What Rips, Bangs, and Burns?

Sometimes I feel like money dwindling in my bank account is like some sort of a cancer, some abnormality draining cell counts, sucking, withering. Life force is bolstered by the cash stuff. 

Money feels like this burning acid that eats through my wallet and I’d like to think of it more like a soothing balm, something sticky, minty fresh that accumulates as a pungent whiff. I wonder if there's a simple approach to how one views money, eh? If it does feel like an acid, yes, it will eat away, but if one looks upon it as some sort of nice ointment, well there you go, it releases a sort of green endorphin that triggers the brain to make actions that result in sudden pulses of cash stuff. There are so many programs out there that teach you how to get rich, but the thought of sitting down and turning off thought in a sort of sickly gleeful worship of cash flow makes money all the more feel like a heap of dried, chunky vomit in one's pocket. There seems to be something skewed in these programs, because the practitioners are getting rich teaching people to be rich. What is the real cultural value? Maybe that's what turns me off, culture and substance have been flattened with cliches and over charged motivation. What goes up must come down, there's a cliche for you I know, but that's gravity. And that's what I've experienced from any Zig Ziglar dabble I've had in the past. You're pumped in the morning, by the end of the afternoon, a bitterness starts to rain down on your head.

I've begun reading this book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman and it examines the self help industry, and the often times reverse effects. For instance, statistically people who buy a self help book buy another one within 7 months. Did that first one even work? But the thing that resonates with me is the idea of embracing uncertainty, bathing in insecurity as a way to uncover actual growth as a human being. Stare your flaws and shortcomings in the face as a way to find a way around those obstacles. Learn from them. Sap power from anxiety by letting it rip through as obscene jitters. There's a tyranny in the self help world of THINK POSITIVE THINK POSITIVE THINK POSITIVE and if you don't do that constantly then you're a grump destining yourself for failure. But the world has harsh fluctuations, and I wonder how we can solve problems if we don't study them, dive into the darkest shit and to come back with scars and a thicker skin.

I'm excited by articles like this - Why Iceland Should be in the News but Is Not - where despite declaring bankruptcy are finding solid progress by shunning international banking and reforming their constitution through an all inclusive participatory democracy, making use of that there internet to engage input. Fascinating! That 1) the internet can be used for constructive discussion in politics instead of just pumping pundit badgering and goading. 2) Since money is made up to begin with, money doesn't stem as an actual resource from the Earth, we have a lot of freedom in terms of reconstructing economies. So perhaps this can save me time in considering whether I should think of cash as an acid or a soothing balm and focus on creating systems of thought. The exchange. That's what it boils down to. A fair and active system of exchange. Like positive thinking putting up a blinder to actual solutions to problems, thinking about money tapes gauze to your eyes and slices paper cuts and takes your time away from actually doing interesting things that might result in a fee for your service.

My blood work came back recently from my first doctors visit in years. I have high cholesterol and high triglycerides. I've started to eat oatmeal for breakfast and dessert almost every day until it’s all good. I remember my triglycerides riding “sky high” back when I was 16 and was on Accutane for bad acne. They had to take me off the medicine pretty soon into treatment due to how it was affecting my triglycerides. I didn't really care what triglycerides were back then, but now I surf articles and animations about their function. I've seen a variety of infomercials for class action lawsuits for other afflictions in Accutane users, things like inflammatory bowel disease. Not yet. 

But, I am well, for I am not the gentleman I saw right after his bike t-boned a car. The remainder of my ride was cautious. Like a granny spinning wheels enough to stay upright. Eyes open. Don’t touch me. I’ll break. Survival of the fittest machine.

There were two girls who stopped with me at the site of the crash. One had an accent. Her boyfriend, she says, doesn't wear a helmet. As we looked on the puddle of blood left by the fallen biker. A helmet-less force. Two other gentlemen stopped. We all talked while the fallen was loaded onto an ambulance, which to his luck, happened to be cruising by. The hitter looked distraught but stoic. He paced. Waiting for the police. The other bikers and I continued to chat. It was the most social I've felt in a long time. At the scene of accidental vehicular brutality.

A second bike accident occurred three days later. Well, Vespa accident. I rounded the corner from George St., about to pull onto Elston but I saw this Vespa guy coming so I stopped. Then as he was passing through the intersection a white beater of a car made a left turn and the Vespa guy t-boned the front, and he flipped up and over the hood somersault style and smacked his forehead on the pavement. There must have a delay of pain, nerve needles of the sharper kind, because he stood, then his legs buckled and he bowed to the ground, pressing his head down into his hands. He asked “am I bleeding?” I said no. He wasn't. A bunch of people were already to his aide. A woman who was walking her daughter to school helped him down the ground. A guy got out of his car to help call 9-1-1 but the operator of a storefront drape shop I think it was, was already on it. On it before I could even pull my leg off my bike and approach the fallen. Another biker in a fluorescent yellow spandex shirt caught up to the scene and mentioned to me that the Vespa guy was driving like an asshole, weaving in and out of cars. Vespa guy also didn’t wear a helmet. I later did some testing of physics with my own helmet, simulating impact points and noticed both riders, had they been wearing a helmet, would have protected their heads from immediate concrete smackery.

I stuck around for a few minutes but the guy was well tended to, one was asking him questions to test his alertness. “What’s your name?” Simon. “How old are you?” 33. “Where do you work?” Verizon. (I changed some details as not to call out clues to his identity). He was conversing, but out of it. A concussion most likely. The lady with the daughter kept snapping her fingers to keep him from nodding off because he wanted to close his eyes.

Helmets. I will sing their praises. I will champion their cause. Protect the damn noggin my fellow bikers.

