It’s happening a lot more these days, this blurring of the lines between dystopian fantasies and the world I see around me. I used to absorb those works of fiction which let me bathe in the tragic absurdity of what the world could become. It might even have seemed remotely realistic, but it was still fiction: the secret police abductions of homosexuals in V For Vendetta, the eugenics in Gattaca, the suppression of emotions and art in Equilibrium, the martial law and terrorism in Children of Men, the drugs and surveillance of A Scanner Darkly, the cybernetics in Johnny Mnemonic, the ruthless corporatocracy in Resident Evil, the oppressive conformity in The Giver and Anthem, the absurd government in Demolition Man, and the list goes on.

But now I can’t even tell. Certainly our technologies and governments and corporations are not so extreme as in the above portrayals, but they are becoming reminiscent. More and more I feel like I’m living in an early cyberpunk setting. Most recently I had a conversation with a friend about Burj Dubai (pictured above). He said, “I actually find the aesthetics of dystopia pleasing, and this is one of the best representations of a coming dystopian era that I’ve seen; it’s macabre in its opulence.”

I agree. It’s terribly majestic. I’m not quite worried what society will become. More than ever, I find myself able to imagine sudden dramatic shifts–militarization, cybernetics, eugenics, oppression of our freedom, suppression of our humanity, etc. I know the momentum of history is by now inescapable, so despair is futile. We’re entering that world. We don’t know precisely what it will look like, but it will be ugly. And it will possess a tragic beauty.

We became aware of suffering. We knew we had to work to change things. The first step was learning. We read as much as we could, we started talking about how things could be different. We didn’t know what to do.

We became aware of power structures. We saw an opportunity to work towards change. We navigated through the channels offered to us by the elite. We felt a sense of agency, and saw possibilities.

We wanted to change the structure. We realized that the deck was stacked. We knew the struggle was a long one, but thought good will and hard work could overpower greed and corruption.

We became disillusioned with the structure. We understood the structure was fatally flawed, and we despaired. To work within the structure was, in and of itself, to endorse the illegitimate authority which sustained it.

We wanted to overthrow the structure. We understood that reform was impotent. Small structural victories were simple appeasement and the larger battle could never be won when the elite wrote the rules. We knew we had to destroy the structure in order to truly be free.

We abandoned the structure. We gave up revolutionary ideology, understanding that we had simply used it to endow ourselves with a false sense of agency. We realized that we could never extinguish the existing structure with only the promise of what we would create in its place–we had to start creating it right away. If we created something good, then it would naturally overtake the existing structure, and that was our task. We removed ourselves from dialectic struggle, circumvented the existing structure, and set about building something beautiful.

There’s a pattern we can observe, it goes like this: naive enthusiasm, naive counter-enthusiasm, and wise release. Patriotism is foolish. Anti-Americanism is equally foolish. Nations seem to preclude some sort of world harmony, and yet to quest for their destruction is misguided.

Why celebrate the Fourth of July? The founders were intellectual elitists who forced their minority will upon the people. Britain was making poor decisions, but there was no conspiracy for total domination, the perception of which justified the revolt. A bunch of rich white men simply wanted to renegotiate power arrangements, and sent a bunch of poor boys to die so this could happen. This is still a favored method of negotiation for powerful men.

The American Revolution was not about you or I. It was not about wage-slaves. It was not about dreamers. It was not about cogs. It was about the elite. We are not the elite. To celebrate their victory is to celebrate our oppression.

Many realize this. Many submit to the reactionary impulse to protest with a mirror image: instead of having a BBQ to celebrate the illusion of freedom, they have a BBQ to celebrate the freedom of illusion–the illusion that spite is power. Why celebrate spite? Is it to come together, to feel some sense of community? It certainly is not pragmatic.

See, nobody cares if you hate the government, because the government still owns your ass. So burn your flags if you want to, but that only tells me that you are still caught up in seeking liberation through opposition. You can’t fight them, because they made the rules.

The wise release is this: play a different game. Don’t counter the holiday with an anti-holiday, just ignore the lies and live in the truth. Today is Friday, which happens to be the fourth day of the seventh month. Today I do what I would do on any other Friday in July. By chance, some stores are closing early, but this does not really concern me. I choose, simply, to not observe.

The abandonist renegotiates power through circumvention, not through competition.

