It's like what George Clinton said in 1976: "We Want the Funk." He also says give up the funk and that 'we' need the funk. Listen to the man: We need the funk. Right?
What is it about a funk that makes it stick? What makes it a funk? It is a valley, easy to descend but a long struggle to try and get out of. To try and escape. (Then, when you do, if you do, there lies another valley beyond that one. Is that life, capture and escape, catch and release?)
What is the line that stands between sheer laziness and a loss of will to keep up? I try to keep up on my bills, to tend what is important, and by important I mean the things I will get in the most trouble for when I do not tend to them. I try and get to work at a reasonable time, to do something or some things of worth in that time and stay long enough to make it worth it to come in that day. Later than I want, but earlier than I should. I go to work, that particular work because if I don't I have find another one and I will have to struggle more. I go to work because it is easier than not working. I can see that far. At home I have an animal that depends on me to earn enough money to spare for her food, to wake up and walk her before I leave in the morning and make sure she has enough time to piss and shit when I come home at night. I can't stay away too long because of a dog. I retrieve an animal's excrement with a sad little paper bag. It's the law. I take showers at least every other day. When there are extenuating circumstances I've gone as long as six days without a shower, but rare is the case. The things that suffer most are those that don't have to leave the house. My wood floors are covered in a layer of filth. My laundry has recently refused to stack any higher and has begun to extend outwards from the tower I've built of it and it constantly threatens to take over the entire floor the way it used to when I was in high school and living with my parents. Then there are the dishes. Dishes are the worst of all. I can stretch out showers, I can re-wear a lot of the same clothing over and over again, I can throw on socks to protect my feet from the grit and hair on the floor. But I can't not eat. I cannot stop using dishes because each meal, no matter if it's a four course or a bowl of cereal dirties a series of utensils, receptacles, etc. Every day there's more of it. It always seems like I get hungry after I finish washing a sink full of dishes. So the cycle starts again. When I walk in the door that is what I see. Before I leave, every time, that is what I see. I see the sink and the dishes and I feel the weight of it. It hits me like a trigger, sets me off and I just want to avoid it. I want to eat and be done with it, I don't want to linger in the kitchen wiping up little spills or scrubbing pans.
I recognize that if I had an empty sink to walk in to, and made sure I had an empty sink to walk away from every day the weight wouldn't seem so great. But that is a habit and a rhythm that I just can't seem to establish.
No, it is the will to get out of it that stops me from being lazy. The want and the attempt to climb the hill. The urge to surface defines the struggle.
Cheap Trick said to Surrender, but warned not to give yourself away.
It is life. It is the day to day. It is all the little things that add up, that snowball to create a monster out of a bunch of ants. It is the indifference created instead of ingenuity. It is the constant struggle with sleep as the only reprieve. It is the urge to indulge in distraction, to dull experience and make life a lesser version of itself. It is something I do at the end of every day. It is something I feel. It is something that does not stop. It will not cease until I do. It is heavier some days than others.
It is what Buddhists call suffering. It is what Buddhists call life. It is what Islam calls Jihad, which means 'struggle.' There are two kinds of Jihad, greater and lesser. The greater struggle in Islam is the inner struggle, the struggle of the self. If there was one, basic focus of Islam it would be surrender (the two words are synonymous), and that surrender is the focus of Jihad. Life is lived in order to surrender your self, your being to something else. You don't give up on yourself; you give your self. The freedom comes in admitting to yourself, even the basic realization that everything is bigger than you are and that you don't really matter and that you are okay with that. You will come, you will go, nothing will change and you are all right in that equation. (See: George Harrison/Beatles/Within Without You) Once you can wrap your head around that struggle, all the little shit is supposed to go away. I can't believe it does, but it could be a helpful reminder not to let a sink full of dishes ruin your day, or your week for that matter. Of course I should note that the struggle in Islam only ends when you die, because when it comes down to it people actually can't do something as simple as get over themselves.
"Who thought I would fall a slave to Demon Alcohol" quizzes Ray and the Kinks.