So cycling back (pun intended) to how I started this post, in talking money worries, and working my way up to bike accidents, I'm thinking heavy on what really, actually rips, bangs and burns us people. And money just seems to be a pathetic weapon yet we fear it more than any object. 

Gross Harris

I heard a rattling outside my apartment's front window and saw a shirtless African American man pushing a shopping cart of collected cans. His gait and voice reminded me of a man I met a couple of years ago named Harris. His pace was brisk. Before I could think about saying hello and seeing if it was indeed Harris, he was pretty far down the street.

For a month I worked a door-to-door sales job selling Quill office supplies. I had resigned my photo op management job, attempted to make a run at writing fiction full-time, learned it was a tough "market" to sustain, shared a sad laugh at the illusory joke on over-excited artists the hard way and was back to working a regular job. My savings had depleted, new bills were coming, and it was the first somewhat legitimate job I found on any online jobs posting that wasn't an obvious scam.  I went in for the interview, the post was well written, something about "one man wolf pack" intrigued me and I thought it would be for some fancy marketing job with a cubicle, maybe a small office. In the interview I spent a lot of time rationalizing why I'd leave a management job during the recession. But they called me back for a second interview which brought me out into the streets, doing door-to-door. The guy that took me out for the "in-field" segment of the interview process was nice, level-headed, and made some nice sales and that made me confident in the business model. They brought me in for a re-cap interview and told me I was likable and offered me the job. I learned that I have a propensity toward taking compliments to heart and head when desperate. 

Desperation and capitalistic fairy tales. 

I started in on training the next day and went through morning "atmosphere." An hour and half each and every morning of self-help-esque inspiration in oratory form from the "leaders." Promising young college grads eager to make their mark on business, and the energy was actually infectious, as I imagine cults to be. I listened to their promises of soon running my own office! Even though that kind of responsibility was exactly what faded my spark for the photo job. Priorities do change, however, when you start to think of money as though each bill denomination is a different vitamin for the spirit. And no one would admit that we were door-to-door salesmen. We were consultants! I'd go out into the field, jacked, ready to get rich quick off of hocking office supplies.

The territory I was trained in was Portage Park. There would be stretches of storefronts all in Polish lettering, and with the late winter afternoon light, I'd feel as though I was returning from Europe each evening. It had a jet-lag like quality. I was always tired and losing weight. I was too fatigued at night to realize I didn't like it and should be searching for other jobs.

After I burned through that territory, making some modest sales and making a lawyer furious with me after miscalculating a sales discount on the calculator of my flip phone, I was on to my next territory. Beyond Garfield Park. The West Side of Chicago. 

I didn't do much selling there as I didn't come across that many businesses. Pockets of it were a post industrial wasteland. Boarded up factories. And not to sound racist, but most businesses were chicken shacks or barber shops. These were on the no-no list for Quill business accounts. But I was fascinated. I took the opportunity to wander a part of town I otherwise would never have reason to wander. Run down housing units. People peeing in the street multiple times a day. High speed car chases. I was asked by many if I was selling dope.  "Nope," I'd reply. Lone white guy dressed in a suit and pea coat. I stopped in the Public Library to use the bathroom. It looked more like a homeless shelter. Sleeping faces down into the tables. The water fountain tasted like it was urine infused. When I would come across an industrial plant that was still in service, and after being buzzed in through several barriers of security, I'd be lectured by a white male about how I, as another white male, shouldn't be walking around these parts of town by myself.

A hole had begun to bore itself in the bottom of my dress shoe. This was a concern because there was a lot of broken glass on the side walks. The liquor stores had bullet proof glass separating the counter from the populace. Lawn chairs were set up out front. Men were drinking and teasing one another. They paid me no mind. They gave me no trouble. There was an underground mall with hundreds of little booths where clothes, shoes, electronics were sold by individual merchants and it seemed an endless expanse, like a subterranean lake of small commerce on a bed of graffiti-ed tiles.

I walked by a residential stretch. It was starting to get hot out, spring had rounded out the end of winter. Out front of a house that looked like a rotted mesh of oak there was a shirtless man leaning up against his fence. His pockmarked chest had an asymmetrical proportioning of breast and body fat. A bit toothless. We made eye contact. I said "hello, how are you?" He said he'd be better if he had some damn food. I felt bad. I had been packing my lunches but had already ate it that day. I wanted to give him something. I only had credit cards in my wallet. But I decided to shoot the breeze with him. We talked for a few minutes. He was hard to understand, but smiled and laughed a lot. Despite his initial well deserved grumbling about food, he was jolly. His name was Harris. When I decided I should get back on my "sales route" he shook my hand. His hand was sweaty, sticky and greasy. After I rounded the block, out of his view I wiped off the post-shake residue on my panted leg. But I felt bad about it. Really, really bad about. It was sort of heart breaking, in the way of realizing maybe I don't have the best intentions as a person, that I'm already infected with selfishness and germs should be the least of my worries. Here was Harris, a genuinely nice guy, far down on his luck in life. And my first reaction, when out of sight, was that he was a little gross. 

I kept my eye out for him the next day when I passed by his dilapidated home. He wasn't out front. I thought about knocking on his front door to see if he wanted to hang out. But I was scared, because I assumed the inside of his home was probably a little gross.

He became a character in my daydreams. Gross Harris, and in these fantasies he was a good friend of mine. Whereas when imagination is applied to conceptions of reality, weird textures are all the more vivid and repel with gusto, such nasty sensations can be muted in the daydream for daydream's sake. And in these daydreams I would try crack without consequence and Gross Harris would laugh at my naivety.

There was a fenced in patch of vegetation by the highway. It looked like a little forest of dead bamboo shoots. I felt the urge to hop the fence, build a fort, and declare myself King. Or better yet, tell Harris about it. Let him take it up and farm the hell out of it. And Harris could be King. He'd be a hell of a King.