1.03.2006
stratosphere
In Minnesota, you are always cold even when it's not cold. You always feel a bit uncomfortable and shifty even though relatively speaking there is no reason for it. Paradoxically, I generally find it to be a comfortable state of Scandinavian descent, lakes, plains, and a kind of stoic but kind demeanor. That's a lot to impute to a region of the country best-known for mosquitoes, cold weather, and Prince. But I'm willing to step off that ledge.
What do I mean by saying that you're always cold even when it's not cold? I'm speaking literally, in part. I have been cold the entire two weeks I have been here, just like I remembered only worse. But I'm cold in spite of the fact that relatively speaking this is a very warm early January, with daytime temperatures around 35 degrees. So really, I'm speaking literally of how cold I've been despite evidence to the contrary that indicates that I shouldn't feel so cold.
But I'm speaking metaphorically too. This place feels a little isolated, a little cut off from circulation, a bit too chill sometimes. People go to work, run errands, go home, sleep, and begin the cycle anew. But it's so much more discrete, and rule-like here. It's so patterned. You don't stop and wonder about the purpose of doing what you're doing, and you don't sidestep your routine on a whim. You just hack through each day as though it were a bunch of weeds needing cutting in the springtime. But it's winter, and the sense of accomplishment I get from shoveling isn't enough to overcome the fact that when I walk out the door, I see lots of houses but no people outside them.
The suburbs, modern society, and the anxieties of American life do that. People are busy -- always! Must always keep busy. If you're not at work, sleeping your six hour shift at night, eating a quick meal, or buying some necessities, then you better be exercising, networking, monitoring the stock market, and watching the latest TV shows. You have to keep "improving" in the narrow economic sense of increasing your value, and you are directed to do this by autonomous memes that you can neither monitor nor feel, working inside your brain like clockwork.
These memes direct you unconsciously to desire things for their status enhancement value, for their instrumental value in getting you "ahead" -- whatever that means. Modern economic life (and all life is now economic) directs you to economize and maximize, but never "wastes time" on such trifles as determining a purpose. Why argue about ends, about purposes, when you can maximize, economize, and shuffle along to your grave in the best possible way? The memes don't answer when you call out in the lonely suburban void, the chill night of crisp air and shoveled driveways: "To what end?"
What do I mean by saying that you're always cold even when it's not cold? I'm speaking literally, in part. I have been cold the entire two weeks I have been here, just like I remembered only worse. But I'm cold in spite of the fact that relatively speaking this is a very warm early January, with daytime temperatures around 35 degrees. So really, I'm speaking literally of how cold I've been despite evidence to the contrary that indicates that I shouldn't feel so cold.
But I'm speaking metaphorically too. This place feels a little isolated, a little cut off from circulation, a bit too chill sometimes. People go to work, run errands, go home, sleep, and begin the cycle anew. But it's so much more discrete, and rule-like here. It's so patterned. You don't stop and wonder about the purpose of doing what you're doing, and you don't sidestep your routine on a whim. You just hack through each day as though it were a bunch of weeds needing cutting in the springtime. But it's winter, and the sense of accomplishment I get from shoveling isn't enough to overcome the fact that when I walk out the door, I see lots of houses but no people outside them.
The suburbs, modern society, and the anxieties of American life do that. People are busy -- always! Must always keep busy. If you're not at work, sleeping your six hour shift at night, eating a quick meal, or buying some necessities, then you better be exercising, networking, monitoring the stock market, and watching the latest TV shows. You have to keep "improving" in the narrow economic sense of increasing your value, and you are directed to do this by autonomous memes that you can neither monitor nor feel, working inside your brain like clockwork.
These memes direct you unconsciously to desire things for their status enhancement value, for their instrumental value in getting you "ahead" -- whatever that means. Modern economic life (and all life is now economic) directs you to economize and maximize, but never "wastes time" on such trifles as determining a purpose. Why argue about ends, about purposes, when you can maximize, economize, and shuffle along to your grave in the best possible way? The memes don't answer when you call out in the lonely suburban void, the chill night of crisp air and shoveled driveways: "To what end?"
# posted by Vanity @ 18:09 
