dir/old_school/rant: T h e    R e c e s s i o n

Why?

Cause I remember the last recession.

I remember life before the Internet boom.

I remember being unemployed at twenty, I remember trying very hard to understand how to get a job, when I'd leisurely had a good job and had said job for almost four years and didn't know what to do..

My highschool life was spent in casual observance of school code and the free life that school gave you. I understand with fairly clear but biased clarity why many of my friends are liberal, or as I like to say Liberal Communist. While socialism and Communism to a far lesser degree were appealing -anything that you equate with optional work habits always is, I never understood the limiting notion, which may be my capitalistic mind has never had the ability to grasp; Money is bad.

So instead of hussling fry grease or trying to haul groceries for a living I sold candy to other students, with money there parents had given them. I rode the bus or better yet I walked, instead of owning a car. I sold shit out the back of my knapsack and did anything I could, by hook or crook to not have to work. Working for what? A car, clothes, none of that seemed important. The good life was having as much free time as possible to do my thing and I did it for years. Hell some may say, "Pablo, you still do it." And if you equate the good life with not having to drag lumber to a site or having to figure out a new schedule every two weeks, for some minimum wage gag fest, then fine it's true. I stuffed my brain with as much as I could and I have been in computers ever since then and will likely stay in this white collar, ass-expanding industry till the day I die.

The recession is a hurricane and we have taken to watching it as we did the economy when it was in full swing. I have enjoyed many labors and taken few of the spoils, preferring to live somewhere in the middle. I grew up relatively poor but I appreciate my middle class lifestyle and my way of living. Why should I not? If my boss wants more, I should have given it to him before he asked, give me my number and show me the starting line. I will run the race and I will finish it. I may not win it, I may even huff and puff, but I will blow down this sadness at how things have taken a turn for the worse, cause I have seen shitty times and this is still nowhere close to how far we have come as a society as a whole. You can quote the ever widening gap of the rich and the poor, how the middle class have become elite and how it is evil to want material possessions, but I lived poor. Hell I didn't even have a choice in the matter for roughly half my life.

I grew up a gypsy, we did not have the comfort of a good nomad life, where the only thing we sought was a place to park our wagon. We was my mother and I, we instead just packed up our shit and moved constantly. Life for me as a child was living with someone else, it was a lean mean life, my toys and clothes were just about all I ever carried, furniture was a luxury and as my memory will serve to remind me, furniture was something that often times was owned by other people.

My mother and father separated while I was young (5) while I kept close contact with my father, close in the sense that he was the true disciplinarian and he was a source of joy and presence more in the summer then any other time, it was usually my mother and I, on our own to fend for ourselves. This meant that a good portion of my childhood was spent living with my grandmother, or my mother's sister or some family member or another. Family is the people who open their doors to those of us who do not have an address.

I never thought about the impact of that lifestyle, never questioned how my life for the last ten years has been affected by this process of growing up. In this decade I have lived in more then twenty five places, meaning that I have often times moved as much as three or four times a year, sometimes it was temporary, as short as a few months, maybe as long as a year. But for the most part, when I have had the choice (and that has always been the case) I have moved frequently, finding new digs, living with new roommates and finding new routes to work.

Interesting that in all my years of living abroad -from family, I have never sought a better sense of permanence, instead I have always looked towards keeping a vehicle big enough to "move on my own" and made sure I could do just that. Living in some place for a long period of time was not foreign, this was just a concept I never imagined.

As time has slowly crept up I have had to realize that something unconscious motivates me to the do things I do. I am no different then anyone else, some things I do with little reason or explanation. Some things just come to me and moving is one of them. But I move because I have never had any interest in a sense of permanence. The things that stability means to people have never appealed nor even made sense to me. I like flexibility, so it was not without understanding that I was terrified that I'd signed a one year lease to stay at my new crib.

I awoke one morning in a sweat. The economy was in a full downswing. Why did I sign to some price that could actually move down in six months? Rather then keep my options open I was hopeful that this presence and that this move would bring some personal sense of stability to my life. Twelve months in one place do not seem like much. Work wise, they fly so fast that I have barely come to grasp that I am seven years into what was a "new job" but unconsciously, those twelve months, where I lay my head, seem to drive me nuts, when there end draws near.

But I cannot deny it, I have spent seven years in the same place working. I came to my existing gig at the tail end of the last downswing in the economy. I rode this job throughout the highflying Internet era, while I watched many of my friends make more money then me. I sometimes feel old and tired. I am twelve years into a career and more then half of it has been spent in one place.

