To The Burgeoning College Graduate

I'm speaking from experience here; remember that, maybe at some point of reading this, that small voice in the back of your head will say "who the fuck does this guy think he is". Or maybe because you are a recent college grad, or about to be, you will suffer from the delusion that you are unique and while what you are reading may hold true for the writer, you are far to well educated, supported to befall the same fate. The white middle class is exactly the same as everyone else in the secret unspoken belief ( or spoken belief, if you are a college grad) that deep down inside they are different from everyone else, unique. This disclamer out of the way let me share with you the dilema I find myself in.And I submit that this is what the real, no-shit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out.

I am educated in the Humanities,a kind of new age English major that championed the nobilities of the Human Spirit. Now Im graduated and I can't stomach as much as I could. That is to say as has been said before " one of the great paradoxes of education is that we begin to become critical of the system in which we are being eduacated." I want to hold true to my values believing that the point of it all is being of maximum service to _ _ _ and my fellow man but I have to do it on my terms.
Here is what I find myself looking down the barrel of: getting a job at a meager salery in a government or corporation that is already established. I would rise through the company slowly pay my dues, maybe go to UW nightschool for a masters or more in whatever field I am pursuing. I'd get healthcare, a good salery friends, a title that I could repeat to people when they asked me what it is that "I do" and a home and a car etc etc etc.

The trade off is simply too great, Adults, no matter how well educated they tell you they are insist on repeating highschool antics. There are popular people, dorks under achievers and the lot, all of whom will be talked about by the workers in whatever corporation it is that I find myself in. Here we see what it is that coined the term "office politics". Thats code for: "pandering to human insecurities". I'm not above pandering and schuking an jiving but I wanna do it for something I built.



Do I go for the secure route, most of the reasons for which boil down to fear, no matter how rational or sane it sounds if you say it out loud. Its no measure of sanity to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. I see this in other writers and youth, this contempt for those who couldnt go it alone, who couldnt carve something out that allows them to lead with their strengths, to utilize who it is they are rather than what they are told to be or what they show aptitude in. As I will be in Dutch Harbour and the berring sea fall and possibly winter people ask me " arent you scared, the waves the nature of the work?" Not to be even more grandiose than I have displayed already but. You got to be willing to die to fish in Alaska commercially but there is something much more terrifying than drowning in the cold, alone: Living the career life, thinking we have control over our lives. Whats more terifying than dieing is thinking a career or the security it brings could possibly secure what goes on in my head. were all getting ready to die, to go out, some of us Know this others will wake up much closer to the end than the begining and realize that the only thing in between them and the shrieking nothingness is... the security of their shit. I'm ranting now.

Point being some folks need to be given a job, others are capable of ceating one for themselves.., if they can differ the feeling of security on both the superficial and esthetic level but also the deeper, "whats the point" level. Ille carve my piece out, those given can have their shit taken as they are seeing in this economic crisis. which sheds light on one of my favorite things Both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer.

People go to scool for freedome not security, at some point Fear got them twisted between the two.The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

There's a paradox in the United states of, the people who get really powerful jobs tend to go to the top schools. Often times in these schools they study the liberal arts, philosophy,Humanities etc. and its all very much about the nobility of the human spirit and broadening the mind and from here you go to a specialized school to learn how to sue people or to figure out how to get people to buy a certain type of SUV. Now there are things (among the top, my paycheck) that I don't like about my JOB but I love that I get to use everything iv'e ever learned or think about...daily. This goes a long way considering that sometimes its lonely or unsuccessful work and I remember this when I start to complain: I know that in America there is a very specific class , the upper and middle class, who had parents that could afford to send them to very good schools and received excellent education and are working in jobs that are extremely financially rewarding but have nothing to do with what they were persuasively taught was important and worth while. I never thought of it in those terms but it is a paradox.
I doubt that a Highschool grad who is working in a factory wakes up and says "well at least I dont have all this Humanistic learning I'm not using". Furthermore, I doubt that he's any more nourished inside by his job than that ivy league guy who wrights SUV add campaigns. What you and I are is a class of graduates who can be much more articulate about what it is we are feeling uneasy about. I think if there is something that characterizes this generation of educated graduates, its not that we have come up with any new problems or solutions to them,rather that we are endlessly verbal about the level of disease we feel concerning our career paths. Maybe that is a start.

LaMont and me, we are alot alike...

KEEP AN EYE OPEN FOR WAGNERS NEXT SHOW (Lamont didnt get it but Mike knew what Lyle was talking about)


‘You burn to have your photograph in a magazine.’ ‘I’m afraid so.’ … ‘You feel these men with their photographs in magazines care deeply about having their photographs in magazines. Derive immense meaning.’ ‘I do. They must. I would. Else why would I burn like this to feel as they feel?’ ‘The meaning they feel, you mean. From the fame.’ ‘Lyle, don’t they?’ … ‘Perhaps the first time: enjoyment. After that, do you trust me, trust me: they do not feel what you burn for. After the first surge, they care only that their photographs seem awkward or unflattering, or untrue, or that their privacy, this thing you burn to escape, what they call their privacy is being violated. Something changes. After the first photograph has been in a magazine, the famous men do not enjoy their photographs in magazines so much as they fear that their photographs will cease to appear in magazines. They are trapped, just as you are.’ ‘Is this supposed to be good news? This is awful news.’ ‘LaMont, are you willing to listen to a Remark about what is true?’ ‘Okey-dokey.’ ‘The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.

