(Fromm 1955:23)

Voisez III

I am not here to lecture, for who am I? One of the many unspecials roaming the walk of life, assimilating with the majority, finding its place in society. Being part of the great dramaturgy. Wearing all these masks and goggles exchanging one with the other and on the way collecting more. Learning, as well as advising, at least trying to advise what little we have learned to others that face what we have faced before. To face all with all these synthetic faces. Being, more or less, human.

Depression, one of the most common “mind disease” or commonly referred as disorders. I have seen once, with my own eyes, how depression can really consume someone’s sanity. Knowing this fact, it has always been somewhat a reminder for me, to endlessly seek for better coping mechanisms on how to at least suppress these faceless voices, the hallucination, and the constant overburdening fear and anxiety that comes abrupt and almost unnoticeable. Writing this almost meaningless — and mostly for archival purposes — post is one of them. Pin-pointing where in my life in which I start to feel these insecurities, and analysing what little data there is. As always, the mind is one of the biggest jerks that we face in our lives. In the face of instability it seems that the mind, as illogical as it seems, tries to go against sanity. A very queer mechanism. In the face of high priority problems, the mind just seems to quit, its like there is this sort of “fuck this” switch which could be toggled in an instant without the knowledge of it’s owner. Befell in depression, and just clawing your way out of a well filled with thick mud. Difficult as hell, and the  more we try the more we freak out because somehow it seems to not work. But then we justify ourselves, that this thick mud will soon settle and harden, which means that at least one problem from the eternal shit-list will automatically solve itself, on how to climb out of the well is a completely different problem also nestled somewhere in the eternal shit-list. Do we wait for some good-natured passer by come to the rescue, ladder/rope  in hand? or do we claw our way to the top with the spare energy still left in our souls after struggling just to survive the mud? Again, it is choices, options, wants, and needs. Something so abundant, which for the same reason, becomes the catalyst as well as the obstacle in reaching whatever it is we strive to reach.

There.

Depression averted, for now.

The big bulging feeling inside the head has more or less subsided. The voices squawk no more. Anxiety  lifted by the sound of flutes from my headphone.

Flutes, fucking flutes from a score sheet created hundreds of years past by Mozart.

It takes, an attempted suicide, and a visit to a dear friend in the psychiatric ward, for me at least, to really understand the workings of depression and the struggle to survive this so-called mental illness. To actually survive life, to not give in. To actually put a real meaning to “earning life and all its perks”. We owe ourselves that at least, a chance to earn something. A dream of an average length but fruitful life.

The Money:Problem Ratio

Money is what God used to be. Good and evil have no meaning any longer except  failure and success. Hence the profoundly significant phrase, to make good. The Decalogue has been reduced to two commandments. One for the employers — the elect, the money-priesthood as it were –‘Thou shalt make money’; the other for the employed slaves and underlings– ‘Thou shalt not lose thy job.’

-George Orwell in Keep The Aspidistra Flying

In the same novel, Orwell also wrote: “Lack of money means discomfort, means squalid worries, means shortage of tobacco, means ever-present conciousness of failure — above all, it means loneliness.” Although a very timeless, not to mention precise, observation it is also a very naive perspective. Satirically Orwellian  in every aspect, but still, the degree of alienation of what success offers is almost as significant as the loneliness offered by inadequate personal funding. The concept of living day to day with a very limited amount of money will always create this multitudinous level of envy towards welfare states, a friend of mine came back from Germany and told me that, evidently, washing machines and television has been categorized as a basic need for the people there. Here in Indonesia that need is reduced to: “being able to excrete faeces in a hole or something resembling one” and even that doesn’t fare well.

I am not much of a socialist, the concept of shared wealth has always been some sort of ideal type for me in a way, but if that same concept supports the creation of trashpeople¹; then perhaps it is a concept de manqué or inelegantly failed concept. A folly on the much larger concept of “taking care of those in need” which evidently somehow fails to pinpoint whom it is that actually has those needs. There was this lecture once in which the roles of the states of the worlds — whether major or minor — has transformed from individual states into a part of this array of global villages, in which each village is interconnected forming more practical means for communication, transportation, and — above all — policy. What isn’t explained is that this global village consists only of the top layer of the society, leaving the bottom feeders to stay in a foetal position and shivering. Kind of like the curdled butter when churning butter, the buttermilk stays on top while the butter clumps down in a vat made out of goat’s stomach devoid of air and light. Not unlike butter, when bad bacteria is introduced to the buttermilk while churning, the butter will also be affected. So when these top level global villaged some percent of society are introduced to new policies and models, the whole society must concur. When policy dictates that capital is the new threshold of happiness, then let it be so.

Of course we shouldn’t be naivete to go as far to say that “money can NOT buy you happiness” and that the joys of life includes sleeping near train tracks and under bridges. By the 9 circles of Dante’s Inferno, of course no! Capital is the core where joyful feelings reside, the actual warm fuzzy feeling that we are so privileged to touch, taste, smell, see, and hear. It is a bargaining position in respect for the lonely and wasted, a means to reach for a somewhat glorified state, a state unlike what we currently dread, what we have conditioned ourselves. Either in bankruptcy or in a secure job working 8 hours plus overtime without ever seeing the sun on weekdays, there is only delusional constructed  loneliness fuelled by the self-loathing created by the undeniable fact of serial wrong-choosing.

