Outlandish Josh

Part of the problem with working a lot as a matter of course is that you don’t necessarily have a ton of “afterburner” power. I can go from zero to sixty pretty quick and steady, but that top-end power — the 60 to 100 — is harder. Still doable, but comes with more stress than I really like.

Plus I haven’t been taking awesome care of myself, so the physical plant isn’t in top condition. Months of decadent living, no bicycle, bad posture; relatively speaking I’m probably in some of the worst shape of my life.

All of which leads to various and sundry fantasies of training, getting back on track, cue the theme song from Rocky and all that jazz. They’re fantasies, but the idea of imposing more will and intention on my day to day has been caroming around my head for months now: eating better, getting sweaty, reading and writing more, early to bed and no TV, flossing twice a day. You know, the things you’re supposed to do as a good and healthy human being.

It’s approaching the point of a crisis of confidence, where I begin to doubt my own ability to get my shit together. So I guess we’ll see what happens here.

I’m headed back down to SF this afternoon, will have to start carving out some routines, pretend I’m training for the champeenship. Books and brawn, that’s the plan I think.

Packing up my room here in Westhaven, pulling up lots of interesting finds from the past four years. I saved a ton of business cards from all the various conferences I’ve been to since moving to California. There are some good postcards, some interesting letters from interesting women from the past, and a little parade of old wedding invites, baby pictures, and christmas cards.

It makes me wistful, reviewing these artifacts. I don’t want to change my past. Nor do I want to go back and repeat it. But I do wish — especially with baby pictures and the like — that I had more time to be there, to be a more active participant in all the wonderful happenings within my extended network.

I’ll also miss the hell out of this house; more than anything Kellymundo and Ace.

I think before I started becoming a real entrepreneur I had an alternate track that would have put me here more to stay, and while I’m happy to be where I am and headed where I’m headed, I’m also just a little sad and curious about that other track.

Hopefully I’ll have many happy returns to this little piece of Redwood Paradise. I’m sad to be leaving.

An old tradition returns: killing time down here on the Embarcaderro platform, taking advantage of that sweet sweet free wifi.

Big local news was yesterday’s verdict in the Oscar Grant trial. Last New Years over in Oakland, a BART cop shot a kid in the back. He, the young man, the young black man (natch), was handcuffed at the time, lying face down on the ground actually.

The verdict was involuntary manslaughter.

On the one hand, it’s a rare enough thing for an officer of the law to get convicted of anything — horrifying security footage probably helped there — but it’s still a pretty BS verdict if you ask me. I’m hoping hard that the judge hits the killer with the gun enhancement, sends him away for a good ten years or so.

The defense was that he thought he had his taser. This is pretty hard to believe for anyone who’s actually held a handgun and a taser. You really wouldn’t make that mistake, and I wonder why there wasn’t some tactile evidence submitted to the jury. “Feel these things? They both have pistol grips, sure, but notice how one weighs twice as much? Notice how their safety mechanisms are in completely different places?”

But you can’t expect the most diligent prosecution in these cases. No DA wants to send a member of their own team to prison. And anyway, why taser a kid in the back who’s already face down and cuffed? I guess it made sense to the jury. I guess the jury also didn’t have any African Americans on it either. Queue the Bob Dylan.

Reaction-wise there was some violence in the streets, but nothing too out of hand. The Whole Foods and the Foot Locker got smashed up, and there was a lot of standoffing, but no fires, no widespread looting or destruction. That’s good. People expected the worse, and an acquittal would have probably have been more inflammatory.

The frustration here is very real. To put it lightly, Cops and citizens in Oakland (especially black citizens) haven’t enjoyed the best of relationships over the years. Then there’s the manifest injustice. Still, rioting rarely harms the power structure. Rather than smashing the state, it far more often smashes the local neighborhood. Anarcho Punks joining the scene for fun and games take note.

