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It seems to me that each of us is, in the end, is trapped inside our own head, completely unable to truly see the perspectives, the concerns, or the needs of others.

Sometimes in desperation you just give up on seeing others’ points of view, in order to protect your own sanity, since they are just as unwilling to see yours.

Sometimes I wonder if it is worth anyone’s time to form relationships at all, given the underpinnings of the culture in which we live and the fact that anyone who is not a mercenary is, by definition, a lunatic.

It rained today. Not rained like we usually get… not whimpering, barely moist desert-rain that is almost imperceptible even as it happens and doubly so once it’s gone…

It rained buckets. It rained inches. It rained cats and dogs. It was incredible. You could smell the plants saying thank you to the sky. If I’d had an environmentally sealed camera, I’d have gone out and taken some snaps.

I almost did anyway.

Judging by the neagativity in the Web diary as of late, I’ve been having a rough few months, probably since I began at eBay and on the overseas writing project.

I suppose in some sense I am justified in being grumpy. I got stiffed out of thousands of dollars for labor already delivered and hit with a with a “so sue me.” I haven’t yet. A major publishing project with my name on it went astray and became a somewhat frustrating exercise in problem solving. On of my best friends broke me because of an ethical position that I took. Somebody hit my car while it was parked, rendering it undrivable, and they didn’t even leave a “sorry” note much less an insurance policy. The cardbus slot in my PC stopped working, meaning no more DVDs and very slow storage; I won’t be able to afford a replacement for some time. And on and on.

It’s not that I think that my problems are worse than everyone elses… Far from it. I realize that life is tough and everyone is trying to get by. It’s just that these problems are mine. 🙁

Perhaps I need more rain to cleanse things a little.

We’ll see.

My problem is that I was not raised to think like a criminal. So often in a discussion, people will start to talk of big, grand business or political schemes, who can be sued, who can’t be sued, what they can leverage in order to increase their profit while unloading expense on to someone else, or what they can leverage in order to increase their chances of winning, while deflecting negative publicity on to someone else, what the lawyers think of the whole thing, how other parties can be manipulated into supporting the enterprise, and so on.

If my parents had raised me to be a crook like so many others out there, I’d be doing fine. Instead, they raised me to be honest, and to avoid lying, cheating, stealing or ordering “small roast minority child” at swank restaurants just to show off the degree to which I can afford to be debauched, so people always call me a communist and say that I just don’t understand business or politics.

The brutal cynic. Sometimes people mindlessly place me into this category, a kind of reactionary statement against hyperbole and dysfunction. I don’t generally disagree with the comparison, but every now and then, as I am sitting trapped between rays of Sunday-afternoon light, the darkest things on Earth, I am sure that it is flawed.

The fundamental problem is that the cynic is always, at some deep level, speaking in jest. Put a gun in his hand and he won’t shoot. At the moment of truth, he’ll break, “cynical” about the bullets as much as he is “cynical” about the target’s heart.

Beyond the flincher there is yet another level of cynicism… that level at which gun in hand is gold. The level at which a pulled trigger is a dialectical hiccup, enough to generate a tiny shift in status quo, the most minor of satisfactions for the most minor of role players…

But perhaps this isn’t actually a brutal form of cynicism at all? Perhaps pulling the trigger… perhaps putting a pile of minor functionaries against the wall… is the most brilliant, the most binding form of optimism…

Can you save some of the people by killing the others, the ones who sit atop the pile and sneer? At what point is revolution transcended? At what point does the savior become the monster?

I am unable to cope with such ethical questions.

All I’ve ever wanted was to find something beautiful, something that I could share with everyone else, something that wouldn’t be destroyed by business or politics or humanity… But it is humanity that I love…

How can I reconcile the paradox?

It rained today… whether that is an optimistic or a cynical statement I can’t yet determine. Into everyones’ lives… a little rain must fall.

(A little prayer for the living, from an atheist. Amen.)

I have a slim margin of patience for small-minded people who see everything in terms of dollars and cents. People who can’t see past banalities are doomed to live a banal existence and contribute inertia to the status quo.

…escape…

…escape, escape, escape, escape, escape, escape…

So many important aspects of the world… so many important aspects of my life, even, conflict with one another fundamentally, would refuse to allow one another to exist if given the slightest chance… Reality is becoming a kind of tiring exercise in which I try to keep hundred silly factions from learning too much about one another, so that each one of them doesn’t turn on me for being associated with the others.

I suppose at some point I will have to purify, to purge… to discard everything but the most fundamental aspects of my value system. But I am reluctant to take this step until it is absolutely necessary…

None of these problems will have been solved by the time I die, even if I die in a hundred years. Very few things happen entirely within the space of a single human life. Isn’t it wild that history seems to happen anyway, even though each of us only contributes a tiny thought here and there?

When it rains and I can smell the concrete, it allows me to touch something in my past that I can’t otherwise reach. I don’t know what it is… but I love it. Concrete is every bit as beautiful as rainforest canopy. Anyone who says otherwise… simply doesn’t understand.

What am I doing?

Internship: A way for the capitalist class to pit worker against worker, getting them to scramble and compete against one another for the chance to supply endless free labor, on the shaky assertion that it will help their chances of someday being paid for exactly the same work (provided they can at that point somehow out-compete the endless stream of younger would-be interns who continue to wish to donate the same labor for free…)

I believe it was Mao who said that “Political power grows from the barrel of a gun.”

Wave the flag, you lot.

My last several weeks have been very uncool. Today was particularly bad. I am having one of those moments in my life when I am losing touch with a great many people for no real reason.

I am sitting here editing photos like a madman because right now it is what keeps me from being a madman.

All property in surplus of need is theft. All property without material basis is theft. Someday we will nail these thieves to the wall. Someday we will have stopped them all.

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