Yep. Failed to write everyday in my blog this week. Still having a damnable time writing.

Well, hellwithit. Today, I worked. I managed to complete weekly kitty litter detail. My room is reasonably clean. Uh. I can see most of my floor. I colored in my abstract coloring book with my Prismacolors while watching Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes (the best Holmes I believe.) I adopted another rat, who is twice as big as Poly, but they got along famously as they sniffed rat butt on my bed. Well, when Jay, the new rat wasn't peeing on my bed. (Note to self: Wash sheets.) The rats are fed. The cat is fed. And I'm getting to bed an actual whole hour over my bedtime instead of three.

Life.

We'll work on writing about it next. Oh. And dating. Uh. Maybe.

This is the week where I will try to return to the habit of writing in my blog everyday. It's a challenge that I need.

It's hard to call my job, a "challenge" as it's pretty much a joke. Most of the work is done and can be done even better by automated systems, but real live security guards are better for insurance rates and probably cheaper than more computers. Still, there was a time when I fully believed in the full force and neurotic majesty of the acronym soup that the DSM dished up for me, that I could never do anything remotely like hold down a job. So maybe its not peanuts. There is something strengthening of managing a phonecall from some irate building tenant who tried to run the garage gate and got trapped, sorting radio transmissions from the guards at the other two buildings in the "pod" controlled by the central building I work in, dealing out passcards and keys like a blackjack dealer to contractors and vendors, and logging everything but my bowel movements on the computerized logs. The capability to manage under pressure that before would have made me pop like a one-penny fuse in a quarter socket. Mind you, I don't plan to run off and become an airport traffic controller.

Meanwhile... I was reading one of Seattle's alternative weeklies (the better one in fact,) The Stranger and inside was a full-page add saying that the word from "The Messenger" had come to town, and here was this hint at the mighty wisdom if you wanted to learn more. It was this treatise that was that pure American invention of the bastard stepchild of Theosophy and New Age apocalyptic millienialist conspiracy theory. Instead of Satan, it is "The Fear" that will bring about the end of the world as we know it, when the Father of the Fear, George "Poppy" Bush Sr, sacrifices his Shrub to get himself made Dictator of Everything. There will be seven years of the stuff of Revelations, which will end in 2012, which is the marking of the death of time in the Mayan calendar. But, "The Messenger" brings word that we can renew if we overcome "The Fear." Oh and show up at some place in Seattle, which will be.. oh, and I must quote this... "at the Tribal Gathering Place that will soon become the magical chocolate factory at the center of the universe." Hoo boy. And the scary bit? The Willy Wonka of Post-Samsara wondrousness will be appearing on one of my nights off, and I know I gotta hear him or her speak. It's like a chance to see Fringapalooza. Moreso, how can this mysterious stranger afford a slick full page advertisement?
I have little to worry about. If I do succumb to the amazing power of "The Messenger" and join a cult, I have long pre-arranged agreements with certain friends that they will put a bullet into my head or least deprogram me with long hours of cable and the works of Stephen Jay Gould.
Sometimes I think it isn't the end of the world coming, it's the end of ideas. This is the End Times of Pastiche Made Reality.

Been really unfocused lately, and the heavy questions inside my head have been fast and loose. Today, I was thinking about gay marriage as I did my patrol rounds of the building. I've always said that I support the new movement on principle. but in actuality, I'm not for gay marriage. Oh, there was this "huge" anti-gay marriage church-sponsored rally at SafeCo Field here in Seattle on Saturday, only a number of blocks away from my site. When I left work that day, I found myself making more light of it all. There was also the traditional workers' May Day rallies at the other side of downtown, so I watched the weekend crowd going by and played a rousing round of "Socialist or Evangelist: You Make the Call." To me, you can leave marriage to the religious and secular traditionalists who claim the preemption of heterosexual ritual sanctity will lead to the disintegration of moral culture. It's their language they are bickering over. Civil Unions that provide the full spectrum of benefits and securities that mark civil marriage are practical, and trying to gain acceptance by gaining cultural marriage from a culture isn't. Mainstream Western culture isn't all that worth it to adopt. Mainstream marriage is nearly a joke now, falling apart along with long-accepted family standards. Much of gay and lesbian culture already works full-steam at trying to define itself by heterosexual values like materialism. It's throwback thinking instilled by those trying to maintain the status quo, who use marriage as some great indicator of being in good with God. Why would anyone want this from the same source that has been rejecting them wholly as "wrong in the scheme of things?" This is not an insensible argument, I think to myself as a I jiggle doorknobs.
Yet, I looked at the issue of gay marriage from another angle, and it made sense that way too. Many gays simply want to live as everyone wants or does, and be a part of the culture they live within. Marriage is an institution of merit and value, as a sign of living morally and practically. The joy gained from the act of marriage is something real to them. Acceptance is deeply important to a lot of human beings, isn't it? So, I think to myself, this is also a sensible argument. Then why did I reject this argument's values so strongly that I tossed aside the whole validity of the issue? Then I started my last few floors with a minor pain behind one eye.
I rejected the issue because I reject the value of the culture. So was this political, philosophical, or simply personal? Why was it so personal? I was arguing passionately for my side of the issue that was based in my negative reaction to gay culture. It was a view founded in a false non-conformity that was no more than me shifting blame for my failure to enmesh with others on... Well, others. The pain behind the eye did not abate. The specter of hollow identity struck again. Well, how is it, I asked myself inside my head, that I am so Jewish-identified, yet I reject being a believer in Judaism as a religion? Didn't Judaism as an institution, clash with me mostly because how strongly I rejected my parent's brand of Judaism? Was I creating my identity through external conflict with larger social elements that I perceived that I cannot make myself a part of?
One of these days, I'll figure I should carry around some pain relievers on my person at all times, for when I get these glorious brainstorms.
It's bad to be able to deduce what is coming sometimes with a relative assuredness. I knew what cutting the strings from what I knew to where I could be would start shredding my identify faster than a cat finds the new leather sofa. I'm still too much the center of my world. Who I am now is much expressed in how strongly I think everyone else is wrong. How I fight and buck against a world which lives on, no matter how I feel it should be. I'm just another human being who is fighting for the same thing.. what I believe are my natural rights: To feel safe, but to be free. To suffer, but also know joy. To be myself, but to be a part of something bigger. To believe. To hope. To love.
Still... food for thought as I bed down, and probably mulled over when I chain patio tables tomorrow evening, is what do I do to be, but also do. I can't be a part of these cultural expressions, in the end. It's not who I am. But how is who I am, or will be, compatible with the world that I live in? I know there is something inside me, meant to be different, so that I can bring difference to the lives of others. It's one of the few things I've ever really believed in. And lastly, I must ask myself.... Where is my Advil?