Step two

In January I got a feeler from a potential employer for the coming year. It was much like the job I have now but it was in a different (and more enjoyable) part of the world. I was interested. There was email exchange, a video call and the checking of references. After that the waiting began. It ended a few weeks ago when I finally had to ask directly about their plans. They told me they decided to go with another candidate. I was shocked and royally pissed, not so much because I didn't get the job but because they made me wait a month past the time we had agreed upon for a decision and because they didn't even tell me. I had to ask them. So it goes.

I now have about three weeks left in my current job. To date I have no future employment. Another potential employer who asked me for weeks to join their team got my paperwork two weeks ago. So far I haven't heard one thing about it moving forward. One other person asked me for my paperwork to submit to his supervisor last week. He said I should have an answer from them by the end of this week. I guess we'll see. With all these people doing the asking, it would be nice if someone followed through.

I'm not worried but I am a little concerned now.

One of the worst things about all this is that I have six days of work left with my kid. I don't know what to tell him about our future together because I don't have anything tangible to tell him right now. I can't say goodbye because I don't know if I'm going away and I can't say I'll see him soon because I'm not sure I'm coming back. I've set it up where I put that off until sometime in July. It's occurred to me that I might go home in June with no job but could potentially be called back over the summer. There are no jobs in New Jersey so I hope that's the case. It's not that I'm even all that crazy about Jakarta but there's work here, it staves off inertia and I get to travel a bit more for another year. That's enough for me. I do have a long-term Hail Mary idea in the works but that's a ways away just now. I need something more immediate.

In the final days here I will be hitting up other places for employment also. I will do what I can do spread it out as much as possible.  With the time I have left I've gotta put my shoulder into it and make something happen. I didn't come this far to be stopped here.

I don't regret putting my notice in with my job. I left for all the right reasons and I'm proud of the work I did with my buddy. His life is much larger now and he's happy. It's my most sincere hope that I get to stay in his life for another year, although in a less direct way. I made the correct decision for me on a professional level. Just the same, the challenges in this life never end. I've learned that through experience. I'm up for it. I'm coming for it. The next thing. 

Green Fork in the Road

There are two schools of thought when it comes to anger and resentment in my book. The first is to fill up your metaphorical plate with positive stuff and assuming there is a zero sum capacity on your "plate surface", you'll drive the anger and resentment away with shit that's more useful and enjoyable. That would be a good thing.

Assuming, however, that some shit just gets stuck in your craw (and everyone knows that that happens), you may be in need of a second option. In that case, I would advise turning toward your anger and using it to get shit done. I cannot be certain that this does not create a circular dynamic where you're constantly feeding the beast (and there's always the possibility of your anger getting the best of you and you going off and doing something dumb and/or dangerous), but it seems reasonable to be able to use that angst in the gym or in some other way to improve yourself.

Thoughts anyone?

I want to become Life itself

"He didn't understand why I should be dissatisfied with my position in life, particularly when I as doing so much good. That one could be thoroughly disgusted with being a mere instrument for good was unthinkable to him. He didn't realize that I was only a blind instrument, that I was merely obeying the law of inertia, and that I hated inertia even if it meant doing good.

I left Tawde that night in a state of despair. I loathed the thought of being surrounded by dumb clucks who would hold my hand and comfort me in order to keep me in chains.

If you persist in throttling your impulses you end by becoming a clot of phelgm. You finally spit out a gob which completely drains you and which you realize years later was not a gob of spit but your inmost self. If you lose that you will always race though dark streets like a madman pursued by phantoms. You will always be able to say with perfect sincerity: "I don't know what I want to do in life." You can push yourself clean through the filament of life and come out at the wrong end of the telescope, seeing everything beyond you, out of grasp, and diabolically twisted. From then on the game's up. Whichever direction you take you will find yourself in a hall of mirrors; you will race like a madman, searching for an exit, to find that you are surrounded only by distorted images of your own sweet self.

