Charlatan Marmalade

I am dissatisfied. I am disenfranchised. Jaded, politically cloudy. I am walking through a haze of pop-culture and the wisps of its thick smoke - thickest on the outside, not the expected centres - wrap around me, heady and beckoning. I stop and smile and walk on by.

No one wants anymore. Everyone is content. No one understands what Derrida was talking about when he uttered the word differance. Not only for linguistic purposes but as a catalyst, as an entire universe of pository change and action, of distinguish and the opposite of lingering, the opposite of stasis and homogeneity.

The problem is that no one wants to learn for the sake of learning anymore. No one wants to sit and wonder and then explore hidden meaning. Those that do, seek to be published, lust for recognition, of the kind that Emily Dickinson exchewed. There is no passion in their work, only a few dozen articles in a database to their name - and my, what a name they've established. Indeed, when they're gone this earth will remember their name, will whisper it on the wind, will bear a mark of their own arbitrary system of words and languages.

The futility of doing - well, anything, really strikes me hard. But that doesn't mean I don't want to do. Everyone looks at you all funny when you say things like - I lust for knowledge, I strive for truth, I need to learn, I want to project and effect and - most of all - i want to BE affected.

I'm tired of these fucking markham street car racers and people lusting for Benzs and lofts. Waiting for the start of life which equals economic independence - their new Promised Land. I'm tired of people earning degrees to try and be the next CEO under 30 who gets published like that is real self worth - the real startup, Canadian/American dream. They think that getting a boyfriend or a girlfriend is their milestone and it puzzles me. It puzzles me that it puzzles me.

Me myself, I am a bolter, a great big run-away-er so I'm not one to talk; my opinion is biased. I am scared of something that has no name, no face, no identity that I can concretely call out to. See a devil, call him by his name? I cannot. No interpellation. Running away is the only way I know how. Of course it's true, beginnings are the best. When everything is new, when change is still rife in the air, hanging on a low wing. But after that...routine sets in. Familiarity.

Sure, everyone wants a rock, a bastion, somewhere you can return, somewhere like home. But what happened to process? Why does no one value the process? Why can i kid myself and want to pull the wool over the eyes of others, make up excuses for the reasons that I'm doing these things, pursuing what I want to y pretending their goals to a bigger something? They're not! They are lives in and of themselves! They are valuable in and of themselves. I don't want this to be another Waterloo.

An example of this restlessness and a need for the organic, the inspiration, the process in my life: an essay assigned ot me. I will not write it if I feel even a bit of resistance. There doesn't have to be a spark of inspiration but if there is any resistance, if it doesn't flow - I will put it off 'til the process is organic, 'til it feels like its time, like its right. These are internal processes, inexplicable and complex.

It's not only that the fun of everything is gone. It's not only that I cannot enjoy what I'm learning or studying anymore. I would love to be a doctor but if I had to worry about getting into med school...I would shoot myself. Cutthroat, goal-oriented. End results. Investments with the dependent clause of profit. Why can't the dependent clause be independent experience? Why can't the process be cherished? Practicality shouldn't be made a part of casting yourself into the future; it should be a matter of dreams, of wants, not what is feasible and what you should do today to make tomorrow happen. Tomorrow is already happening; it's happening as a virtue of today. We are in residual time. No one understands that. No one values that - very few, at least.

Everyone just wants to know know know. Where where where. Where are you going? When when when. When will you be there. How how how. How will you get there. Where is there, I ask? What is this 'there'? Why must I know and, more foolishly, how can I know? Clearly, I am not going to be a psychic, nor am I a machine that can calibrate. How can you ask me to predict the outcome of Chaos Theory or how an infitesimal shift in action, in thinking, in movement can change in my path?

What is the point of these plans? But then again...how does one go through. For those of us floating in a sea of nothingness, negation, floundering, wishing we had some way - some outlet. Not merely only to show the world that we're progressing towards something but to feel alive, to justify to ourselves that we are proceeding to something. Some...goal. Some unforetold horizon.

I just want to run away. I want to run away and live in a chateau, reading books and drinking wine and living like a recluse, the oddity in the village like the author of Wide Sargasso Sea. I want to get lost in a marketplace in Morocco and resurface, a year later, at the base of the Himalayas. I want to make people smile, I want to educate. Enough of theory- I want to activate. I want to write stories and see them come alive on film. I want to listen - listen to others, listen to the Greats espouse their thoughts, study and observe nuances. Marvel. No one wants to marvel. I want to stay in while it rains for days on end and watch as the world goes by with Miles Davis in the background. I don't want to speak anymore.