Here at the end of the day I am tired. I am worn down and I feel defeated. I don't want to sleep because that means that I gave my whole day over to work that I don't believe in and I've cease to be able to appreciate. I am not okay with that. Since my job provides only enough to live paycheck to paycheck, I will not go out and I likewise will not order out for dinner. I will drink the one beer I have leftover from last week and wish I had at least one more. I will leer at the mostly finished bottle of Kentucky "Bullit" whiskey that I keep on top of my cupboards and wonder if I should drink the last of it, but I will not because if I do that means I will find the money to buy another bottle. If I buy another bottle I will drink it freely without the fear of running out as soon as I start. And I will drink. And I will drink some more. Alcohol dulls my senses; it doesn't make me feel better so much as it will make me feel less, which I feel is more important. Towards the end of the bottle I will slow my drinking down and very nearly finish the bottle. Then that next bottle will sit and I will look up at it occasionally, think about it and want to drink it, but I will stop myself short of uncorking it. I will put it back and save it for another day. The alcohol feels like it fights the funk, but really it feeds it. I can feel it, as it surges through my system. That rush, which really isn't a rush at all, is just a emotional ceasing. The spigot of life gets turned off for a while. There's a slow drip, which there always is, but when you feel less of its impact you don't care about the forest for the trees, you just want to curl up with your bottle because you can smile about things. Because I can smile about things. Then Demon Alcohol rears its ugly head and reminds you that you're an idiot because she's a depressant. You're an idiot because she always has been and will continue to be. Don't take it personally, she's that way with everybody. Then the next day comes and there's that jigger (1 oz) of vile brown liquid staring down at you with beady little whiskey eyes wondering why you didn't drink that and why don't you drink that and while you're at it why don't we throw a part and invite another bottle? There you'll be buried deeper than you were the day before, worse for the wear, bile grinding a slow hole in your stomach, throwing up so hard it comes out your tear ducts. The dishes are still dirty, your refrigerator is still empty, you still hate your job, you have shit for money and instead of getting up and doing anything about you're staring at the ceiling all day long waiting to see if you have to throw up again.
Insert clever musical reference here.
Yourself hold you down; it is your own hand on your chest. You are your own victim. You give in to distraction. You watch basketball games, check for football scores. You check your e-mail, your alternate junk e-mail, your myspace, your Facebook, your blog, your home page, you Google your name, you look something up on E-Bay, you check the weather, you glance over news headlines, look for yourself in craigslist's missed connections, you watch a stupid video on You Tube, you read Doonsbury, you watch the Daily Show, you check your e-mails again. Fire up the Nintendo. Put a cd on, then change your mind and think of one that's more complicated to find. Send a couple text messages. If they respond keep going back and forth until they don't. Glaze over want ads on Monster, on several other sites even though you know there's nothing advertised on there for you. You don't have an education for this, or experience for that. Give up before you find something. Check to make sure your resume, which you've buffed and retouched a thousand times, is still there at the ready. Look for mistakes that could be stopping people from contacting you. Make one up and resave it. Convert it into pdf and xml and update all your job sites thinking that this will be the one, the magic bait that will get you a marvelous job where you're appreciated, where you work less than you do and that magically all of the problems of your current job are disappeared as soon as your current job is. It is magically good and provides vast wealth and benefits and vacation days and sick days and you can come home feeling like you haven't been run over by a truck and smell like a lawnmower soaked in diesel. Watch your favorite new series until two in the morning. Get to work the next day and immediately remember why you went home last night chanting, like a mantra, "I must find a new job" until the person next to you on the bus thought you were crazy and moved seven seats away. Loathe yourself for the next 9-11 hours. Repeat. For 5 years.
This happens. It is cyclical. Sometimes the cycles are shorter than others. But usually it lasts a few days and I resurface able to cope with life a bit better or at least sufficiently ignore the uglies of life. Lately it has been no such luck for me. Lately it has been always for me. The spigot will not turn off. I know it isn't me, but I feel like it is overtaking me, that it shields me from what is important in my life, from the people that I know and love and from the life that I want to live instead of the life that I have happened into by letting things happen. This is the life of inaction in action. But when there are days where getting out of bed feels like the hardest thing I've ever had to do, inaction, well, somehow just seems to make sense. I don't know how to explain it.
It's a long road. It's a deep hole. It is the story of Sisyphus. Every person can relate because everybody wakes up and lives the same day over again, too.
What is it about a funk that makes it stick? What makes it a funk? It is a valley, easy to descend but a long struggle to try and get out of. To try and escape. (Then, when you do, if you do, there lies another valley beyond that one. Is that life, capture and escape, catch and release?)
What is the line that stands between sheer laziness and a loss of will to keep up? I try to keep up on my bills, to tend what is important, and by important I mean the things I will get in the most trouble for when I do not tend to them. I try and get to work at a reasonable time, to do something or some things of worth in that time and stay long enough to make it worth it to come in that day. Later than I want, but earlier than I should. I go to work, that particular work because if I don't I have find another one and I will have to struggle more. I go to work because it is easier than not working. I can see that far. At home I have an animal that depends on me to earn enough money to spare for her food, to wake up and walk her before I leave in the morning and make sure she has enough time to piss and shit when I come home at night. I can't stay away too long because of a dog. I retrieve an animal's excrement with a sad little paper bag. It's the law. I take showers at least every other day. When there are extenuating circumstances I've gone as long as six days without a shower, but rare is the case. The things that suffer most are those that don't have to leave the house. My wood floors are covered in a layer of filth. My laundry has recently refused to stack any higher and has begun to extend outwards from the tower I've built of it and it constantly threatens to take over the entire floor the way it used to when I was in high school and living with my parents. Then there are the dishes. Dishes are the worst of all. I can stretch out showers, I can re-wear a lot of the same clothing over and over again, I can throw on socks to protect my feet from the grit and hair on the floor. But I can't not eat. I cannot stop using dishes because each meal, no matter if it's a four course or a bowl of cereal dirties a series of utensils, receptacles, etc. Every day there's more of it. It always seems like I get hungry after I finish washing a sink full of dishes. So the cycle starts again. When I walk in the door that is what I see. Before I leave, every time, that is what I see. I see the sink and the dishes and I feel the weight of it. It hits me like a trigger, sets me off and I just want to avoid it. I want to eat and be done with it, I don't want to linger in the kitchen wiping up little spills or scrubbing pans.
I recognize that if I had an empty sink to walk in to, and made sure I had an empty sink to walk away from every day the weight wouldn't seem so great. But that is a habit and a rhythm that I just can't seem to establish.
No, it is the will to get out of it that stops me from being lazy. The want and the attempt to climb the hill. The urge to surface defines the struggle.
Cheap Trick said to Surrender, but warned not to give yourself away.
It is life. It is the day to day. It is all the little things that add up, that snowball to create a monster out of a bunch of ants. It is the indifference created instead of ingenuity. It is the constant struggle with sleep as the only reprieve. It is the urge to indulge in distraction, to dull experience and make life a lesser version of itself. It is something I do at the end of every day. It is something I feel. It is something that does not stop. It will not cease until I do. It is heavier some days than others.
It is what Buddhists call suffering. It is what Buddhists call life. It is what Islam calls Jihad, which means 'struggle.' There are two kinds of Jihad, greater and lesser. The greater struggle in Islam is the inner struggle, the struggle of the self. If there was one, basic focus of Islam it would be surrender (the two words are synonymous), and that surrender is the focus of Jihad. Life is lived in order to surrender your self, your being to something else. You don't give up on yourself; you give your self. The freedom comes in admitting to yourself, even the basic realization that everything is bigger than you are and that you don't really matter and that you are okay with that. You will come, you will go, nothing will change and you are all right in that equation. (See: George Harrison/Beatles/Within Without You) Once you can wrap your head around that struggle, all the little shit is supposed to go away. I can't believe it does, but it could be a helpful reminder not to let a sink full of dishes ruin your day, or your week for that matter. Of course I should note that the struggle in Islam only ends when you die, because when it comes down to it people actually can't do something as simple as get over themselves.
"Who thought I would fall a slave to Demon Alcohol" quizzes Ray and the Kinks.