LaMont Chu is an eleven year-old student at the Enfield Tennis Academy. Chu has dreams of going to the professional Show, and his bedroom door is "completely covered with magazines' action-shots of matches" (757).GT criticizes Chu because he ceases "'to seem to give total effort of self since you began with the clipping pictures of great professional figures for your adhesive tape and walls'" .

LaMont Chu recognizes that his obsession with the Show is hurting his playing; he states that "he wants to get in the Show so bad it feels like it's eating him alive" (388). In a discussion with Lyle, Chu says that he "won't take risks in tournament matches even when risks are OK or even called for, because he finds he's too scared of losing and hurting his chances for the Show and hype and fame" . To this, Lyle notes that "'After the first photograph has been in a magazine, the famous men do not enjoy their photographs in magazines so much as they fear that their photographs will cease to appear in magazines. They are trapped, just as you are" (389). When Chu acknowledges that he is trapped, Lyle states that he "might consider how escape from a cage must surely require, foremost, awareness of the fact of the cage", which Chu does not fully understand.

I find myself alone, very much so, able to love and work and participate with others but ultimately alone on what has become a reckless pursuit of the
authentic or some fundemental truth on which to hang my hat; something on which to rest the entirety of my life, my ego, and my sense of self. Sitting
alone in the airport on my way to D.C. so I could participate in some Bullshit (with a capitol B) I was reading Melville, the two men next to me were Punjabi and wore the trademark turban of the Siek. They bantered back and forth in a foreighn tounge and then one dissapeared and returned with two steaming cups Seattles BEST coffee, thats bullshit because that coffee is awful. The seated man recieves the coffee, takes a sip, makes a face and the banter continues in a distinctly different tone.

I interupt, I say " its a lie you know?" they both look at me waiting for me to finish " its not really seattles best coffee" the conclusion of my sentence washed the look of puzzlement off of their faces replacing it with a huge smile. Just then Alaska Airlines crackled over the PA "now baording this bullshit flight to DC" we all pause as if recieveing the word of god, eyes cast upwards and then return to the conversation. The older of the two sieks Stands up and as he does he says in an almost unintelligible accent " there is no room in this world for truth son". At that moment, I realized his smile was not for my "whit" in noticing the inequity of corporate namesakes but rather at the ignorant childlike conception I held of truth.

DC was a lot of BS. The nature of which I will name in no uncertain terms. If I had to name any inherent truth throughout the entirety of the trip that existed un-molested and pure, it was that moment in the airport. Maybe the best I can hope for is a life of kindness towards others with fleeting moments of truth...

The degree to which we participate in bullshit is dictated by both our
willingness and ability to do so and our awareness of it. That is to say, some
people are more aware of bullshit than other people, still again some people are acutely aware of bullshit and have a high tolerance for it, thus allowing them the opportunity to be an active participant in society. Myself, I am extremely aware of hypocrisy and half truths, perhaps because I am so full of both of these things, If my experiment thus far in life has taught me anything about bullshit it is that most people simply accept it for one reason or another, as the way things are, or they tell themselves the half truth that they will grow out of it, but really they will grow into it.

Woking class or Proffessional Route

Throughout the checkerboard that is my past I have left the requiem of
so much dirt in my wake, at the ripe age of twenty six I have had the privilege of living several lives I haven’t committed to any one thing while only showing promise in a few. I find myself resisting the urge to commit to something because I know the reason is bullshit. That reason being this:

When asked at a cocktail, dinner parties or academic conference what it is I do I want to deliver an impressive array of accomplishments that lets people know just how intelligent and unique I am. " I’m a lawyer commercial fisherman tattooed first grade teacher" I am a" cowboy, policeman astronaut doctor"... that’s bullshit, the accomplishments of a persons entire career can be traced back to the adolescent need to be able to deliver, in a sentence, their entire ego when asked the question " so what do you do?" and its bullshit, and as surely as I am right, and make no mistakes; I am right, I will pay the price for being right.

The fact of the matter is that if you don’t want to participate in the
bullshit your going to pay the price, and the price for mortgaging a bullshit
free life is a heavy one. You will remain among the bullshitless (a weeee
population), you will find that while others head up the same stream you are
swimming on an entirely aesthetic level it will appear as though the current they face is significantly less voracious. But ee cummings said it best when he wrote "it takes courage to grow up and become who you are supposed to be" I believe this and if one advances in the direction of his dreams he will meet success unfound in common hours.

Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent

In the neuter austerity of that terrain all phenomena were bequeathed a strange equality and no one thing nor fish nor boat nor net could forth claim to precedence. The very clarity of these articles belied their familiarity, for the eye predicates the whole on some feature or part and here was nothing more luminous than another and nothing more enshadowed and in the optical democracy of such landscapes all preference is made whimsical and a man and the sea become endowed with unguessed kinship.



This was a good day, No Bow lines got snapped, nothing went overboard, and The Captain bought us Ice cream. I was happy as a clam I assure you.






Coming Home, flying out of Dillingham on a tiny little plane. Had me slightly rattled but better than out in the bay bobbing around in what proved to be one of Bristol Bay's rougher summers. I'm sitting on the plane trying to think about what happened, wondering: did I like that, I think I liked that but Im not entirely Sure. The single engine Cesna fires up, I feel for the ten Grand in my pocket. Ya, I liked that. Not to be to grand but there is something very liberating about participating in something you have to be willing to die in in order to do.