Me, Natural Human, Like Everyone - #71
Hi everyone,
After browsing through my winter clothes, I finally found the login info for this newsletter.
Joking! A knee-slapper! I’ve been in the trenches these past many months: finding a job, finishing up projects, forecasting foreseeable angst. I’m striking with my comrades this May and attending the Austin TV Festival in early June. This is a sizeable distro, about 100 folks across Hollywood (and the Earth) – I hope to run into you! Don’t be a stranger.
I present to you an essay, with an accompanying narration by yours truly (via Spotify). Highly inspired by "The Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber & David Wengrow.
Enjoy.
Listen to this post here! (Spotify)
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Is this just me?
Like, me, in apartment, a dirty dwelling with grimy windows, going wacko, wondering if me need human communion. Yes, my monkey brain beckons, I do! A man, a woman, maybe child, a little human to remind me why I grew up in the first place. Should me approach my best neighbor? Don't know them.
Mailman? Don't know them.
Beggar? Don't know them.
Myself? Tired of him.
Text friend. "Hi hi how are you," me sent. Suggested activities we could do: frolic through highway, garden empty lot, burn a bank? Wait for answer, pace living room. Stare at monstera, ask, why are you in my kitchen and not in Honduras? Me should do research. Too bad books are big nowadays. Ding! "Or we could go grab that olive oil coffee that makes you shit. Down?" he replied. How mildly exciting!
We met. He said hi Don, I said hi Ron. Full name is Ronnie Macaroni; why did he keep name father gave? He could've been Michael Cholula, or Johnny Szechuan, but no, his father gifted him name. Yet dad is complete moron. About as smart as a pack of Skittles. Why not change it? Does he not want to anger sperm donor?
We go up to barista, a bisexual twink with blue hair. "Two of your finest olive oil coffees, please," me requested. Ronnie tapped card for his, then my turn. "Five money please," he said.
"Why not allow me to sit here because I am human like you?"
"No. My master do not like that."
"Okay. I will just ignore you and sit."
"Then I will summon humans who have guns."
"Then I will ignore them."
"Then they will throw you into concrete box."
"Then I will say please don't do that, resist, and run."
"Then they will call all their friends, grab all their guns, and chase you in big wee-woo cars and scary helicopters, find you, beat you, possibly shoot you, and if alive, make sure you stay in concrete box for very, very long time."
Me pay five money. Surrounding spaces are either ugly, cars, or belong to other human me don't know. Pondered, "If I knew everyone, could I go everywhere?" Friend and me sit in space designated as part of entity that trade coffee for money. "How are you?" friend asks.
Sun cooking planet. Plastics in my brain. Sexless society. "I'm doing fine, thanks. And you?"
Ronnie was promoted at his totalitarian heirarchy called a "company". "My position has three letters now!" he rejoiced. "No longer am I being told direct orders and cowering in fear of my corporate overlords. Now I'm the overlord! I tell people what to do. I call the shots. And I make more money for it. I'm moving up in this world, my friend, literally, up floors at this company!"
He told me his company does "B-to-B technology partnerships". Who knew so many humans needed printers. "Okay," me said, "what if your masters all perish in midday microwave explosion because dumbass left a fork inside? What then?"
"That would be sad," he relented. Then thought. "But I would get promotion."
"Interesting. You sound like psycho."
"I'm nice to my wage slaves!"
"Okay, could wage slave at office say no to your direct order?"
"Sure. But I would have power to banish them from concrete building and stop giving them money."
"But people need money to survive?"
"Correct."
We walk through park. Astroturf world. Homeless ham sandwich. Depressed teens kicking rocks. "How did we get like this?" me ask Google.
"Because we're smart!" said Google. Friend explained to me why Google right. He should know; he has piece of paper saying he studied for four years about why current way of living is good. It's called "Economics".
"We were cavemen banging rocks for thirty thousand years, then we said, 'Enough of this!', and began to grow wheat, which led to bigger families, bigger towns, which led to private property, which established hierarchies, cultures, cities, and although it led to kings and bureacrats, they were all necessary evils for us to advance human race to what it is today, a prosperous civilization that thrives on solving problems and thinking the big questions."
What? With this many disheveled specks who cannot feel our basic nature? Who eternally suffer from warped thoughts, yeehaw syndrome, and authoritarian tendencies? They say, Could be genes! But it could also be mix of car exhaust and corn syrup. Could be national ethos to become mini-dictator.
"Have you ever seen elephant at city zoo?" me replied. "Watch them. In silence. Keep eye contact. They will sway and bob their head, then move back, stop, move forward, bob their head and do it again. And again. And again, until you move on, thinking, 'Aww he so cute." Yet did you know he stressed? He sad. He has 'zoochosis', big word which means 'going fucking crazy'. And did you know it goes away when elephant is in wild? There is not a single elephant in any zoo that does not have zoochosis. Did you know I don't pace my living room or scroll my brain away or smoke hash or binge videos when I see sunshine, drink water, or hug dog?"
"What are you saying?"
"I don't think we made a world for human beings," me said. "Is that a childish idea fathomed from a college textbook? Me feels, somewhere along the way, we've lost touch with what it means to touch grass. Like, imagine, a festival, in forest or desert, a mass migration of diverse peoples from all across continent come together to celebrate the beauty of living on planet. Many days of music and happy clapping! Big bonfire! Maximum self-expression! Then disband, clean, create new families, friends, and breakthroughs on how to live good life, meet God, or whatever. People themselves pick who they want to be with, not their birth-givers, nor grey buildings, nor pieces of paper full of legal blah-blah. Just humans who say, ‘Wow I like standing here!’ From Africa to America, there's evidence ancient humans ten thousand years ago might have done such a thing. What happened to us? You knows?”
“Yeah, yeah!” friend said. “You mean like Burning Man?”
Photo Credit: Midjourney
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