created: spring, 1997
It’s never that I thought of myself as a counselor. I never in a million years EVER considered myself one who was there to gove advise as to the “right Path.” I do, however, have a knack for affording the right situation with the (somehow) appropriate analogy or metaphor. And it is this that I unconsciously accell at. Unfortunately, there is a weird situation here. I feel like there is a load of shit that somehow got dumped on my friends good fortune now that I left. Now, I’m enough of a realist to accept that it has nothing to do with my departure. It’s just that there are some similarities between whats going on down there and whats going on up here. Yet, without going into the details of how our situations allign, let me just spew. Spew again, yet never quite the “end-all be-all.”
Anna and I are not necessarily strugling, but there are some issues. I have embarked on an unprecedented journey. What I thought was a nice, comfortable situation back in LA, I have swapped for this stilted, unprepared attempt to enhance this chapter of my life. I have always though that as long as we keep altering our environments, we will never be at a loss for stimulii. So, regardless of what advances the SHAMAN had made in LA, he gave them up. He was not, I repeat: was NOT following a girlfriend. In all actuallity, I hated LA. There was narry a day that went by that I didnt curse the Basin. Yet, once I left…on my own terms, mind you…I found that I was riddled with self-doubt….self-doubt that directly belies that “own terms” shit. For example: If I keep saying that I want to be a 3D computer artist with / around / in / for / behind… etc the motion picture/TV industry, then why did I move from the proverbial hotbed of talent (prospective and proved alike) and into more of a corporate world then I ever cared to address whilst I lived in LA? Basically, I moved away from “hands-on” world of, for the lack of a better phrase, “playing with the goods” and into a world where if you dont know how to program this shit at the CODE level, then get to the back of the fucking bus. San Francisco is a place where the geek, the professional, the executive and the artist are expected to blend into one ambiguous form, ever vigilant for the opportunity when one persona’s skill will be needed over another. See, back in LA, there was evil looking over you at all times. But there was always such a bottom rung that there that you were always afforded a seat…regardless of how shitty it was. Here, I dont know…it’s different. I now know why in LA they recruited so heavily from up here. The cats that they were talking to from up here were originally put to work because they knew what they were doing…however they got that experience. I’m in the loop though. I’m having my ends meet better than they were back in LA, and that, after a recent relocation, is more than I could ever have hoped for. If nothing else, I’m learning, first hand, hoe it is that things work out here. Jubal, I had one day off…the day that I drove up here. The next day, I was put to work at a job that could very easily go “full time.” And in this building, are the very 3D workstations that I would like nothing more thsn to be making minimum wage on. Sure, George Lucas and ILM need my help more than I can put into words, but its always been the appreciation of the bottom rung that allows you fathom the view from the top. “It takes poverty to love a toy” -Widespread Panic SO…although I’m making a decent living, I’m finding, just about dusk every night, a feeling that I should be sitting down to this computer to write the latest, inflatest cover letter to a resume that I’m not so sure is all I thought it was. I put it this way: I am converting what it is that I want to do FOR A LIVING to something I’ll fund as a hobby. Because as you must know by now, what I can accomplish today for $5700 worth of equipmwnt can be done 2X faster and in 1/2 the storage for 1/2 the price a year from now. And who knows, there me be some marvelous turn of events in the near future where I’ll be asked upstairs to “feeelance” where the have all the Silicon Graphics and the 3D Studio and the Digital Audio Work Stations and all the AVID’s. But in the meantime, I’ll just put on that “sponge” routine and soak up as much skill as possible…in the off-chances that some other company up here will find it necessary. Which leads me to my next event: Do we really have enough time in this life to devote ourselves to pleasing those who pay us MONEY?
Arent theere more important things to involve our subconsciousness?
“I left at the top of my game.” “I left on my own terms.” “I left with the intent on using what LA taught me against LA.” Let’s face it: I left LA because I felt drawn. I’ve always known that there was an unavoidable attraction to the North. I’ve remarked upon this in any number of my Spew’s. And Redfield made it the lynchpin of his book The Celestine Prophesy. Basically, there is one thing we sould keep in mind during this life: The natural world is one we should embrace. There is something to be said about the draw and the energy that surrounds either a natural, “original-growth” forest and/or rock outcroppings that mimick organic formations. Jubal, I’ve seen these. I’ve felt what this author and the thousands he’s spawned are talking about. I’ve felt it drug-free and I’ve felt it as real as in my own hand. He mentions theorems that force us to believe that the further we move away from “nature” (natural, old-growth trees, and those FUCKING rock formations), the further we’ll get from the most productive thoughts we’re capable of. When one’s in the city, one has a very self-centric look about tghe world and how it pertains to him/her. They fall right in line with the cult of the dollar and they spice it up with the belife that they do it for they really love it, or they need to keep that apartment in the sky or over the water or they need to keeo that special someone happy or they need to maintain those payments on that Saab or that BMW so that their precious credit report which they’ve never physically seen wont get tarneshed so that they can keep extending themselves on fake money called credit so that they can keep repeating the evil steps A thru F. And all this day by day, paycheck by paycheck, quarter by quarter, and I KNOW they only dream about getting back to a time when they moved at their own pace. “I dont fantasize about industrial breakdown, I wait for it.” “I dont need to return to Hunter-Gatherer, I want to HAVE to return…either by methods apocolyptic or viral.” -shaman. Read the Unibomber manifesto and tell me what YOU think. Money is great, and you need not combat that. There was a wise Paleo-lithic who was so efficient at hunting, either cuz game was sparce or that new design, that there began to be a horde. These “man” was so efficient, that he began to accuulate susstinence throughout the winter. And along with his gatherer “woman,” even though probably 1/2 of all women were out there hunting as well, he began to accumulte a wealth of commodities. He had something others wanted (food, warmth, survival), others had something he wanted (service). Commerce was born. Labour furthered this. Soon, we began to employ our children to enhance our lives. Holy shit, what a tangent!
What I’m trying to say, is that there are some promising advantages to living in a complex of comerce as well as some disadvantages, which we neednt go into. As well there are some advantages to living in a place where events and the people who ive them….take…their…time. I, for one, miss this. Tucson was a place where life was hitting the snooze bar while still conscious of advances. And either way, how the hell could you get out of that bed on the wrong side? In a town that operated at that pace, there was plenty of time for reflection. You could not only see things coming, but you were able to deal with them in the pace that all things in this life deserved. There was a multitude of vehicles to explore the avenues life. The only thing that I would worry about now that I’ve seen the other side is that there is too much a delay between the advances and the tangibilities of those advances. Are there enough stimuli? Are there enough other things to do without gluing yourself to the world’s outside events?