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Confession
thejanechord
Diaryland
notifylist.com
2002-09-23
3:39 p.m.
Am I turning into a snob? Does my intense need to make something serious of myself and my enduring reputation as a culturally aware spokesperson of the masses make me too snobby to be able to speak of the general public?
I’ve been through so much in my life. I’ve been through far more than I ever signed on for. In fact, I didn’t sign on for life at all, as we all must know due to the fact that I didn’t ask to be born. What I’ve become through the hellish experiences I’ve withstood appears to be nothing more than a cynical, pessimistic, unfriendly, unhappy, miserable person who can’t stand to be around anyone but the one person who is equally as miserable. Is it wrong for me to want to tell the world of the horrors I’ve encountered? Is it wrong for me to want to say something?
Here, it must be said that I have become the sort of person who will no longer bother to deal with stupidity. I have become the sort of person who despises all things of and for the mainstream. I have become someone who won’t even bother to read the description of a book if it’s been a New York Times bestseller. I have become the sort of person who refers to anything other than serious literature as "crap fiction."
Crap fiction.
It sounds a little harsh, doesn’t it? Of course it sounds harsh. I suppose it’s intended to sound harsh. It must sound harsh in order to be heard by anyone because people don’t pay attention these days. The world is a harsh place in which to live and if you want to be heard you have to play the game. It’s all about playing the game.
The game sucks.
I’m sick of the game. I’ve spent far too long wishing for one thing and working like hell to get it because I’m supposed to be living the "American Dream," but what nobody tells you when you’re growing up in America is that the illustrious "American Dream" of which they all speak glowingly is an utterly despicable illusion. We’re not living in a place where the streets are paved with gold. We’re not living someplace where giving it your best shot is all that matters.
No.
We’re living in a world where you eat or are eaten, and if you’re not one of the corporate invertebrates who’s willing to sell out for a handful of quarters, you’re trampled beneath the feet of those who are greedier and hungrier for fame, fortune, and power. The good people in the world swim eternal laps in pools of filthy, sewage-filled gutters and come up for air at brief intervals to suck in a glorious lungful of putrid, toxic, death-incensed air while the people who would sell their mother for a profit sit calmly and coolly on the beach of a five-star resort, soaking up rays and leaving less than 2% tips for the lesser capitalist slaves who refill their drinks and sell them sunscreen.
I hate society.
Sure, it makes me bitter. It makes me angry to a point where my physical health falls prey to the magnificent plot twists of the unfortunate failures whose stories get lost along the telling trail of the fantastic "American Dream," and the result is the pitiful pile of me who stands before you today proclaiming the death of it all, still wishing ineffectually that I could do something specific, something extraordinary and wonderful, something different to change the ways of this fucked up world.
But I have failed.
My new class starts tonight. I’m really excited. I’m taking Graduate Research Methods and Scholarly Writing in the Humanities. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Even though the class hasn’t met yet, the instructor e-mailed all the students a week or two ago to give us a reading assignment to prepare for the first class period. We were to read Emerson’s Nature and Self-Reliance.
Interesting stuff.
The interesting thing about reading Emerson is that his ideas, while idealistically wonderful, are completely and totally ridiculous when considered from a practical perspective. He assumes that the man who can think for himself, act himself, be himself will automatically become serene, peaceful, at one with himself and his God, Nature. My question is, what does it mean when you live wholly for yourself, act wholly for yourself, and search wholly for yourself and all you find is horror, weakness, atrocity, and filth? Is that a reflection on society?
Or is it a reflection on me?
According to him, I’d be the happiest person on the planet. Every single day I spend in earnest reflection on the meaning of life, my inner self, the complexities apparent in the juxtaposition of total, adverse odds in the guise of an exuberantly well-balanced Nature. Everyday, I find myself once again reacting to the simplest facts of existence, the simplest concepts readily available within myself, and I search forever for the less readily visible, the less easily available facts of existence. And every single day I conclude that life, nature, god, death, and I are all eternal nothingness: worthless, meaningless, useless pieces of incomprehensibly horrid wretchedness.
Where’s your serene, life-saving, wonder-realizing, unadulterated self-reliance now, Mr. Emerson? I suspect that it’s dead alongside the wonders of Nature and the American Dream, both of which died long before we pick up the pieces of their fallen structures now.
