Traffic

So I wanted to write about a lot of things this week, mostly because I have ADD, and partly because my new job has me sitting by a window. But to begin with a digression may ultimately be where I want to go. Initially I thought of writing about the absurdity of the human condition. Albert Camus wrote, “The absurd is lucid reason that sees its limits.” I’m born, I die, but I’m hardly lucid or reasonable, and mostly absurd. I thought of why I feel so lost, and behind, and why I want to leave to places I’ve never been, and then I thought, I’m a god damn American, the notion of a frontier is in my blood. That’s when the notion of a frontierless America came to me. The frustration of a nation with no place to go, that was told it had a place to go. Somehow lost in a much larger culture that, for good, bad or indifferent reasons doesn’t see the world the way I do. I felt though, that maybe from my own naivety, or maybe the world had indeed changed, that it had not always been this way. Somehow we’ve conquered much of what we, as Americans, and our progenitors, set out to conquer, and now all we have is to look at one another. Clumsy pioneers without a frontier. Stuck in traffic, smarter than our boss, waiting in line, how are there people still writing checks?, someone took my parking spot, is Excel really this complicated…and all this frustration with the world came pouring out of me, and I realized that somehow compassion had gotten away from me. There was a time when people discussed ideas, found new ways of doing things, and weren’t bitter. Accepted that others had a different view point not because they were ignorant or misguided, they just happened to have a different way of looking at the world, and it wasn’t wrong. I don’t know if this time actually existed for everyone, but it at some point in my life it existed for me, and I lost it. Personally, I blame it on the traffic, that shit is wrong frontier or not. So in the end digress if you’re feeling what I’m feeling and have some compassion, because if we don’t have love, then all we got is traffic, and body scans.

This is how I feel right now…Queen/David Bowie – Under Pressure…Listen to it, they said it better than I could, and most of it is gibberish…

It's the terror of knowing
What the world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming 'Let me out'
Pray tomorrow - gets me higher
Pressure on people - people on streets
Day day de mm hm
Da da da ba ba
O.k.
Chippin' around - kick my brains around the floor
These are the days it never rains but it pours
Ee do ba be
Ee da ba ba ba
Um bo bo
Be lap
People on streets - ee da de da de
People on streets - ee da de da de da de da
It's the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming 'Let me out'
Pray tomorrow - gets me higher high high
Pressure on people - people on streets
Turned away from it all like a blind man
Sat on a fence but it don't work
Keep coming up with love
but it's so slashed and torn
Why - why - why ?
Love love love love love
Insanity laughs under pressure we're cracking
Can't we give ourselves one more chance
Why can't we give love that one more chance
Why can't we give love give love give love give love
give love give love give love give love give love
'Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And loves dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves