La economía del asesino a sueldo

Been a long time since I done writ anything here. Hace mucho tiempo que no escribo nada aquí.

In light of current events, some things have come to mind. Gotta be mindful of these currents in the event of them coming. Debido a eventos recientes, se me han ocurrido algunas cosas. Hay que tener estas cosas en cuenta cuando occurren para que nos demos cuenta que cuentan por algo.

Sometimes I write things I'm thinking in this little graph-paper notebook. I liked these sentences. I was watching a documentary about the collapse of the pension-plan system. A veces escribo lo que pienso en este cuardenito de cuadrados. Me han gustado estas frases. Estuve viendo un documental sobre la ruptura del sistema de los planes de pensiones. Se me occurrieron estas frases - una mezcla de palabras más o menos sueltas, pero vinculadas por algún significado. Al menos, eso espero.

I like mixing up the words and terms used in common locutions to make new sentences.

You decide what it means. Decide tú lo que significa.

Temporal canvases

           

 I wish I could somehow express with words on a piece of paper the feelings I’m feeling right now. Maybe this is so cliché and passé but the things that I’m feeling, the feelings I’m feeling, I’m sure that someone else knows what I’m going through. And that’s just it, ain’t it? The feelings of the feelings I’m feeling are something that we all share with each other, along with our desire to be understood by other people, it’s part of what makes us human beings, isn’t it? I think that maybe Henry Miller was onto something when he decided to go off on stream of consciousness art-rants about the nature of life and love and sex in Clichy in another century, because I’m sure we haven’t figured out better words to express it now. There’s no way that we have, for though language morphs and changes and transmutes, there is no way that it has changed that much in so little time. We are like rocks and sand and wind – these things take time.We are all landscapes.

To Asturias

To Asturias:

I have failed in my aspirations to be above average. No, actually, that’s not really true. I’m doing well but it seems always sometimes like people around me are doing better than me, achieving more. However, I know that many of these people aren’t happy and also feel like they’re underachievers.

            Maybe we’re all selfish and have failed in our attempts to be like God – perfect and immaculate. This, of course, is impossible. But we all want to feel important. That’s the most fundamental feeling of human existence.

            In the same sense, to be stuck with limitations that are unexpected, undesirable, and inconvenient is also part of being human. If it’s like they say, that no one ever said it was going to be easy, I’m pretty goddamn sure that no one ever said it had to make sense either. I’m pretty sure of that, if nothing else.

Calle Goyescas, Fuente Berrocal

Valladolid, Valladolid, España

5:29, 11/11/11

There Are Many Battlefields

There are many battlefields
And I have been to war,

but I know that peace is better.

I have seen hard stares,

but I know that smiles are brighter.

I have felt real fear,

and I know courage is harder.

I have tried to be like others,

but I know that me is better.

I rule my den.

Because I’m a crawling king snake, and I rule my den.

John Lee Hooker spoke those words into a microphone so many years ago. And John Lee did not worry much about whether his guitar was perfectly in tune nor whether the recording sounded perfect. He did not care much about his grammar or the pitch of his voice; he just wanted to sing the things that were in his heart. And sometimes you just need to tell the world that you rule your den and not be bothered with whether that conforms to anyone else’s needs, or whether it sits right with you yourself even! Sometimes it’s more important to just let out what’s inside, regardless of imposed constraints.

It’s always important to just be here in the moment, to just be here now. An old man said to me today, “I remember when I was young, son. I was always thinking about where I should be and not where I was.” I don’t know if he meant to be that profound, but I took what he said to heart. I am always thinking about where I need to be and not where I am. But in reality, the only thing that’s real is right here, right here with me. You and me.

Nonsense

“I’m sure you’re talking nonsense in calling this inn a castle.” / “Sé que decís disparates en llamar castillo a esta venta.”

Write what you mean, not what you want to sound like

When I read pre-structured, soulless academic writing, I can’t help but lament the gigantic waste of time and talent that such a vapid task surely cost.
A colossal waste of time.
Pages and pages of sugar-free information.
Inane diagrams, vida infras, and see appendixes. Stretching on for literary miles.
I don’t know why exactly but I see the written word as a medium for the conveyance of emotion; not rote, basic communication. Don’t get me wrong – when you’re writing an email or a text message to simply convey rote, basic information, then it is appropriate to write accordingly. But I cannot fathom spending hours and hours of my time writing to simply convey rote statistics and figures. That’s not even what I think of when I think of “writing”. It’s more like mechanized reporting; a form of soul-sapped, automated stenography.
Perhaps it proves difficult for many people or maybe it’s just against the “rules” of academia (or maybe I’m just getting used to the devil’s side of the whole “advocacy” thing) but I think that when you’re writing, you should always say what you feel. You should let a little bit of that soul - that ever-evasive “self” - shine through. Everyone out there has something to say more than they have something to convey. Some of the most powerful and profound academic work I have ever seen belies a little sadness, gives you a little wink, lets you see the obvious anger permeating every account of injustice or maltreatment or asinine historical misconception.
I want a nudge, I want a nod, I want encouragement. I don’t want simple percentages and pre-authorized transitions and standardized paragraph structure and data reports.
No one wants to read that shit. Not even other academics. It’s all just an arcane set of Ivory Tower writing regulations that are essentially intended to keep John Q. Public from cutting into the “experts’” monopoly on information. They make it so no one has the ability to read it without the proper academic credentials. But hey, what’s the point of going to years and years of school except to make your theories sound more professional? By making it only intelligible (or halfway interesting) to other academics and “experts”, they can pour more cement into the foundation of their intellectual stockade, the garrison that separates them from the people without as many degrees.
This is most remiss for sociologists, social psychologists, and other humanities experts. It is our job to explore and expose the machinations of this social world, not to further shroud them in secrecy and unintelligible academic buzzwords. It is not our job to be uppity elitists and study mysterious “theories” encrypted with pseudo-Greek and Latin academic gibberish* about the way our society works. It is not our job to write really smart-sounding academic papers with impressive vocabulary and sentence structure. It is our job to debunk, to demystify, to instill hope, to figure out. It is our job to provoke change, and no one ever achieved that by inventing esoteric six-syllable quasi-Latin words to describe simple, everyday occurrences. You talk of “phenomenology” and “philology” and “pedagogy”. Why not “how stuff happens” and “how people say stuff” and “the way people teach”? Is all of this coding really necessary? Don’t you want to make a change in this world? Don’t you want people to understand you?
There are things that are broken in society, things that need to be fixed. Writing about the ontology of semi-urban disenfranchisement in divested zones of transition is not going to help any poor folks in the inner suburbs get more rights.
I think we need to re-examine the way we write to exact change. Everyone knows we’re smart already. Let’s try to help. Let’s try to share some real emotion and stop being such unsure-of-ourselves, insecure, namby-pambies. Let’s bleed and be pissed off together.
It’s not a fucking “-ology”. It’s life.

*I realize the irony of saying something is “pseudo-Greek”. Go fuck yourself.

OK, now that that’s all said, I think I have officially justified not doing my reading for the evening. Good night!