Here at the end of the day I am tired. I am worn down and I feel defeated. I don't want to sleep because that means that I gave my whole day over to work that I don't believe in and I've cease to be able to appreciate. I am not okay with that. Since my job provides only enough to live paycheck to paycheck, I will not go out and I likewise will not order out for dinner. I will drink the one beer I have leftover from last week and wish I had at least one more. I will leer at the mostly finished bottle of Kentucky "Bullit" whiskey that I keep on top of my cupboards and wonder if I should drink the last of it, but I will not because if I do that means I will find the money to buy another bottle. If I buy another bottle I will drink it freely without the fear of running out as soon as I start. And I will drink. And I will drink some more. Alcohol dulls my senses; it doesn't make me feel better so much as it will make me feel less, which I feel is more important. Towards the end of the bottle I will slow my drinking down and very nearly finish the bottle. Then that next bottle will sit and I will look up at it occasionally, think about it and want to drink it, but I will stop myself short of uncorking it. I will put it back and save it for another day. The alcohol feels like it fights the funk, but really it feeds it. I can feel it, as it surges through my system. That rush, which really isn't a rush at all, is just a emotional ceasing. The spigot of life gets turned off for a while. There's a slow drip, which there always is, but when you feel less of its impact you don't care about the forest for the trees, you just want to curl up with your bottle because you can smile about things. Because I can smile about things. Then Demon Alcohol rears its ugly head and reminds you that you're an idiot because she's a depressant. You're an idiot because she always has been and will continue to be. Don't take it personally, she's that way with everybody. Then the next day comes and there's that jigger (1 oz) of vile brown liquid staring down at you with beady little whiskey eyes wondering why you didn't drink that and why don't you drink that and while you're at it why don't we throw a part and invite another bottle? There you'll be buried deeper than you were the day before, worse for the wear, bile grinding a slow hole in your stomach, throwing up so hard it comes out your tear ducts. The dishes are still dirty, your refrigerator is still empty, you still hate your job, you have shit for money and instead of getting up and doing anything about you're staring at the ceiling all day long waiting to see if you have to throw up again.
Insert clever musical reference here.
Yourself hold you down; it is your own hand on your chest. You are your own victim. You give in to distraction. You watch basketball games, check for football scores. You check your e-mail, your alternate junk e-mail, your myspace, your Facebook, your blog, your home page, you Google your name, you look something up on E-Bay, you check the weather, you glance over news headlines, look for yourself in craigslist's missed connections, you watch a stupid video on You Tube, you read Doonsbury, you watch the Daily Show, you check your e-mails again. Fire up the Nintendo. Put a cd on, then change your mind and think of one that's more complicated to find. Send a couple text messages. If they respond keep going back and forth until they don't. Glaze over want ads on Monster, on several other sites even though you know there's nothing advertised on there for you. You don't have an education for this, or experience for that. Give up before you find something. Check to make sure your resume, which you've buffed and retouched a thousand times, is still there at the ready. Look for mistakes that could be stopping people from contacting you. Make one up and resave it. Convert it into pdf and xml and update all your job sites thinking that this will be the one, the magic bait that will get you a marvelous job where you're appreciated, where you work less than you do and that magically all of the problems of your current job are disappeared as soon as your current job is. It is magically good and provides vast wealth and benefits and vacation days and sick days and you can come home feeling like you haven't been run over by a truck and smell like a lawnmower soaked in diesel. Watch your favorite new series until two in the morning. Get to work the next day and immediately remember why you went home last night chanting, like a mantra, "I must find a new job" until the person next to you on the bus thought you were crazy and moved seven seats away. Loathe yourself for the next 9-11 hours. Repeat. For 5 years.
This happens. It is cyclical. Sometimes the cycles are shorter than others. But usually it lasts a few days and I resurface able to cope with life a bit better or at least sufficiently ignore the uglies of life. Lately it has been no such luck for me. Lately it has been always for me. The spigot will not turn off. I know it isn't me, but I feel like it is overtaking me, that it shields me from what is important in my life, from the people that I know and love and from the life that I want to live instead of the life that I have happened into by letting things happen. This is the life of inaction in action. But when there are days where getting out of bed feels like the hardest thing I've ever had to do, inaction, well, somehow just seems to make sense. I don't know how to explain it.
It's a long road. It's a deep hole. It is the story of Sisyphus. Every person can relate because everybody wakes up and lives the same day over again, too.
salome:
Thank you for the sweet comment on my set!