Don’t waste time walking’ & that’s like a motto for a whole generation. His voice is complacent & my vigor is vacant Both had long work days but his paid better & mine was way wetter, weather like my life too cold to not hurt, but too hot to fully freeze. We live in inbetween, but focus on either side, to ride w/ destination in mind becomes unbearable, the best way to get a place is to forget you’re going at all. // And maybe he wonders how I got her attention but what he doesn’t know is I got it four years ago and now it’s just a shadow or maybe a second wind–we hope it carries till we can breath again. // It’s an exposition, but it’s not that good tends to go that way nowadays, more about the balls to display than really displaying balls. & I’m chilled to the bone, because of that will never be alone, the opposite of them who blocked all pain, or at least feinged and now are together lonesome // Is it modern to say “this is a great song”? Then postmodern to say “I appreciate this song because…”? // This shit goes on whether or not I’m here to see it, but shit makes my blood boil, and motherfucker I would hit you

The first words he spoke were, “I’m dying.” Said with such unfitting nonchalance that I wasn’t sure if I had even heard it. After I offered to buy him some tea he calmly asked, “Can I tell you something I truly believe?” I nodded and he said again, “I’m dying.” I tried to gauge him–what was his motive? What was his condition? His pants bore stains, his mustache spilled over his upper lip, his dirty hair was slicked back to hide his balding head, and his pupils were but pinholes. I sat with him for three hours. At first I simply listened to his story: he lived in a condo where he had filled the walls with mad scribblings about his broken DNA, tomorrow–fourteen years after his father’s death–he would come into his inheritance, the money would do him no good because the disease was killing him. In fact, nothing could do any good.

I tried to console, to find hope amidst what appeared to be insurmountable anguish. He did, after all, have health insurance. Surely the doctors could diagnose him. He was convinced the problem lie in his Mitochondrial DNA, that it was too elusive for the doctors to find, that they would only know the truth once he died. As I pressed harder for some shred of optimism, he stripped away the bastions of reason until nothing was left but his naked self-conception as a man persecuted by the universe. His disease was terminal and debilitating. Each day brought more pain than the one previous. His only goal was to be killed by the disease so the autopsy would finally reveal his condition. He was, he said, born to suffer. Nothing would change that. None of my suggestions were new to him, and none of them could pierce through his persecution-mythos.

It became clear that this man suffered some mental illness. The way he spoke of his estranged family members, the subtle mention of psychiatric wards and case workers, the broken mannerisms. He claimed to find no comfort in our long, awkward conversation, and its end brought no closure. I believe, however, that deep beneath his delusion lies a lonely and confused child. None of my words could ease his distress, because I could not dispel the myth. I only hope the simple comfort of human contact in some way calmed his spirits.

Dear _____,

You are changing. In some ways, you are blooming–becoming what you always knew you would. Except, you didn’t know precisely what that would look like or even what it was, just that you would become. So no, you’re not becoming what you always know you would, you’re becoming as you always knew you would.

You are 23 today. It was almost a year ago now that you left university life and plunged into the dark, cool waters of absence. Absence of structure, absence of love, absence of purpose or direction, absence of happiness–absence of context, so absence of self.

You have struggled. Winter almost broke you. You have never felt so lost, so isolated, so suffocated. And then you slipped quietly into the comfort of complacency. Absence of courage. Absence of movement.

Trudging aimlessly through forgettable moments, staring down not caring, you didn’t see the lake ahead of you and walked right off the end of the dock. Submerged again. But this time the waters were electric, they sent pulses through your body and got your heart working again. It was remarkable. Unprecedented. Majestic.

You awoke, slipping suddenly out of a dream you didn’t know you were having. And now, right now, years of presentiments are manifesting. Destiny has whispered in your ears for so long, and you never disbelieved, but you never really knew. But now you’re living the stories you used to hear on the wind, meeting characters foreshadowed by the moon, hearing songs written by bees.

You are changing. You’ve prepared a long time for this, though you were unaware that’s what you were doing. But now you’re in the current. You’re moving, swimming; using instinctively muscles you didn’t know you had.

You will go to San Francisco. Some of them will come with you. You wish you could hold them all forever, but you can’t. Some of them will leave you. But this is big. You will find something, you know this much.

You are doing well. You have structure, have love, have purpose and direction, have happiness–have context, know self

These are the times. These are the people.

Hold onto you. You’ve been a long time separated.

Love,

_____

A man approached me to explain something important.

He had been experiencing reality on a different plane, where his ultimate self had been freed from the layers of identity that usually served as shelter. Earlier, some kids had been throwing rocks and one almost pelted his face. He had no reaction. So absorbed was he in his ultimate self that it was completely unfathomable that he should need to protect his body. He was shameless, and, in a way, he was free.

