Application of a Festering Thought.
During my strange year back home in Santa Barbara I was drinking fairly heavily, and smoking copious amounts of marijuana. Drinking and driving is a very bad idea, I have only good things to say about smoking pot while driving and did so with great regularity on long night runs to bad areas in Los Angeles to pick up a Chevy S10's worth of political material for one of Jeremy's crazy political schemes. There was no CD player, and it being 2004, I had no tapes. Just the general madness running through my head, and my arm out the window to let as much Central California Coast into my car as possible before going over the hump into the Los Angeles Basin, and all the bad vibes that doing so entails.
It was on one of these weird drives, possibly the weirdest one of them all that I had an idea that was to fester. I was dropping off anti-Wal-Mart material to a strange and paranoid but well intentioned gentleman outside of Paso Robles. He swore constantly, and I was stoned completely out of my head after several hours of late night "madroad driving", so communication was abnormal at best. This is actually of little importance to this already rambling narrative.
It was an idea running though my on this long drive took hold. I was in that fearful and weird post graduate twenties career/life decision bullshit phase of life referred to by help hucksters as "the formulative years". It's a cake walk for some, a testing period for others and leads to paralyzing nervous breakdowns for others. It's a total crapshoot. The possibility for mental collapse is especially real when drugs, booze, sleep deprivation, are combined with a total lack of tangible work skills. Which they most certainly were. These days are much quieter.
To add to all the normal weirdness of the time, 2005ish, I had just been in Thailand and all around South East Asia finding solace in the poor and hot places in that part of the world. I had been eating the proverbial and literal lotus leaf for long enough to permanently destroy the cutthroat instincts necessary to screw people out of money as a young bloodthirsty yuppie from the ugly troughs of American business. I just frankly didn't have it in me and knew I never would, nor would want to. The rags to riches story is bullshit, and I wasn't from rags anyway, so I didn't need to prove to anyone that I could screw people more efficiently than some other baldhead.
Anyways in the same way that turns men to be jungle guerrilla warriors and Catholic priests, I looked to my heroes. In my case I thought about the lives of Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, and Noam Chomsky for inspiration. But you probably already knew that. Anyways, the story continues, and the idea festers.
EDIT: In proofreading this I realized that I haven't even told you what the idea was, but don't worry it's coming soon enough, and it's good, but first more writing..
The idea of being a pure drifter like Kerauac and the other vanguards of rucksack revolution was out of the question. I don't have the stomach for it. In the hot South Fresno summer of 1998, I'd had a taste of farm work and, while an excellent way to cultivate virtue, was not for me. Beatnik drifting is a very beautiful thing, but being financially indebted to kin was not. So, while I respect it immensely, like I said, it was out of the question, though I am always tempted to pack up my 6200 cubic centimeter Kelty Red Cloud and my synthetic and trail tested 4 season Marmot sleeping bag for destinations and durations unknown.
I'm currently sitting in Japan so it's safe to say that the bacteria that inhibit settling tendencies have (ironically) developed colonies throughout my nervous system.
In addition to Jack Kerouac, the psychotic life of sheer documented madness of the late Dr. Gonzo was extremely appealing, though prohibitory dangerous. The process pioneered by Thompson was to match the external madness of the modern world with internal madness and then see what came out the other end of the typewriter. Then, assuming it's legible, somehow convince someone to print it and try to pass it as actual journalism. The possibility for addiction, psychosis, estrangement and certain rejection are very real for those who chose this path. It takes talent and sheer weirdness that can't be faked. I know people weird enough for this lifestyle. They've asked to remain unnamed. One man in particular is, or maybe once was, a filthy and raging monster, fully in the moment and disturbingly beautiful in his God-given madness. If somehow inspired, he could write some truly weird stuff. Maybe someday we'll get torn back and write it all down in a frenzy. But I fear those days may be over. Time set in. Life set in.
Sorry, got a little distracted there.
Anyways, from Thompson I'll hang on what guru Alan Watts describes as "the irreducible element of rascality," and remember that, like Vishnu, you sometimes need to totally lose your mind in order to find it. Maybe I'll keep writing too. Hell, maybe someday someone will read it "with the right kind of eyes" and have a laugh. The important thing is to always keep things a little weird. Weirdness maintains thinking. Thinking delays stagnation. Stagnation invites death.
Oh yeah, almost forgot, I also really need to emulate the productivity of Thompson. Although he was completely out of his mind, he got a lot of shit done. All the creativity in the world goes nowhere if it's stuck in your skull.
Lastly and distinct from the other two nutcases is Professor Noam Chomsky. Certifiably odd human Glen Jackson introduced me to Uncle Noam and his academic brilliance in college. His thinking and morality enlighten (small e) people that listen and read what he has to say about world politics and the corrupt fascists bastards that profit from it. And Uncle Noam is a badass professor, and a brilliant one at that. Perhaps, it is from Noam that I'm most inspired. After all learning is my real hobby. That and teaching. I love teaching, especially to adults.
I suppose what interests me most about all three of these white men. They were all teachers in some capacity and had a curious mind to look at the world from different angles, and it doing so find unique ways of interpreting it. I'm not so sure I have that kind of mind, but I hope that I do. Or I suppose I can steal if from unsuspecting person who does.
So, back to that idea I had. The idea I had on that and many other very weird nights is make a life and living as a gonzo educator. I'm have, am, and am going to try to incorporate the elements of gonzo, socialism, and anti-fascist thinking into a career in education, a field usually full of suited tight-asses on a pencil necked ego trip. Maybe all this isn't coming across effectively. I'll give you an example of a gonzo educational activity. Examples usually help.
Example: In a class of all Swiss-German students I took them on a field trip to a bank. They then had to write a paper, in English, on how to rob that bank step by step. Defiantly gonzo, definatly socialist, questionably educational.
Of course this kind of stuff is impossible teaching ESL and living in Japan. A) They just don't have the vocabulary for it. B) they don't have any reference point to begin with. Gonzo like any form of change comes on very slow out here, and to be honest, being out here is tough on the gonzo already in me. No motorcycles, no drugs, hell not even a car.
One thing I've learned in this fucked up place is that you have to scale craziness to an acceptable level for the environment. My very existence is weird enough for these groupthinkers, and introducing individuality and free thinking in the classroom can only be done after puréeing it and serving it with a Gurber spoon. They couldn't handle anything close to the Isla Vista shit like smoking pot in full view of the police, or playing baseball with recently emptied beer cans completely zonked out on plycibin and Wild Turkey in the middle of the street laughing hysterically while singyelling "Sugar Mountain" at 3 in the morning. That shit won't fly. None of that would fly. They haven't had their Ken Kesey yet, but God willing, they will...he or she has to be homegrown. It ain't me babe.
Staying focused while writing this today hasn't been easy. I'm at work, and that means coffee. Copious amounts of it. Today I made it; and it's very strong. In the absence of anything really mind altering, you have to take what you can get. Most mammals do something, anything, to distort reality even it's just banging their heads against rock
That's what I want to, be a gonzo educator. So here's the plan, I'll stay in Japan and keep teaching, even though it's rather mindnumbing. I'll Work on the educator part during the daytime hours Mon-Friday, and study International Relations at night. Giving the highly interpretive and dynamic nature of the field and the sheer amount of fascism needed to be dismantled, IR is a great field for Gonzo. I need to get qualified in it to teach it to people capable of understanding English. Then after I finish an MA, on some moonlit night I'll take the gonzo out of storage and hit the throttle...