In the end, there are no wrong choices. Just misplaced fortunes. Fortunes accessible through the right dosage of option, chances, wants, and needs.

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¹ Trashpeople: people who exploits the fact that their lives are supported by the hard-working few in which they choose to become lazyfux^1.1 because, what’s the point of trying harder? (unrelated to trash men, which in a very big way is of great significance in our society)

^1.1 lazyfux: actually, yeah, just lazy fucks

Just Another Dump File

I haven’t really anything to say — well not so much as usual — but it seems that I have this egocentric drive that ushers me into writing. I only haven’t written for a month and I feel as if I haven’t written in years. Hyperbolic as that fact is, it is mostly true, that there seems to be an itch to publish something. Nothing important of course, just to ease the mind from sediments of cyclical thoughts that keeps on going for a large  part of my life; A “dump file”, just large enough to spare me from uneasiness, uncomfortability (as usual, not really a word), and other un-sensations. Truth be told, as apparent ageing proceeds, this “dump file” seems to leave smaller a footprint than usual. Life is somewhat good, when contemplation is redirected/misdirected into seeing — whether sincere or in denial — the end in mind. Not particularly goal oriented just believing that you know where your going. The word believe is chosen because no one really knows to where their visions may take them. To have ideals and such is a mighty tool into empowering this belief. This pseudo-faith at least keeps your drive to succeed high enough.

Success, if such a word really does exist beyond the planes of concepts, theories, and the ideal type, would be the nirvana of all working class/social climbers/drones/gold diggers/bottom feeders/opportunity scrapers/etc. The final resting plane for the next hike into the peak point of living. Definitions, terminologies, construction of meaning, a nondescript set of words that remind us that there will always be a last chapter, the nihilist’s nightmare.

Leaving the 19th Floor, not looking back, redefining memories and the usual consequences of action escorts me to a sort of realization that somehow we always need a change of scene. Compromise, as non-idealistic as it may be, is a constant that seems to pester existence in general. To submit to values and ideals outside of our minuscule knowledge, dwarfed by the massiveness of the universe, we are but humble nodes insignificant enough yet essential for the operability of life, the universe, and everything else. A node who if self-conscious enough may mould into whatever it desires to be, make themselves with whatever may facilitate its journey.

Voisez II (For The New Year)

Hide, in the darkness of the new dawn. As it fades, let morn’s light interchange. Through the UV protected tempered glass. Opened just a peep, tragic is to die by carbon monoxide. Death by carbon monoxide. It is dawn, it is cold, it is only logical to keep warm, so warm we may be. The combed cotton on your flesh, needs not to be worn. It cannot protect you from the cold. It is: useless. Let whatever is left of the miniscule quantity of alcohol take over. Let the vapour bask in our brains, let us un-think , let consequence be absent, for there are no consequence. Let morn’s light interchange with the darkness of the new dawn, let it shine through the UV protected tempered glass. Opened just a peep, to escape death by carbon monoxide. A simple precaution. Contorting, shaping, slithering, sighing, to the tempo of shuffled music. The playlist: post-rock. It is for a slow fade. Awaiting morn’s light interchange.

Awoke, in front of the 24 hour convenience store. Morn’s light finally arrives. Shining through the UV protected tempered glass. Opened just a peep to avoid death by carbon monoxide. The new dawn fades, a morning arrives. New Year. End. Routine.

The Worry Reference Guide

The older we are, the more we worry about consequences;

We worry about the future;

We worry about reactions;

We worry about leaving our mobile phones at home;

We worry about leaving our wallets at home;

We worry about leaving our keys at home;

We worry about leaving the house;

We worry about where we parked the car;

We worry about where we put our car keys;

We worry about car accidents;

We worry about not filling enough fuel;

We worry about the yellow fuel  indicator going on and off and no gas station in sight;

We worry about what we eat;

We worry about obesity;

We worry about illnesses caused by obesity;

We worry about being late;

We worry about being neglected;

We worry about being monitored;

We worry about being rejected;

We worry about sin;

We worry  about grace;

We worry about not being thankful;

We worry about the presence of god;

We worry whether if there is a god;

We worry the earth will be hit by a giant meteor;

We worry the earth will be swallowed by the sun;

We worry about food additives;

We worry about cancer;

We worry about AIDS;

We worry about getting her pregnant;

We worry about marriage;

We worry about commitment;

We worry about infidelity;

We worry about being too nice;

We worry about being mean;

We worry about fitting in;

We worry about spending too much;

We worry about the shoes we wear;

We worry about the colour of our shirt;

We worry about which jeans to wear;

We worry about being over-dressed;

We worry about being under-dressed;

We worry about the latest trends;

We worry about what’s hip;

We worry about being hip;

We worry about bands we used to like becoming hip;

We worry about being proven wrong;

We worry about being stingy;

We worry about not making enough money;

We worry about our job security;

We worry about hating our job;

We worry about becoming mindless corporate whores;

We worry about what would happen if we quit our jobs;

We worry about what other people think;

We worry about worrying to much;

We worry about not worrying enough;

We worry about eventually dying and there is nothing we can do;

And we worry about the afterlife;

Or whether there is an afterlife;

Would we go to heaven;

Would we go to hell;

Would we go into limbo;

Would we feel our body rotting;

Would we taste the earth in our mouths;

Would we feel numb;

……………………………;

What would it feel like?

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A worry list, how cliché and unoriginal.