"Dawson City Dreams"
Like
a sinner nailed to the cross of woe. the law of life has it that every man must
make his way in the world, like fortune-seekers up in the Klondike laying down
their stake with a pounding hammer through the hard permafrost. The blisters and
callousness you build not only fortify your self-respect, but strength of
character as the reluctant-- we all start out reluctant-- move heaps of rock to
get down at that little bit of gold at the bottom.
Wherever your heart's gold is, there you will find it.
For the record, not everyone is successful at this alchemy of transformation, and the task of ages will turn "men of lead" into gnarled, bitter stumps chewing on cigar butts and scowling around the fire like a wedge of rat-piss cheese. That's where most guys find themselves in the beginning, in the company of trolls and wondering if that's some kind of answer.
A youth sleds into town-- call him "Johnny half-breed"-- and he crunches into the "Dawson City" trading post with his dogs tied up out in the snow where they yawn with their lolling tongues. Out of this supply store, where Jack London may have very well have stepped foot, he stocks up on the necessities-- coffee, flour, sugar, meat, tobacco, if not whiskey to warm a sturdy heart through the howling winter of lean times where you scratch to get by. The currency up north is elemental and uncomplicated. . . . . and trades without much effort or confusion as its slammed down on the table and the owner bites the coin.
But move south to warmer climes, in a civilization of boundless luxury-- and Johnny goes rotten like meat dunked in syrup and left out in the sun, drawing flies. Life was made needlessly Byzantine by the illusions in which we lived like so much jelly, made so by the plastic/electronic/disposable leisure of modern society at the close of the millennium where you found yourself with too much comfort to be content, and too much free time to dwell on the impurity within as the system was putrefying from the inside out with the stink of death that could not reach for life.
Back then in what passed for that "intellectual climate", an idea was buzzing around like a hive of bees known as "The End of History. . . . ." which seemed mostly geared toward selling books and policy position papers. It had the very worst elements of religion and "Manifest Destiny" with the conceit that it was beyond such things (-- like a bone thrown to the P.C. crowd), swelling us up with an air of correctness and self-justifying inevitability that "our way" was best.
A cold day on the continental drift of joyless ideas which turned out to be a strange grafting of military/techno/ industrial might and something not so far from wizards with flowing white hair and Shakespearean accents (-- if not Alan Greenspan at the Fed) staring into boiling cauldrons with splayed fingers and pondering the eternities of Adam Smith and "The Wealth of Nations", the sum total wisdom of man all within their hands like a floating ball of light ceded to us like a gift of "American exceptionalism".
If enough influential people repeat an idea enough times, it can sound almost believable. And there I was, sidling up to "this great conversation in American letters" like a snifter peeking through a key-hole, wondering if I would ever be rich or gifted or brilliant enough to "join the dialogue" and transcend this world of inefficiency, friction, and grime that made me hurt so much like a warped half-man with an inflamed heart, serotonin imbalance, and a raging sex drive which could find no company. Somehow to find the answer, the one true cross with which I could bludgeon my enemies like a destroying angel swooping down with wings of white and eyes of fire in a symphony of cartoonish destruction-- like Donald Duck on a jihad.
You could say that I had issues with life "as is". . . . .
It began with learned helplessness and a fear to act.
Speaking broadly, bourgeoisie lifestyles have made us tame as caged cats. The fear that we may lose everything "in one fell swoop", that someone will pick up our cage and rattle it, or send it crashing to the ground as we yowl in fear, splattered with our premium cat food and soaked in our kiwi-flavored yuppie water from "Whole Foods" where otherwise well-spoken help leap to serve us.
The frontier is settled, the push for manifest destiny expended, and all that energy of "MOVEMENT" sloshes back from the West Coast, the Alaskan Klondike, over back to us like a splashing tidal wave of anxiety and "fast-money" jitters like a crowd watching a slick young guy in a sports-coat put all his chips on one number in a casino and holding its breath for an eternity as the feller laughed and tweaked the breasts of two cocktail waitresses like sin personified.
It is the magic of dynamic freedom and true prosperity that eludes the Western mind-- hounded by notions of respectability and mortification of your next door neighbor's opinion. We will put up with any insult "just to get through" as we grit our teeth and wave, looking to the "greener pasture" where history is reasonable and climbing upward, that we are sitting at the peak of all the striving and progress in the world.
But that faith gets shaky with "the cult of victimhood" in the air that is constantly thrust in our faces, an image of the crushing hammer of fate coming down as surely as a faulty mechanical apparatus-- and turning us into a torn pile of bloody pulp. Man, lizard, fly-- the gelid, nervous eyes that flick as it rubs its forelimbs together before oblivion comes with the Nazi jack-boot of overblown analogy that sells in the books, films, and artwork of the pseudo-sophisticated who merely want praise.
But on the newsmagazines, it all came down to "hamburgers & hotdogs"-- the regular "general interest" stories about how average, fat-assed Americans were put through traumatizing ordeals because of negligent doctors, confidence men, and unresponsive bureaucrats that turned their lives into "a living hell". This, they utter for the benefit of those watching at home, staring on with inflamed, blotchy faces, all but lacking the grill marks from the brazier of fate.
The horror! The outrage! The fact it could happen to you! Now the parties turn to a court of law to remediate this suffering with trial attorneys who grandstand on the issue more like politicians that ignore the real issues, nodding with slightly-widened eyes with the courage of their dubious convictions when confronted with the unprofitable truth.
Here was a caricature of the American people in all their glory with their lawyers in tow-- fat, ignorant, clawing-- marching toward whatever the new millennium held like misshapen ogres. Unhappiness and responsibility-dodging resentment was spread across the ground like entrails, the crows of the media pecking at the mess of human misery for our prurient viewing. The media reports, you decide. But the camera and tone in the narrator's voice already came with loaded assumptions about how we should see the world, as much that was said as what went unsaid.
And I didn't like that one bit. . . . .
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I wish I could have given some kind of answer to myself, but there was no answer to be had. The system was too rotten, everything too wrong, and no one entirely at fault. It was "the sloping consensus of things" that made it that way, when to do any different would have been "too much work". Truth is it's own author, and nature keeps it's own books. What we all seemed to be in denial about was the sternness, harshness, cruelty, and bitterness of history-- how the way we live catches up with us. As generations hence look at what this millennial crop has made of ourselves, maybe they'll know enough to avoid some of the obvious blunders. . . . . and head north to Dawson City where the living may be crude, but at least it keeps you honest!
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"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'
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(Rheeee of Crickets)
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("I heard that, Missy!")
© 2008 by Insufferable Industries
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