What I disliked most in George Marshall, in Kronski, in Tawde and the incalculable hosts which they represented, was their surface seriousness. The truly serious person is gay, almost nonchalant. I despised people who, because they lacked their own proper ballast, took on the problems of the world. The man who is forever disturbed about the conditions of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them. I am speaking of the great majority, not of the emancipated few who, having thought things through, are privileged to identify themselves with all humanity and thus enjoy that greatest of all luxuries: service.

There is another thing I heartily disbelieved in---work. Work, it seemed to me even at the threshold of life, is an activity reserved for the dullard. It is the very opposite of creation, which is play, and which just because it has no raison d'etre other than itself is the supreme motivating power in life. Has anyone ever said that God created the universe in order to provide work for Himself? By a chain of circumstances having nothing to do with reason or intelligence I had become like the others---a drudge. I had the comfortless excuse that by my labors I was supporting a wife and child. That it was a flimsy excuse I knew, because if I were to drop dead on the morrow they would go on living somehow or other. To stop everything, and play at being myself, why not? The part of me which was given up to work, which enable my wife and child to live in the manner they unthinkingly demanded, this part of me which kept the wheel turning---a completely fatuous egocentric notion!---was the least part of me. I gave nothing to the world in fufilling the function of breadwinner; the world exacted its tribute of me, that was all.

The world would only begin to get something of value from me the moment I stopped being a serious member of society and became---myself. The State, the nation, the united nations of the world, were nothing but one great aggregation of individuals who repeated the mistakes of their forefathers. They were caught in the wheel from birth and they kept at it until death---and this treadmill they tried to dignify by calling it "life". If you asked anyone to explain or define life what was the be-all and end-all, you got a blank look for answer. Life was something which philosophers dealt with in books that no one read. Those in the thick of life, the plugs in harness, had no time for such idle questions. "You've got to eat, haven't you?" This query, which was supposed to be a stopgap, and which had already been answered, if not in the absolute negative at least in a disturbingly relative negative by those who knew, was a clue to all the other questions which followed in a veritable Euclidean suite. From the little reading I had done I had observed that the men who were most in life, who were molding life, who were life itself, ate little, slept little, owned little or nothing. They had no illusions about duty, or the perpetuation of the State. They were interested in truth and in truth alone. They recognized only one kind of activity---creation. Nobody could command their services because they had of their own pledged themselves to give all. They gave gratuitously, because that is the only way to give. This was the way of life which appealed to me: it made sound sense. It was life---not the simulacrum which those about me worshiped.

I had understood all this---with my mind at the very brink of manhood. But there was a great comedy of life to be gone through before this vision of reality could become the motivating force. The tremendous hunger for life which others sensed in me acted like a magnet; it attracted those who needed my particular kind of hunger. The hunger was magnified a thousand times. It was as if those who clung to me (like iron filings) became sensitized and attracted others in turn. Sensation ripens into experience and experience engenders experience.

What I secretly longed for was to disentangle myself from all those lives which had woven themselves into the pattern of my own life and were making my destiny a part of theirs. To shake myself free of these accumulating experiences which were mine only by force of inertia required a violent effort. Now and then I plunged and tore at the net, but only to become more enmeshed. My liberation seemed to involved pain and suffering to those near and dear to me. Every move I made for my own private good brought about reproach and condemnation. I was a traitor a thousand times over. I had lost even the right to become ill---because "they" needed me. I wasn't allowed to remain inactive. Had I died I think they would have galvanized my corpse into a semblance of life.

"I stood before a mirror and said fearfully: "I want to see how I look in the mirror with my eyes closed."""---Henry Miller (1962) 