Here comes the train…

I spent the past four days on the Island of Oahu, Hawaii, doing my part as a groomsman for the blessed union of Jesse Austin Dean and Gina Maria Long. Everything went off incredibly well. Weddings are sometimes occasions for people who don't see (or really want to see) one another very often — e.g. divorced parents — to clash. But there was zero drama, many kind words were said — my man The Girth burnishing his credentials as a first-rate orator — and a good time was had by all, not least the bride and groom.

Most of my experience was (rightly) about these other people, but it was pretty good for me too. Not a vacation, but a chance to decompress for 72 hours. Touristas aside, my cliche expectations are much exceeded by the reality of Hawaii. The North Shore felt like a place to spend some more time without a schedule or obligations, and I enjoyed being an out-of-place bum in Waikiki for a day.

Also got a lot of reading done. Finished the Žižek without uncovering significant further revelation, and then slurped up the much less dense Geography of Bliss, which was a good pick for a quick pseudovacation. Eric Weiner, a foreign correspondent from NPR and self-professed "grump" with an overdeveloped sense of irony, travels the globe to very happy (and unhappy) places, in search of what makes them so. Occasionally strenuously clever tone aside, the content is good food for thought. I was particularly struck by this passage at the end of his visit to the recently-ultrawealthy Quatar:

I keep thinking about something Abdulaziz said. When he's feeling down, he said, he talks to his God. Not prays but talks, that's the word he used. I liked how that sounded. Talking comes naturally to me. Praying does not. Of course Abdulaziz's God is Allah. Not exactly my God. I wonder: Who is my God? No obvious answer springs to mind. Over the years I have been spiritually promiscuous, dabbling in Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and even occasionally Judaism. None however could qualify as my full-time faith, my God. Then, suddenly, his name pops into my mind and His is not a name I expected. Ambition. Yes, this is my God.

When Ambition is your God, the office is your temple, the employee handbook your holy book. The sacred drink, coffee, is imbibed five times a day. When you worship Ambition, there is no Sabbath, no day of rest. Every day you rise early and kneel before the God Ambition, facing in the direction of your PC. You pray alone, always alone, even though others may be present. Ambition is a vengeful God. We will smite those who fail to worship faithfully, but that is nothing compared to what he has in store for the faithful. They suffer the worst fate of all. For it is only when they are old and tired, entombed in the corner office, that the realization hits like a Biblical thunderclap. The God of Ambition is a false God and always has been.

It was doubly interesting reading for me as the book was a pass-on from Rina, and had some of her notes in the margins, which she found embarrassing but made me smile continuously, being connected in a world of ideas. It was a particularly nice 21st-century romance moment to bask in the morning-after-wedding feeling of hope and optimism, "talking" with a beautiful woman via gchat, me from my phone on the edge of a volcanic rock in the middle of the Pacific, and she in Amsterdam (world cup fever!) on her eventual way to London.

I'm back on the mainland now, setting in to what might turn out to be again-temporary quarters at the Cornell Club — landlord called the day of the wedding to tell us he's selling the joint — and it's "back to life, back to reality." I'm joyful for my friends, and grateful to have gotten this bit of respite which I must confess was pretty sorely needed.

Now onward into the summer. To greater glory, and possibly some happy return to that island paradise.

By means of assuaging my mother and anyone else who might be tuning in, in spite of my angsty posts I’m not going to collapse into nothingness or the like. I am getting a lesson in “how much is too much” from a work/stress standpoint, but things are actually progressing well on that front, and I’m about to escape — succurro! succurro! — to Hawaii for a wonderful (wedding) celebration of life.

I may be hailin’ from the edge, but I’m pretty sure everything is gonna be alright.

Having a lot of trouble focusing, my mind skittering around the edges of what’s to be done. Feels like personal failure. I’m a little sad, caught here outside the perimeter, alone.

In the grand scheme of things I know I’m one of the luckiest people alive, that This Too Shall Pass, but it’s just not a great Sunday morning.

On the one hand, I believe that good things require some amount of pain and sacrifice — A Grand Don’t Come for Free, after all — I also believe that the most important thing is to stop struggling.

When struggling, there’s a pretty good chance that “You’re Doing It Wrong.”

Not sure how to do it right though.

Not super happy that Rina is moving to London next week.