By the time he found me, shame was returning to him. Not guilt, not disgrace or remorse. Shame. Human shame. The awareness that others were perceiving him and this might have implications for how he should present himself. He realized he was naked in the garden.

Caught in the impossible frustration between a pure experience of self and resurgence of a frail identity, he cut himself off mid-sentence and uttered with distress–

“I’m halfway between myself!”

Last Friday I hitchhiked from Madison to Minneapolis. I have too many stories, too many reflections to offer all at once. For now, here is a sketch of the first person to pick me up.

Mark is tough. He knows this. He grew up white in the Boston projects where he “learned a healthy respect for reverse racism.” He knocked the rotten teeth out of his wife’s ex’s mouth. He yells at his seven year old son over the phone with such indifference that I can only respond with indifference. He travels with a female pit-bull named Natasha who is one of the most gentle creatures I have met. His dog is deeply symbolic, for his own brutal manhood contends with an unacknowledged sensitivity.

I see his giant red semi-truck pull onto the shoulder ahead of me while I am scoping a good place to stick my thumb up. As I go past, he opens his doors and asks for detour directions. I cannot help him, but ask where he is headed. Baraboo, he tells me, and this is on my way. I ask if I can join him, and he complies without even considering. Between the closed highways and the poorly marked detours, it takes us two hours to travel 30 miles. We talk.

A black trucker once told Mark that his dog would kill him in his sleep. Mark wanted to respond, “Well then you’re going to rob me when I turn my back, because you’re a nigger and you guys steal everything,” but it surfaced only later as a caustic afterthought. “I don’t understand how someone who’s supposedly been oppressed their whole life could have a racist bone in their body,” he tells me. His ignorance is somehow compassionate, his racism is indirect. He objects to the notion that race determines character, but is still holding a grudge from his childhood.

His son cries a lot. “I don’t care if he turns out gay, I sort of expect it,” he explains, “I just don’t want him to be one of those trannies or anything real weird like that.” Some time recently, his son threatened to jump out of a window. Today, his son broke the screen out of the window in his room, violating a no-playing-near-windows rule that was established after his threat. Mark learns this from his wife while they are talking on the phone, and he becomes quite angry. He talks to his kid who tells him the screen broke on accident. “I believe you broke it on accident, but why the fuck were you playing near the window?” All his boy can say is that it was an accident. “You’re a lyin’ motherfucker!” he yells, “How about if I get back home and smash your face in with a hammer and call it an accident and then you can’t complain about it cuz it was an accident!” All his boy can say is okay. At seven he knows this is not a parley, he knows he must let himself be trampled in this way because anything but passive compliance will spark more fervor in his abusive father.

This interaction is going to occur whether or not I am in the cab to witness it, so I am completely detached. My observations change nothing about the situation, and I am powerless to do anything. So I watch. At one point while Mark is yelling, he suddenly disconnects from the intensity and violence of the conversation, turns to me with a smirk and says, “See, the little fag is crying now.”

This is profound. Mark is full of contradictions. All his verbal abuse and physical threats would seem to invalidate the fact that there are two dogs in the cab: Natasha, and a month-old puppy he bought to bring back for his boy. His ignorance would seem to negate his nuture-over-nature sentiments. His sense of rugged mahood would seem to preclude his helping a stranger without a second thought.

Mark was fascinating. I left him without looking back.

Traveling broke takes more work. Today I dropped cash on new bearings for the hubs on my bike, but only spent $1.06 on food. Before that, I tried to case all the places that sell bread, but almost everyone was roundabout in telling me they didn’t trash expired stuff. I don’t know if they knew the words they were speaking were not reflecting reality–bread gets shipped, not all of it gets sold (because it’s better to absorb the extra cost than to disappoint the customer), and when it gets old, it gets thrown in the trash–but a confrontational beggar is a self-destructive one, so I moved on.

And I moved on. And I was rejected several times before stumbling into Jimmy John’s where I knew they sold day-old loaves for loose change. Fifty three cents, it turned out. I purchased two. They said if I came back at 3:00 AM, I could have any that were left over. I went back at 2:51 AM and scored nine loaves of bread. That’s bounty enough to feed me for the whole weekend.

I can’t afford this trip. But I also know that a decade from now these petty financial stresses will be faded from my memory while Saturday’s wedding will remain. I should be more fiscal. I shouldn’t have brought my bike, much less paid for repairs. It’s auxilliary, it’s unnecessary. And what isn’t? Food. How ironic, then, that I will spend money on the one and not the other, and yet it reflects something interesting: time on the saddle feeds the spirit, food on the table feeds the body.

I guess it’s clear where my priorities are.