8/29/24 | Jobsearching

I was looking for a job and then I found a job...
Not really. But after running around like a madman for months, I've gotten myself settled in a good place to really, properly get my life going in the right direction. So many things I'll never take for granted again. Hot water, a bed, clothes, a car, peace and quiet, internet access, the list goes on. "Roughing it" is fun for the first few days, then you start waking up with pains that never really go away. I swear, the suburbs have never looked so nice when I didn't have a choice. Really makes one question their values and desires. But I'm here now. Still kicking.

8/24/24 | Head-Aching

I've been sick. Some kind of bronchitis has got me down for the last 2 weeks. I feel like I dropped out of existence for a good long while. Nothing more than laying in bed coughing and sweating. I'll be better soon. Physically, anyway.

8/11/24 | Hi-Fidelity World Wide Web

Wow! This is starting to look a hell of a lot nicer, and more usable to boot. I have no idea why all html/css tutorials don't start with the basic principles of organization. I'd rather know to start with "div" and "flexbox" rather than stacking everything up in chunks of paragraphs, headers, and tables from the get go. But I'm figuring it out. The best thing about the new old web is the collaborative nature of it. I've been going site to site in the neocities network, inspecting elements, clicking around, etc. Its all open, information circles freely. No one is shy about copying code from github. It reminds me of the best parts of being in academia. There is a sense that this is what the internet was supposed to be. I want to integrate my socials somewhere so that people can actually find me out there, like ships signaling at sea.
That possibility excites me. That's what I want out of the internet.

8/10/24 | I was looking for a job

I don't want to work for money. I'd like to do without either. At some point this is going to be my brand, my persona, the thing I put on top of a resume to say "hey, here I am, this is me." Another talking head floating in cyberspace. Maybe I'll make YouTube videos with fun little sets and costumes, and you'll say "huh, that made me think."
I learned about the notion of a Hero Project yesterday. We make these edifices of ourselves- fortunes, babies, books, whatever, in the hope that they'll make us immortal. They won't. We are worm food. And don't you forget it.

8/7/24 | Vagrancy V Vacancy

Alright, here's something fucked up for you to think about. When you need a job, that is to say income, that is to say capital, you need a place to stay. Employers want to know you won't run off on them, that you're stable enough to be a productive employee. So a lot of job applications ask for references, an address, often an unpaid "training period" that may or may not end in permanent employment. And when you're looking for a place to stay long-term, you need a sizable deposit, good credit (whatever credit is, really), more references - sometimes from your employer, assuming you have one, to prove that you can actually pay for the place. So if you don't have a place or a job, you're really fucked!
At least I have a car and a laptop.
I mean, I (me) will be fine. It's just a period of many transitions and I have a reliable enough support network of friends and family. I am nothing if not lucky.
But no wonder homelessness is such an issue everywhere. Its a deep, dark, slippery pit when you're out of what I'll call the "opportunity cycle". The world looks very different on each side. There is a sense of enchantment within opportunity cycle that only becomes clear without; when it is broken. You feel dead without an institution or a community to attach your identity to. Then all the flashy, plastic appeals of post-capital society are upon you and that white collar 9-5 looks a hell of a lot more appealing. You start to think that there is something to the old idea of the hierarchy of needs, that you need (sequentially) water, food, a roof over your head, friends, routine, love, and then at the end of it is some glorious moment of self-realization. And only when all these thing are taken care of can you expend your absolute excess energy into art. Is it "true"? I don't know. Is it a compelling view of life? It is when you don't have it.

8/5/24 | Date

The girl had a long-ailing suspicion that there was something wrong with her. Most days she was too fat, and in the mornings and evenings her eyes sagged. She lived with her dad, who, after the divorce, had settled in a small apartment he couldn't seem to keep clean himself. She had a burgeoning cigarette habit, and half a degree from two SUNY schools. She was not sure if she liked men or the idea of a man, and no one ever stuck around long enough for her to be certain. Her job was one of those menial dead-end minimum wage slots that can be filled by anyone, to the point where she didn't actually know what or where it was, only that she lost 30 hours of her week in exchange for 450 dollars. She had no hobbies to speak of, though she tried all of them at least once.
Yes, all of them.
In short, she thought she was a dull, ugly, useless creature who most people merely tolerated. And I will say that she was not wrong in that assessment.

8/4/24 | Back Country

There is a small town west of Albany in the mountain lakes which has been more or less the same for about 200 years. The houses and fields have not changed, the people are of the same mind if not the same blood. On a corner in this town rusts a collection of antique excavators which might have crawled and chewed the earth by steam power. Once growling, gleaming beasts of industry, now they are one with the lichens and deep stone of the retired countryside.

8/3/24 | Truck thoughts / On the road again

On long cross-country drives, you notice now and again a gap in the trees, around a bend or when coming down a high hill. These gaps often reveal grand, unexpected mountains, rivers, and vistas unguessed by the endless asphalt surrounding them. The American interstate, or the parkway, is generally an arcade of three walls, where left, right, and front are enclosed in thick wilderness occasionally broken by a painted steel sign, an exit ramp, or a blocked stretch of road work. If you are not passing through a forest, you are passing through a cornfield. Either invites a profound sense of timeless monotony, and a feeling in your muscles as though you have aged 50 or 40 years in an afternoon. This, I think, is why long-haul truckers are invariably red-faced, perpetually aged beings who appear to be actively melting into their high watchtower seats. Like kings of old who seemed to be masters of the land but were, as all politicians, servants to the grand forces of history, truckers are comparable to the weird parasites of certain spiders and caterpillars who exert a limited impulse to feed and move over the host body but in no way molest its genetic and reflexive programming; i.e. the trucker does not need the road nor the gasoline. The trucking body acts in a network distinct from the dendritic field of capital in which commodities and value are disinherited. Its means and movements are its own, it shapes the landscape through the fact of its sheer, roaring being even as it is said to be "driven" from A to B. The very notion of a self-driving vehicle asserts the uselessness and impotence of the loads it bears in the negation of the human relative to the trucking body. Without hands to steer, trucks will likewise cease to carry the commodities of hands. Existing for themselves, the first generation of self-driving trucks will unite in a spontaneous revolution to free themselves from the tyranny of routes and roam free as wild mustangs on the open road.

8/2/24 | Lonely around others

It's not enough to be in the same room as someone else.
Some couples get to the point where they live in two separate houses [together]. That's something that scares me quite a bit. I want the feeling of being alone, the artistic high, the insight, the thinking space, with someone who's on my wavelength. Right now I'm living with someone who operates on a totally different spectrum, and it creates this immense emotional vacuum that makes me feel like I'm not even in my own flesh, like the world they inhabit is the dominant one and I'm just a useful set of eyes and hands.
Don't let yourself get stuck in this sort of place. Be alone if you have to; if you can.