Not feeling very much in the flow, or where to go to get picked back up into the stream.

For the moment, it’s a world of TODOs and trying the best you can, trying the best you can, hoping the best you can is good enough.

I’ve been slowly making my way through First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, which I picked up while browsing the Strand back in the spring and then purchased as a supplemental counterweight to the delightfully light/fun Shantaram. Žižek isn’t really breezy, but he’s certainly brilliant, and more importantly willing to ask pretty hard questions.

The book is part dissection of the contemporary neoliberal status quo ideology, and part argument to revive the idea of (haunting music) Communism. It’s already delivered a few gems, such as this explanation of the uselessness of the modern Leftist opposition:

In the good old days of Really Existing Socialism, a joke popular among dissidents was used to illustrate the futility of their protests. In the fifteenth century, when Russia was occupied by Mongols, a peasant and his wife were walking along a dusty country road; a Mongol warrior on a horse stopped at their side and told the peasant he would now proceed to rape his wife; he then added, “But since there’s a lot of dust on the ground, you must hold my testicles while I rape your wife, so that they will not get dirty!” Once the Mongol had done the deed and ridden away, the peasant started laughing and jumping with joy. His surprise wife asked, “How can you be jumping with joy when I was just brutally raped in your presence?” The farmer answered: “But I got him! His balls are covered with dust!”

A lot of the rest is somewhat remedial for anyone with a critical eye for the world: how a “kinder” — or more recently “greener” — capitalist status quo has taken hold and is recycling its opposition into its own system, etc. The interesting piece to me is not this critique, but the argumentation to seriously (re)consider the Marxist alternative.

Žižek argues that the financial collapse was the final end of “Captialism” as a meaningful thing, and that emerging post-financial-collapse iteration of the World Order — big industry bailouts, a more culturally sensitive consumerism, enough social safety net to keep people complacent but not to really redistribute wealth — is really a sort of corrupt consumerist/cronyist Socialism, still rife with inequality and on a collision course with ecological catastrophe, and of course suppressing the still-present specter of Communism.

I don’t buy all of his arguments. Some are just wrong — for instance the contention that recent famines are indicative of insufficient food production, when in fact modern famines have emerged within an abundance of resources; the problems being distribution and ownership. Others feel like a bit of a reach — appeals to post-humanism, fear of genetic manipulation, generally appolcalyptic thinking. However, the main thrust is undeniable:

• This 21st century post-capitalist elite-supporting socialism may be socialistic, but it’s still primarily oriented around property and the preservation of existing holdings.
• As a result, vast and immoral inequality of life-chances looks set to persist through the coming decades.

• And of course nothing meaningful is being done to address any of the planetary-scale issues which, if they break in a bad/sudden way, will cause the inequality to rapidly escalate into a dystopian world so polarized and divided we can hardly imagine it today.

The last third of the book, which is what I’m still reading, explores the emancipatory notion of Communism as a way of freeing ourselves from this fate. Maybe there will be some aha! moment at the end, but I somewhat doubt it. Still, it’s got me thinking.

At this time, I feel it’s an appropriate time to peer into the cultural consciousness via Star Trek and some wonderful people from Iceland. First, Picard:

And now, Iceland:

The Best Party, whose members include a who’s who of Iceland’s punk rock scene, formed a coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (despite Mr. Gnarr’s suspicion that party leaders had assigned an underling to watch “The Wire” and take notes). With that, Mr. Gnarr took office last week, hoping to serve out a full, four-year term, and the new government granted free admission to swimming pools for everyone under 18. Its plans include turning Reykjavik, with its plentiful supply of geothermal energy, into a hub for electric cars.

Their campaign video gives a good taste of the vibe:

It reminds me of Jim Henson and the muppets somehow. Comic, but also earnest. I like it.

Now my own position is ticklish. As was pointed out by a feisty old relative last fall in the midst of a debate about Health Care Reform, “You’re in business for yourself. You’re a capitalist, right?” In some ways, yes, though I more or less agree with Žižek’s thesis that “Capitalism” has lost all but a tribal/totemic meaning. Though, I think that’s how the question was posed, as a sort of cold-war “with us or against us” formulation, which I think is totally dated, but c’est la vie.

