The" Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Employment " Entry
Date: 1.12.04
Climate: Nice but only for about thirty minute intervals
Eating: nothing
Drinking: Water
Feeling: Marx
Listening to: That Beach Boys Song, God Only Knows What I'd Be Without You, changed up with the Pharcyde's Passing Me By. I don't know what it is about these two tunes and me lately...
Watching: Enemy of the State
Reading: I finished Chinese Takeout in one night, if that says anything
Today I walked for five hours around literally, literally, one of the worst neighborhoods I have ever been in.
Men yelled profane, sexually explicit comments and gestured wildly. Ew.
The houses were boarded up, wood, fence, gate, bars, and yet, people lived there. These were homes wher the lights are always off, and you had to knock twice, three times, to get a head out of a window even acknowleding you were there.
I felt scared and yet upset that this world was so foreign to me; poverty, I guess.
I was trying to get Union 880 members to register to vote. It costs nothing. But its amazing what people just won't do.
It was so cold. And it felt so desolate. Life doesn't move there, and when it does its slow, sharky, and uncertain.
I have no idea where else this job search will lead me. I did meet a nice guy named Sergio who was half Spanish/half Russian. He discussed Philosophy with me; he went to school for Film at Columbia. He was incredibly intelligent; its been awhile since I had discussed dialectic materialism on a real level. I really truly enjoyed it. I asked questions and learned so much, but what the whole day really proved was just how many of "us" there are out there, doing jobs like these, trying to find jobs where maybe a fourth of our actual intellect will be used or applied.
And the members of the union were what I had thought them to be, which saddened me more. Just people, trying to make a living, trying to make a better wage, with kids, bills, and fear; it was clear with how they secured their residence that they had seen maybe too much. But it wasn't pity that I felt, just frustration of their inability to motivate themselves to register to vote: to actually follow through with where their union member dollars go. They just, they wouldn't. Its the typical American voter or non voter in some ways. They dont' see immediate results and trust levels in politics for non politicos are low.
It was aggrivating, and I was even more aggrivated with my attitudes and in some ways, realizations of what life on the less known for its stellar coffee shops and art museum and restaurant side is all about.
I hate that some things are so predictable.
I hate that so many things are so unchangable.
The end of the day brought more discussion about philosophy, and Sergio said "you're a reformist. To this socialist party that I was a part of for a while, (and its really interesting the insults they come up with), I was a reformist. To that socialist party, it was revolutionaries that mattered."
The petit bourgeous that is now really middle management has been the largest gatekeeper that I have encountered in getting that toe hold in the workers party. And aren't I supposed to be the proletariate which over throws the bourgeous and so on and so forth?
Yet I am not a revolutionary nor an anarchist. I am that luke warm reformist and I hate it.
The people I saw today don't even necessarily know they want a revolutionary, its just the only thing that will make the changes they need.
I hate how preachy I sound, but it was quite a heady day.
Date: 1.12.04
Climate: Nice but only for about thirty minute intervals
Eating: nothing
Drinking: Water
Feeling: Marx
Listening to: That Beach Boys Song, God Only Knows What I'd Be Without You, changed up with the Pharcyde's Passing Me By. I don't know what it is about these two tunes and me lately...
Watching: Enemy of the State
Reading: I finished Chinese Takeout in one night, if that says anything
Today I walked for five hours around literally, literally, one of the worst neighborhoods I have ever been in.
Men yelled profane, sexually explicit comments and gestured wildly. Ew.
The houses were boarded up, wood, fence, gate, bars, and yet, people lived there. These were homes wher the lights are always off, and you had to knock twice, three times, to get a head out of a window even acknowleding you were there.
I felt scared and yet upset that this world was so foreign to me; poverty, I guess.
I was trying to get Union 880 members to register to vote. It costs nothing. But its amazing what people just won't do.
It was so cold. And it felt so desolate. Life doesn't move there, and when it does its slow, sharky, and uncertain.
I have no idea where else this job search will lead me. I did meet a nice guy named Sergio who was half Spanish/half Russian. He discussed Philosophy with me; he went to school for Film at Columbia. He was incredibly intelligent; its been awhile since I had discussed dialectic materialism on a real level. I really truly enjoyed it. I asked questions and learned so much, but what the whole day really proved was just how many of "us" there are out there, doing jobs like these, trying to find jobs where maybe a fourth of our actual intellect will be used or applied.
And the members of the union were what I had thought them to be, which saddened me more. Just people, trying to make a living, trying to make a better wage, with kids, bills, and fear; it was clear with how they secured their residence that they had seen maybe too much. But it wasn't pity that I felt, just frustration of their inability to motivate themselves to register to vote: to actually follow through with where their union member dollars go. They just, they wouldn't. Its the typical American voter or non voter in some ways. They dont' see immediate results and trust levels in politics for non politicos are low.
It was aggrivating, and I was even more aggrivated with my attitudes and in some ways, realizations of what life on the less known for its stellar coffee shops and art museum and restaurant side is all about.
I hate that some things are so predictable.
I hate that so many things are so unchangable.
The end of the day brought more discussion about philosophy, and Sergio said "you're a reformist. To this socialist party that I was a part of for a while, (and its really interesting the insults they come up with), I was a reformist. To that socialist party, it was revolutionaries that mattered."
The petit bourgeous that is now really middle management has been the largest gatekeeper that I have encountered in getting that toe hold in the workers party. And aren't I supposed to be the proletariate which over throws the bourgeous and so on and so forth?
Yet I am not a revolutionary nor an anarchist. I am that luke warm reformist and I hate it.
The people I saw today don't even necessarily know they want a revolutionary, its just the only thing that will make the changes they need.
I hate how preachy I sound, but it was quite a heady day.