Radio Dada

Never before has someone been more unconvertable in every way; and forever, that’s how I’ll stay. —Live your values and people will follow you. Speak values, but in practice fail, deny and defend failure, and persist in living some other values, and I personally will ragequit. Y’all do what you like. If that capitalist Kool-aid comes out though, I’ll be bookin’ it to anywhere but here. Frak that.

People are straight-up exhausting.

If you find somebody to love in this world, you better hang on tooth and nail — but I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.

Atmospheres of invalidation, interrogation about details, hyper-controlling conversations, excessive questioning, monologuing with a lot of ‘you-statements,’ trying to explain basic concepts of ‘we don’t know how each other thinks/feels’ — a rank slice of crazy-making. It’s a trap. It infests, and festers. People wonder why sensitive, thoughtful people need significant time alone. This is why. Not all people are like this, but the ones that are tend to be relentless with this crap. Like they committed early on to the Path of Bullshit and are passionate now about only one thing: spreading their own personal BS Gospel as far and wide as possible. Please, no more. I want no part of this Church of You. I want my time back. I want my trust and respect back. Please, is there someone on this island who is here for deep thinking, creativity, rest, and processing a whole frickin’ lot? I want sanctuary without being obliged to swallow someone else’s crap or serve others’ needs at the expense of my own. How is it so hard to have boundaries here? Or do I just get hit with the enmeshment web first because it’s familiar and likely to me strung up where newbies with eyes not adjusted to the dark will walk into it? I like spiders. It’s humans I take issue with. Where are the ones worth spending time with? Or where is there a van I can move into and hole up in a mess of blankets and softness while I recuperate and save up and get my bearings. Need privacy. Need safety. Need some sanity. The crazy is too much. It’s infectious.

Listening was never an option.

Almighty dollar. Must be funny in a rich man’s world. If I were a rich man… it gives options, but illusions aplenty, and carries so many costs. It can cost a love, a soul, a life, health, so much wasted time. Time isn’t money; you can’t buy back time, and time alone isn’t for sale, and some people’s time is unavailable at any price. The measurement of time, like the measurement of relative value, are human creations, and risky reductive ones. Sin starts with treating people as things. Money greases the rails to that end. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, & so on. All this obsession with urgency, speed, and hustle, has left us mired in busywork and paralysed while also disconnected and unreachable when it matters. ‘Work’ is a filthy, four-letter word to me because our concept of it, like our concept of allowable humanity and value of human life, has shrunk to exclude huge swaths of people and legitimate labour and effort. If someone labours hard to accomplish something, but doesn’t get a paycheck, did it happen? Yes, it did. Money is not evidence of work, or hard work, or worthy work. Money isn’t even a scorekeeper of who is the best at work. It’s a measure of how good someone is at getting and hoarding money. Which should not be as admirable a trait or aspiration. Money is evidence of persuading other people to give one money. It’s a little charm, popularity points, how much one can get for one’s efforts — from people who have money. Neurotypical as fuck. It’s easier to not care what people think if you have enough money one doesn’t have to sell anyone on oneself anymore, and one can pay to, say, buy an island, or leave the planet altogether. And it’s easier to get money if one doesn’t care how other people are impacted by one’s pursuit of wealth. Easier still if one’s ideals are fluid, and sacrificed for expediency in getting paid. Or if money is seen as life-support, and it’s a survival thing, then all bets are off, and this is a war with everyone else. Philanthropy is better than nothing, but it’s voluntary, and not a cure. It also involves a lot of barriers to actual aid, in that the neediest will have the least time and resources and support and attention necessary to access charity. The neediest are the most vulnerable to exploitation, violence, and being tricked into bad situations for ‘free money’ or food or anything else. Just as people are suspicious of freeloaders ‘ripping off’ benefits and charities for pittance and crumbs, the truly needy are justifiably afraid of being trapped and tricked and drained of what little dignity and safety and freedom they have for a promise of aid that is rarely worth it, if it ever comes, and requires so much sacrifice to hang on to. There are no easy answers, but so far the success rate is so egregiously abysmal that if this were run like a business, with the goal of helping people, it would be a badly failed one, and a new system would have to be redesigned in order for anyone to invest any time or money or effort in it. People go into social work to serve the needy and more often wind up serving the systems that keep people needy and barred from what is needed to survive. Money foils altruistic dreams. Somewhere in the process will be someone with a lot of power who serves money. Like taffy in clockwork, like a poisoning cook, everything intended for good will be spoiled by one charming person. Especially if they have lied to themselves so long they are convinced they are doing what they do for the greater good, which will somehow trickle down from impenetrable self-justified grips on alllllll that money. Rant over, here’s a cookie! That’ll be $17.99.