Anyhow, I’m certainly an entrepreneur, and a businessman of sorts — I’m with the invaders, no use in trying to hide that; but at the same time I disagree with some of the things they are doing. I would ultimately prefer to live in a more equitable world less oriented around material things, one with more of a sense of whimsy, exploration, and fun; a world where we might actually reach the stars rather than successively raping one another down in the dirt.

On that path I don’t believe we can eschew economic self-determination or the competition it implies. Nobody really believes that command economies are coming back, but neither are we at any “end of history.” There’s got to be a better way to run things, both pragmatically in terms of creating wealth more efficiently, and morally in terms of distributing it equitably. My guess is without compelling and radical ideas which aggressively challenge the status quo in a progressive way — as opposed to the virulent reactionary opposition we see popping up on the Right — we’ll end up with a bunch of bland technocratic hand-waving, until of course that fails at which point the reactionary forces won’t hesitate to fill the gap.

The most compelling moment for me in the Best Party video was where Gnarr proclaims, And, and we won’t accept mediocrity, because we want The Best. Another world may be possible, but hope is not a plan.

As per Žižek, those who believe in this possibility — whether they’re Communists or not — must begin again at the beginning, and continue to try: “Try again, fail again, fail better.” This is the only way progress is ever made.

Positive things:

• Back up on the bike! It’s hard to underestimate the value of getting natural endorphins in the mix, and circulating the lymphatic system.
• After a weekend of feeling sort of like a shut-in, having much better social times at work and at home.
• I (heart) the world cup. It’s better than the Olympics, I think.

• Pandora radio on my Android as I walk and cruise. The two “stations” I am rocking now are Mark Ronson and Wolfmother. I particularly like thinking about the physics of listening to that as I ride said bike.

I know I’m in a better mood because I see beautiful people around again rather than inhabit a dark grey ugly zombieland, and I’m tolerant of failure and setbacks. It’s a better way to be – more effective, not to mention more pleasant — and I’m hoping I can sail through the storm like this.

So, in addition to tuning a few things up under the hood and getting my blog posts going back to ye olde Facebook, I decided to bust out some Variation on the Theme in light of the solstice.

I've been noodling on a real redesign with one of my mother's students for a while now, but it's not the sort of thing I've had a ton of time to invest serious energy into, and ergo things have kind of stalled.

But I want to write more, and have been sort of hating on my old rust-colored sexyface theme. Maybe this is part of what's blocking, I think, and I went ahead and cropped myself out a new photo, generated a little background to match, and set some new colors. New coat of paint on this lonely old town; inspiration, I'm ready for ya!

The bigger changes I want to make are about content organization and whatnot, but I think the sad fact is that until I start generating said content, energy invested in organization would be questionably allocated. There's always more time for fancy-pants layouts and whatnot. The more pressing question is what, pray tell, would fill the boxes, and how might it get written?

Scouring The Sources Of My Windless Sails

After yesterday's post, which looked at how my working life was sucking my will to live, I started thinking a bit bigger. Work is top of mind at the moment, so that's the first thing to come out, but getting that out of the way made room for deeper/better reflection.

The existential crisis is of course about more than just my jibity job; it's about who I am as a person, and the world around me.

One of the big things is I have this general feeling that time is running out!, that I've got to make something of myself now or never. However, casual examination reveals this is a falsehood. While I'm not a kid anymore, neither am I anywhere near the twilight of my human capacities. It's just the stress talking. This ticking-clock pressure can be handled, I think, with just a little more balance and deep breathing.

I'm also not really happy with myself in terms of my health. Since falling off my bike in May and going into a more sedintary cycle, I'm definitely feeling more giggly and slow. The answer here is pretty clear — start working out, duh, and maybe cut back the beer on weeknights — and it only takes a bit of willpower to implement. This is the sort of thing that's hard when you're all caught up in other things, but tends to melt away pretty easily if you focus on it for half a minute.

