A Sketch on Fear.
I finally bought a candle nice candle for my room, and in flagrant violation of my mother's rules, I lit it earlier and fingerpicked four chords in the dark for about a half hour. My mother (and my grandfather before her) has forbidden burning anything in the house (candles, incense, etc) for fear that the house will burn down.
For the past month and a half, I have been (unsuccessfully of course) trying to help my mother realize the extent of her debilitating fears. One of today's was the fear that thieves would get to her Target gift card before she did - apparently, there is a new scam where some smart aleck decided to take down the numbers of un-bought gift cards, call to see when they were activated, and use them online under a false name. Brilliant, I must say.
I know my mother is extreme; however, white society thrives on this irrational fear. The one I was particularly thinking about tonight is the fear that the world isn't as it used to be. "Oh, those good old days, when people didn't lock their cars." Now, we box ourselves into our gated communities and drive around in our super-armored SUVs to protect ourselves from the world outside. It reminds me of those maps of the medieval world, where the great unknown was represented by dragons and one eyed monsters at the fringes of the map. Our maps don't have monsters on them, but they should. South Central would look like a swamp with a troll in it, and the 110 would be the bridge across.
Okay, maybe thats a bit tangential.
The point is we're fuckin' petrified of each other, for all the wrong reasons. Maybe East Saint Louis has reason to lock their cars and bar their doors - but most of us don't. Above that, we're petrified of death. "I could be stabbed if I go out." Ask any carpenter if you'll survive a flesh wound and they'll pull up their right pant leg and tell you who's roof they fell off of. It seems even to have our VCR stolen would end the world, but I have confidence that any one of us could survive that just fine. We seem to prize this world quite a lot, while the majority of us, evident in our actions that we are boxed in by fear, make of it very little. We've collectively forgotten to make the most of this life, and while I can't say that we as people haven't come to terms with death, I can say it hasn't become manifest in our philosophy. We extend and preserve our lives unnaturally, even if that will mean years of suffering and degereration.
In some communities of Irish sailors, its understood that if a man falls in the water, noone is to meddle with his fate - not even that unlucky man by attempting to swim. Interesting philosophy.
In all my research about hitchhiking during the years before this summer - with the exception of one book from 1970, which described the liveliness of the hitching posts in Berkeley. Palo Alto, and throughout the Bay Area - it was understood that hitching out of cities was not recommended. In part, this is logistical: its hard to get a ride on a freeway onramp, or a city street, or to get to the edge of town, et cetera. A large factor, however, must be the percieved difficulty in catching a ride from so many people who have lost faith in the world.
Even those folks who I know to look up into the sky every so often and feel connection to the universe were pleasantly surprised when I mentioned that I had been hitching around. They both replied that they didn't know it was possible anymore, and said this with an understanding that it was not the world that had become scarier, but that people had become more fearful. The fact that I could hitch around parts of this country without a problem showed that many people still hadn't succumbed to the national paralysis.
If Irish sailors can trust each other NOT to rescue each other, we can easily give each other a hand once in a while.
For the past month and a half, I have been (unsuccessfully of course) trying to help my mother realize the extent of her debilitating fears. One of today's was the fear that thieves would get to her Target gift card before she did - apparently, there is a new scam where some smart aleck decided to take down the numbers of un-bought gift cards, call to see when they were activated, and use them online under a false name. Brilliant, I must say.
I know my mother is extreme; however, white society thrives on this irrational fear. The one I was particularly thinking about tonight is the fear that the world isn't as it used to be. "Oh, those good old days, when people didn't lock their cars." Now, we box ourselves into our gated communities and drive around in our super-armored SUVs to protect ourselves from the world outside. It reminds me of those maps of the medieval world, where the great unknown was represented by dragons and one eyed monsters at the fringes of the map. Our maps don't have monsters on them, but they should. South Central would look like a swamp with a troll in it, and the 110 would be the bridge across.
Okay, maybe thats a bit tangential.
The point is we're fuckin' petrified of each other, for all the wrong reasons. Maybe East Saint Louis has reason to lock their cars and bar their doors - but most of us don't. Above that, we're petrified of death. "I could be stabbed if I go out." Ask any carpenter if you'll survive a flesh wound and they'll pull up their right pant leg and tell you who's roof they fell off of. It seems even to have our VCR stolen would end the world, but I have confidence that any one of us could survive that just fine. We seem to prize this world quite a lot, while the majority of us, evident in our actions that we are boxed in by fear, make of it very little. We've collectively forgotten to make the most of this life, and while I can't say that we as people haven't come to terms with death, I can say it hasn't become manifest in our philosophy. We extend and preserve our lives unnaturally, even if that will mean years of suffering and degereration.
In some communities of Irish sailors, its understood that if a man falls in the water, noone is to meddle with his fate - not even that unlucky man by attempting to swim. Interesting philosophy.
In all my research about hitchhiking during the years before this summer - with the exception of one book from 1970, which described the liveliness of the hitching posts in Berkeley. Palo Alto, and throughout the Bay Area - it was understood that hitching out of cities was not recommended. In part, this is logistical: its hard to get a ride on a freeway onramp, or a city street, or to get to the edge of town, et cetera. A large factor, however, must be the percieved difficulty in catching a ride from so many people who have lost faith in the world.
Even those folks who I know to look up into the sky every so often and feel connection to the universe were pleasantly surprised when I mentioned that I had been hitching around. They both replied that they didn't know it was possible anymore, and said this with an understanding that it was not the world that had become scarier, but that people had become more fearful. The fact that I could hitch around parts of this country without a problem showed that many people still hadn't succumbed to the national paralysis.
If Irish sailors can trust each other NOT to rescue each other, we can easily give each other a hand once in a while.
posted by tank at 10:28 PM
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