Radically accept that some things can’t be done. Some things can’t be changed. So: adapt or move on. My leaps into faith are getting weaker. My courage is eroding. My hope is long gone. My uncertainty I’ve been using in place of hope (I don’t know everything) is not cutting the mustard either. Apanthropy is the desire to be away from other people and to be left alone. ‘Tis a consummation, devoutly to be wished. And a high-priced luxury. Despite the high cost of living it’s amazing how popular it remains. Life finds a way? Maybe. Does it really have to be this hard? This is not the way to bring out the best in people. Fear and scarcity, control and terror don’t grow creativity and love and motivation. Mostly they kill it. People improve with external love and support. What they improve into can’t necessarily be predicted, made to order, controlled. What I could be, if I was enough and not too much, if my needs were met, no one can tell. But it can’t be about that. It has to be a leap into faith, that faith whose most basic article is, ‘this is not all there is.’ It will take wanting to see what grows, for better or worse, given the right encouragement. It won’t be easy for anyone. If it’s easy, there’s a chance it’s not, but whatever’s going wrong isn’t obvious yet. Easy solutions can bring on massive disasters, financial collapse, health crises, wealth inequality, polarised us versus them thinking, compulsions, addictions, infrastructure disasters, and violent revolts. But the path of most resistance is sometimes a Swamp of Sadness into which we sink, never to return.

I hate it when people think calling a space ‘safe’ will make me feel safe. Like saying ‘I love you’ doesn’t make me feel loved if I don’t already feel that way. And saying ‘you can trust me’ doesn’t engender trust. Telling me to ‘calm down’ might cause me to stop expressing how I feel, but it doesn’t change how I feel. Sometimes nothing in the world is more scary than ‘don’t be afraid.’ If other people have discomfort about my emotions and how I express them; they can take a time-out to deal with their own. Understanding, of course, that if I’m upset with someone’s behavior, the feelings don’t magically vanish or resolve themselves when that person is out of sight. They may idle, but unless they are seen and acknowledged without shame or judgment, they’ll still be there. Hurts untended don’t go away. I’m sensitive, and it’s one of my strengths. People like it when it benefits them, when I can be compassionate and sensitive to their needs. But I’m sensitive to my own, as well. Everything has a flip side. If you don’t want the responsibility of taking care not to walk all over someone’s feelings, or consider feelings you don’t understand as valid, then don’t make friends with sensitive people. Insensitive people are the majority, you’ve got plenty. If you want sensitive friends, you’ll need to reflect back that sensitivity. Don’t wanna? Leave ‘em alone, oh Lennie from ‘Of Mice and Men.’ If you can’t be gentle, don’t grab for gentle souls. If you’re clumsy, admire what’s delicate from a distance. Or deal with the consequences of breaking what you admired so ardently. Seriously, with the grabby-hands and poorly-chosen-words and zero-impulse-control and addiction to being too busy to be held accountable. I’ve had it. Ignoring uncomfortable things sometimes makes whole entire people and relationships go away. Unsolicited advice is a great way to shut down my trust and desire to connect and share with you. I’m only interested in artists and survivors, these days — those who have known great beauty and great pain. But even among such as these, it’s too rare to find a peaceful balance of connection yet individuation. To be stronger together, and yet be whole and entire separate people. I have to resist scarcity-mentality, fear-based and money-hungry fixations to have a home safe from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. It never ends. Counting beans won’t save us. It won’t invite love. It will destroy peace and stability. We need time to grow, to thrive, to heal, to build trust and peace. There is time here, but where does it go? People here seem insubstantial as ghosts, haunted by lives and choices of their own making. Always running away, ghosts in the forests. Emptied, permanently, and emptying me. I need to be filled, not with poison, no, not with sex or money, not with someone else’s shit. I need to be filled with peace. Safety. Rest. Things money can rent the temporary illusion of, a mirage too soon to evaporate and leave holes hungrier than before aching to be safe enough to rest. The one who sleeps beside the water hole does not dream of thirst.

Yup. What.

C’est la c’est.