Trigger warning: I wrote this for all the wrong reasons. My good friend who is hammering out a tough job on trucks is a stand-up guy, a fellow of sympathy and encouragement. He's a guys I've known for a long time who had been a huge help when I was lost in SA. Who knows why I wrote this. But it expresses my frustration for the bridge loan of legibility that I currently grant myself. When I was 18 I would never self-censor myself. Moraline and I were publishing a magazine and we got a lot of heat for it. Men react in error and hyperbole, and they have to confess their sins. This is my transition to the big city. No edits.
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Could be. I'll be the first to admit that based on my background and who I am, maybe I'm full of shit. That's fine. If it's true and can be proven, then I'll be a quiet accountant who runs half marathons for Gatorade and cookies and won't be a trouble to anyone.
However, I offer the following: claims of nonsense are claims of legibility. Claims of legibility are claims of the dominant power structure. It is the Schoolmaster, the man who controls the expression of the dominant class, claiming I have broke the rules of sensibility. I know how that game works. It's a power struggle, and if you have to go underground, you have a "hidden transcript," meaning you can't say what you think because you get waxed. So you have a sublimated transcript, and anthropologists arrive in numbers and with wonder about what's really going on. So if I'm chided for speaking "nonsense," well shit write the ticket but I AIN'T PAYING THE TICKET AND I AIN'T SERVING NO TIME. I'll go further, come for me, and I got my Glock and I got my Double Tap high grain hollow points and I will take down any motherfucker who fucks with me.
Already done my time is all I'm saying. I'm here in a new city and I will write what I feel each day. If I'm full of shit, great. A great scholar once wrote that a man "gets exactly what he wants." I was broke and homeless in Alaska and had to turn tail and make money in a big city because it was to my advantage. Show me a skipper who isn't in the fishing for the money. Show me a skipper who doesn't make a spreadsheet and pay his guys fairly (some skippers rip off the crew). I fished on a boat that had an IFQ holder who is currently going to law school and a guy who was *the best deck hand* who is now a practicing CPA. I met a guy, who I've already written about, who said*he wished he had an office job in Seattle.* Tell me that Kevin, a guy who put me up for a week, thinks that I'm an idiot for trying to make money and get by. Kevin just misses my company. My skipper just misses my company. Neither of these two blame me for making money. They are impressed with my ability to do this city shit. They know I hose down decks and take hooks in my hand and work my ass off. Ask the Filipinos who was the guy who pitched the most fish in in 2014. Who was it? Who was the last guy who unloaded the last haul of Pcod in 2014 when he caught the fish? The plant manager and Danny G. could not believe we were fishing so hard and so late. If I'm full of nonsense, if I'm full of shit, show me the guy whose full of the sensibility and sense that you're aiming for. Is is a fucking whale who never stepped on shore?
So I published a phenomenology of my new big city, and it's no different than the struggle for a man to survive. The real or fake contrast wasn't nonsense, it was meant to highlight the fact that a man struggles for his existence and courage, he struggles for the expression of his courage. I don't bust another man's hustle. Each man gets by how he can. In Alaska there is a deep respect for just getting by, because once it gets cold there it's a fucking hard place to live. Each morning I scraped the ice from my truck's windows. I went to the gas station and I got coffee. I went to a library to warm up and right myself. I had no land at the time, no base. Alaska is a tough place with no money. I don't blame anyone for coming to Alaska with money. You need it; vultures will eat you if you come unprepared.
Where I live they are unapologetic about the conflict of the natives verses the new arrivals. I run on a trail where there is a memorial for a man, wife, and daughter who were murdered in 1841 by the Indians. Texans don't have the guilt because they won a war, a few wars. They play music and they dance here and any fisherman would say I'm smart to be here, that I didn't bail but I went to a good place.
Maybe I had the wrong experience in Alaska. The Filipinos weren't my friends nor were the Mexicans. The In-Charge guys liked me for my management skills. That whole operation needed to be righted by a guy like me. I got my job on the boat from the guy in charge who no one liked. Charlie said I should get the fuck out of the business. But I was just in Alaska last week. It was dark and cold and hard again, just like I remembered. Everyone was finishing up. I come back to Texas and write my article, and I'm full of shit and nonsense? Man, I have half my fucking life in Alaska. I'm full of shit and nonsense? Tell me whose the real guy. Fucking show me that guy.
I was hired by a Finn to fish. He trusted no one but trusted me like a son. He understands what I'm doing here. He predicted it. He knows I fit in in this rat race, despite my urges to break away and live in the woods.
So I will tell it like it is as I live in this big city and manage the system of legibility that I created. I have a fraction of blood in the people I wiped out when I arrived in North America, and it haunts me. My grandfather was a dark-skinned hook-nosed high school principal, 50% Cherokee. My own father, a lawyer, is a hook-nosed half breed who wanted to be a forest ranger but who was encouraged to be be big time corporate guy. When my Scottish clan came over here, we had been doing the legibility shit for about 6 centuries. We were never big deals in Scotland, but were major land lords. The King who translated the Bible into English considered one of my ancestors like a father and trusted adviser, because he gave him measured advice on legibility, its limits and its advantages. That clan moved its way to Southern Illinois, where they were Governors and land owners and men who spread the King's matrix. They arrived to the safe shores of Lake Michigan, where they had peaceful and productive lives.
But to stay out of jail and to maintain autonomy, you have to manage the matrix of legibility, and it changes every fucking day. Hesiod said #1 is maintaining autonomy. How did I get my job on the boat? The plant manager, the one everyone hated, called up the skipper and said I was good to go. The working class doesn't like guys like me. I'll figure my shit out, but as I do it, it ain't nonsense. It ain't no problem of language or the problem of the other or the problem of hermeneutics. It's the question of competition and survival against stupid ass one-eyed Filipinos who fucked with my perfection of fish flow. The superstar forklift drivers don't get this. The forklift drivers don't know how cold it gets in winter without heat. The superstar forklift drivers don't know the isolation of cold Alaska in winter without company housing. Everyone likes the superstar forklift drivers. I'm a shit forklift driver.
Finally, I didn't write my phenomenology to bust anyone's hustle. A pissing match is a waste of time. I still have a cabin to build in Alaska. I still have a shit load of islands I will sea kayak in both Alaska and Chile. I want to explore new lands and want my neighbors to do well and prosper. But if I write shit, it's not nonsense. It's my fucking my fucking day and my fucking life. I have been to the desert and I have seen the fucking swells and my body has ached and THEN I had to pitch all the fish, ice them, then re-bait, and then set, all over again MANUALLY, no fucking autobaiter. I made $2,900 fishing in Alaska, about $10,000 on the front dock. I nearly destroyed my hands. Snap on fishing with a rock fish injury--It wasn't Chris's fault, but it fucked up my right hand--is hell. Fucking hell. No philosophy to express this. I still have that spine in my hand and I still remember how I felt at 12 a.m. with a cigarette in my mouth and wanting to sleep. If I'm full of nonsense YOU'RE FULL OF SHIT.
I read something really important the other day, a sort of philosopher's creed (and all humans should be philosophers but that's another point). Do we need to show some "progress" for the exercise to be meaningful? Wittgenstein likened the philosophers activities to itching a scratch - must we show progress for it to be meaningful?
ReplyDeleteI wrote that first part from my memory but I confirmed that he did indeed make such a metaphor. And even further, he said that the itch might continue for some time before the cure is discovered. May we all be blessed with stalled progress for if we get things right the first time we might never know it.
I see the rowers rowing at 6:30 in the morning in the dark as I ride my bike to the early run. They arise early to train. They are healthier each time they train. But they are rowing and I am running. They are in the water and I am on the land. Today I ran around a gold course twice. The golf looked fun but I thought to myself "I don't have the patience." I don't know what the golfer was thinking, but why was some fella running around he gold course when no one was chasing him?
ReplyDeleteThey just built a Snarf's here.
Last night I had the speed back, maximin would have been proud. Just one fast lap but I saw the girl in the sports bra twice - she and I and only about 6 more people were in the park. Everyone else was "partying" or watching Monday night football. Anyway I ran that lap really fast and felt big and strong and unstoppable. And I sprinted back crossing the bridge over the freeway and making the green light on the other side and climbing powderhill climb at a furious pace, in my head the commentator describing the "younger American's effort" and feeling so strong that I would be able to crush a car if I felt like it.
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