Excerpts

"The way I see it, the world is going to the dogs. You don't need much intelligence to get along, as things go. In fact, the less intelligence you have the better off you are. We've got it so arranged now that things are brought to you on a platter. All you need to know is how to do one thing passably well; you join a union, you do as little work as possible, and you get pensioned off when you come of age. If you had any aesthetic leanings you wouldn't be able to go through the stupid routine year in and year out. Art makes you restless, dissatisfied. Our industrial system can't afford to let that happen---so they offer you soothing little substitutes to make you forget that you're a human being. Soon there won't be any art at all, I tell you. You'll have to pay people to go to a museum or listen to a concert. I don't say that it'll go on like that forever. No, just when they've got it down pat, everything running smooth as a whistle, nobody squawking any more, nobody restless or dissatisfied, the thing'll collapse. Man wasn't intended to be a machine. The funny thing about all  utopian systems of government is that they're always promising to make man free---but first they try to make him run like an eight day clock. They ask the individual to become a slave in order to establish freedom for mankind. It's rum logic. I don't say that the present system is any better. As a matter of fact, it would be difficult to imagine anything worse than what we've got now. But I know it's not going to be improved by giving up what little rights we have now. I don't think we want more rights, I think we want larger ideas. Jesus, when I see what lawyers and judges are trying to preserve it makes me puke. The law hasn't any relation to human needs; it's a racket carried on by a syndicate of parasites. Just take up a lawbook and read a passage (anywhere) aloud. It sounds insane, if you're in your right sense. It is insane, by God, I know it! But Jesus, if I begin to question the law I've got to question other things too. I'd go off my nut if I looked at things with a clear eye. You can't do it---not if you want to keep in step. You've got to squint as you go along; you've got to pretend that it makes sense; you've got to let people suppose that you know what you're doing. But nobody knows what he's doing! We don't get up in the morning and think what we're about. No sir! We get up in a fog and shuffle through a dark tunnel with a hangover. We play the game. We know it's a dirty lousy fake but we can't help it---there's no choice. We're born into a certain setup, we're conditioned to it: we can tinker with it a little here and there, like you would with a leaky boat, but there's no making it over, there's no time for it, you've got to get to port, or you imagine you have to. We'll never get there of course. The boat'll go down first, take my word for it."---Henry Miller (1962)

Friday afternoon musings

One of the things I learned in this time period across the ocean is the importance of not allowing yourself to be bossed or pushed around. This is not to say that you can't compromise and work together with people, but at the end of the day when you find core principles being threatened, it's time to make a stand. This is not to be confused with winning or victory in the overt sense. Victory would probably imply or involve manipulating the actions of others. I've dabbled in that a tad but I really have no interest in it overall. I think at the end of the day people should make their own decisions. I've found through experience though that many a house of cards is allowed to stand through the actions of enablers who surround shoddy architecture, ready at a moment's notice to step in and maintain the status quo. Fear is a powerful motivator and fear of change is no small thing.

It's important to help where you can but not lose yourself in the process. Know where the line is. 

I, well, I wouldn't really call it a WISH....

Despite the fact that I live a pretty good life I still find myself wishing that there was a healthy outlet for smashing the living shit out of something every once in awhile. Suffice it to say you have to be really careful about acting on those types of impulses. Prisons are full of people who weren't careful. It could well be, however, that despite thousands of years of evolution and men that sit on couches next to fat women and watch reality tv, there's something inside that speaks to that old hunter-gatherer in all of us fellows.

By profession I'm about as far away from hunting and gathering as one can be. The closest I could get to it these days would be h/g pistachios at the local market. It's probably more than ever a sign that I need to keep moving and changing and that one relocation is far from the end of where I want to be. I still have a long way to go and I want to get my smash on, too.

Random and more random

I'm gonna take the Foreign Service Exam and try to land a job with the US Govt. I don't know if that will go forward due to errors in a previous life but we'll see. I'd be a fool not to try.

I can't shake the things that make me sad. I just do what I can to do things that make me happy and accept that there are some things I can't do anything about right now. I don't like being sad, though. It feels like a weight on my chest.

I'm reading Henry Miller's Sexus. Finally.

I'm listening to The Rolling Stone's Loving Cup. I also download more than 30 Lou Reed albums yesterday but I can't recall the motivation for it now. Welcome to my life. Now I'm listening to Black Sabbath's After Forever. Welcome to my life.

I've never figured out how to balance my heart and my mind. It's exhausting at times.

Seven weeks left till Beirut.