The truth is that all the anxiety has not been because I am tenured, it is not because I dared to sign my lease to a twelve month obligation. It is because these things seem sensible now. To catch you up, if you even care, I have recently moved out of an apartment I have shared with my girlfriend for the last year. Why did I do it? A number of reasons, none of which I will express here in this piece. What matters as a contributor and something you should understand to make sense of this piece and how it applies to me is this. I am afraid. I no longer want to change, my thoughts of one day basket weaving in Paraguay, of maybe living the fascinating peasants life of many of my (once) seemingly carefree friends is something that is fading in my mind.

I do not mean to say that I am giving up the dream. This is not true, the dream has been simple "Work now, play later" Mostly cause I have already played. My twenties were a fine rollicking time, I might have spent a good chunk of them depressed, sad and lonely, but the majority of them (what I choose to remember and fantasize about) weren't all that bad. For having a shitty third decade I did ok. I cannot spend time regretting or second guessing why I did not change or why I blew my time, lamenting lost loves and the seaweed that clung to my dead friends body. I remember all those sad things, but folks. I am still alive. I made it. I took my angst, wrote about it, drew it, imagined it and jerked, sucked and fucked it all off until it became a stain which sits between my legs at this very seat (and many more) that I constantly write at as you read this piece.

Long live depression! Long live the wasted time of my life when I hung on the things I felt. I am ready to live and quite frankly, my lifestyle requires money. My way of life does not require a lot of money, least you count the cost of the KungFu Shuttle and as a free man I had all the choice in the world to do something cheaper, take the expenses on the front end rather then deal with them later. I made my choices I will live with them. We are in a recession and all my running; yelling of the sky falling and unconscious behavior to run when pressure mounts will not change this one simple fact. I have created a life that I do enjoy living. Things around are shitty and will likely get worse on the whole, but we should only lament breifly, pull at our bootstraps and make the decision to work it out. I suggest we work it out and move on.

The sky is falling, and the world is changing as it always has and whether or not you have been on the good end of the stick or eating at the free-shit buffet table all your life, you always have the choice to do whatever it is you want. I always thought that was the great thing about the good ol'USA. So I bitched and whined and for me the sky was falling, hell truth be told it is and many things we have taken for granted are no longer there for the taking. So now I'll earn it and be glad at the chance of being able to try to earn it.

And make no mistake, this is not some late arriving piece, a sellout memoir of eighties sensibility. Am I more authentic if I make less money? Am I more of a better person, if I make what you make as opposed to what I make. Are the stresses in my life any less then those on yours? These are rhetorical. Your life is yours, my life is mine. Maybe we'll marry, maybe we'll live together, maybe we're more likely to ignore each other on the road of life, while we pick our noses, assuming no one else is watching. Life is a sole proprietorship. No matter how you choose to live it, align with others, bear children and then care for them, you are on your own. This is not a cynical observation, the root of why we all seem to be sad, almost always has something to do with the fact that we feel alone. That those closest to us, whether they are cubicle mates, friends or lovers who take up that other side of the bed do not feel as we do.

Do you get that folks? Let me repeat it for you….

This is not a cynical observation, the root of why we all seem to be sad, almost always has something to do with the fact that we feel alone. That those closest to us, whether they are cubicle mates, friends or lovers who take up that other side of the bed do not feel as we do.

And if this is the case, if it's true, no matter what the support system in place, no matter how many people, may or may not be at your side, we are alone and what happens, rests on our shoulders. It doesn't mean you have to pay the light bill alone or keep buying bad food in place of fresh goods, cause it's cheaper, but a certain burden always rests on our own shoulders, and we must deal with it on our own way and in the company of others, who always feel that burden-resting alone on there shoulders as well.

It is me and it is you and while we are together, we are alone. Who understands these words as I try to convey them?

The moral of this story is those whether or not you are in desperation, feel alone or think that the fit has hit the shan, you are still the one person who can make the greatest change around you. You can do it all around you, you've always had the ability to. The only sky falling is the one that measures our potential in trying times. Whine, whine, whine. Dry up the tears, sell your shit, live life lean, stop eating out, learn to cook. Read a book you already read or buy one someone else read for you, pinch every penny till it screams and stop thinking that the things that you had were yours for the earning and for heavens sake, don't envy your neighbor. Otherwise we should all get in line, run down the streets and chant

"The Sky is falling! The Sky is Falling ! I saw it with my own eyes, and heard it with my own ears, and part of it fell on my head."

And lets see how long it takes before the system eats you cause I am afraid but I'll be damned if I let fear motivate me. I am a slacker, but I will win at this game of business, this game of life. 

KungFu is a way of life, not giving up when you are challenged. KungFu is saying fuck it and remembering how you got where you are and how to change if you don't like it.. KungFu is definitely me. The question now?

Is KungFu you?