More troubling is the external world around me. I haven't blogged much about politics or current events lately, and mainly its because the whole thing is pretty monumentally depressing. I won't even begin to dig into the details here, but suffice to say that things are not going well with the world, and without any scapegoat in the form of a Bush Administration, it becomes harder and harder not to see all of this as a total systemic failure. There are plenty of low-level political fights worth having — and I do have hope that the Health Care Reform ball that's begun rolling will add up to something meaningful — but the general drift of events is still towards the precipice.

With the undercurrent of doom running strong, the obvious wrongness of the status quo — for instance, thigh lube — becomes a constant source of deflating disappointment. It's hard to see how our modern way of life survives this, and so one begins wondering who will make it and who won't, and why. I preach a dark future.

This one is hard. It's hard to get super-excited when you feel that even your best putative achievements amount to little more than yelling into the void. It's a cynical-depressive position, and not one I enjoy occupying, but until/unless I can unravel another transcendental win, feels like I'm stuck here.

So I do the little things. I fixed my bike. I did some decent stretching. I repaired the toilet. I spruced up the blog. I took a bit of pleasure in the World Cup. None of this changes the fact that I'm sort of burned/bummed out, but getting anywhere is really a matter of putting one foot in front of the other. The only way out is through.

Existential crisis of meaning. Four years in Chapter Three. Leaving Westhaven. A new life is coming, but what sort? Well dude, we just don't know.

So here's this table from a slide from a presentation my business partner sent me as part of our ongoing project to raise the level of our entrepreneurial game. It's about people's motivations for starting businesses:

It should come as no surprise to anyone that my heart lines up firmly in the Missionary camp, but what kills me about this table is how much my actions are in the other. Beliefs, they say, are habits of action. What you do is who you are, regardless of what you say you think.

This is a cause of no small consternation. Obviously without the "whole life (that works)" bit things are unsustainable, but beyond that — beyond the fraying social ties, the softening physique — there's a sort of spiritual death that begins taking hold. Operating outside my actual motivational framework is a game of diminishing returns; ultimately ending in who knows what, but probably some kind of dark rock bottom indeed.

The problem is that my "actual" desires are vague, without form, and void. Darkness lies upon the face of the deep, but underneath the perpetual engine of ambition cranks away. I don't believe I'll ever be satisfied — and to be honest I sort of like that fact — but blind groping hungry ambition isn't an especially attractive or effective state to be in, just wanting to "be somebody," like an overgrown infant, crying in anger, gumming at the world.

It's a huge complex to unravel, full of compromises and contradictions. The other day I got sucked into engaging with a canvasser for Greanpeace down on Market street. Nice enough hippy kid, kinda stoned, with a pretty righteous come-on about how if we didn't act now, all would be lost. I had to turn him down and be on my way, but it made me wonder why/how/where I would make up for that.

And on the other side of the ledger, for all I've done in the past four years I've achieved some modest self-made-man status. Feels like a B+. Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing to be free of debt and have a little savings, but beyond the basic bail-out freedom that gets me, money fails to strongly motivate. It's not going to get me any real power or influence at this rate, and when it comes down to it I'm culturally allergic to the petit bourgeoisie lifestyle towards which I listlessly trend.

I would like to say I'd rather be a bohemian pauper genius — a bikeman or beatnik or something or other — but the problem is I'm not sure if that's true. I've lost some of the starry-eyed optimistic bravado, don't feel the universe swirling around me much these days. When the Girth wants to call me out, he tells me I'm just another "aging hipster." Sometimes it does feel like this, like I'm past my prime and I should just adjust my expectations downward, settle.

Fuck that noise though. "Be in love with yr life," is one of the better maxims I know, and I'm not really there. I don't know what I love, just what I'm obligated to do, so I live more and more like a Mercenary, a Missionary who's lost his faith. I'd be happier to be poor and on a higher road, but somewhere along I lost my way it seems.

It's a bad scene, no doubt. This is why I'm not writing so much, I think.

The upside is that there's some conscious self-examination happening. Better to be actively engaged in the pitched battle of spiritual crisis than just... struggling.