Fast Strange Times
for fast and stranger people
The world is always changing and those of us on it, we’re just struggling to adapt. Sixty years ago, we conquered the last of the tyrant kings, usurped the old and fickle gods, and really thought we had a world of peace ahead of us. Then what happens? We get Pestilences, Famine, War, and Death – not to mention all the other new breeds of horsemen – galloping across our skies and television screens, halted if but for a moment, by the strange, golden, rays, of a new dawn.
It’s those early, morning, hours; where most of us are still reeling form whatever poisons and toils we were up to during the Werewolf hours, where we dare to have faith in a better day. It’s those precious moments, spent shaking off cobwebs and cursing the cobwebs in our wallets, where the sense of revelry in life is most clearly painted. It’s a reminder of the high waves we rode, screaming into the sunrise, waving the banner of promise and hope for whatever came next.
Hope is a dangerous and powerful drug, doled out to every adolescent, every up and coming adult, but we’ve long since lost sight of the wisdom to use it properly. Now, after passing through the gates of “Adultland” – we realize the charlatans have charged us a steep price of admission. We’re hopeless and doomed, trekking through down the brightly colored walkways, pushing aside tent flaps to shell out our limited tickets to carnival headshrinkers, buying our own hope back at outrageously inflated prices.
The problem is that the modern day, street legal, pushers don’t do a thing for hope. They hand it out in neat little packages, books on tape about “Self Improvement”, motivational posters about success, and whatever else they can get their greasy little fingers on. It’s only natural though, just like everyone knows: There’s no money in a cure, only in treatment. They don’t teach you how to maintain hope, but rather happily take your money week after week, to give you the perspective as if you have it.
I’ve never been one to buy into any of that, finding that too much of whom we’re supposed is fed to us on the spoons of commercialism and the only real sense of worth that means anything in the world is predated by a dollar sign. It’s really no wonder we’ve lost sight of hope. Hope is difficult to commercialize. It’s not sensational – until you’ve lost it – and you can’t market it.
So where’s the place for hope in a world where everything we’re told that everything we need to make it on the outside world should come from a tube and be applied generously in a paste? What about everyone else, those among the crowd ill content to paint on their personality and take a pill for all their problems, these perverts to the “natural” social order? Television dramas would have you believe they’re all lost and tortured souls, in dire need of your intervention. Those who turn it away? Well society would tell you they're a ragtag band of miscreants and degenerates, blazing a mad trail of chaos and depravity that undermines everything that’s right and true in the world.
I like to imagine, if only because it helps me sleep better at night, that the same has been said of all the great Pioneers that have come before. If every cosmonaut had been socially stoned for wanting to go to space or every philosopher was cast out for interpreting new behaviors, I’d feel a lot better about this trend. Couldn’t it be said though that those among us who walk away from this socially medicated thinking – and still manage to overcome – are doing their Patriotic duty? After all, it wasn’t that long ago that a bunch of people got on a boat and sailed away to avoid religious oppression, landing in some new and alien land to forge a path all their own.
Why then, are there those would seek to treat every sickness with the same cure? Is it really that we’re all just sick as people, or is something wrong with the world? It’s the question nobody seems to want to ask, but isn’t it really past due? At what point is the price of not asking just too high? When’s does the risk of breaking social foundations finally cease to outweigh the value of forward progress?
We’re taught, at least in hypothetical principle that progress never comes without risk. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained” goes the slogan, and it’s always been true. The problem comes in when, in these modern times, we’re taught to safeguard our ventures until we’re coughing away a lifetimes worth of unused ambitions on our deathbeds and life support, sputtering and crying our eyes out at an endless list of ‘What if’ questions. It’s another side effect of having a culture run by pushers seeking to treat a sickness, and not cure a disease.
From the moment our key gets turned over in the ignition and the engine screams to life on the echoing sound of a hand slap and a crying baby, we’re burning fuel. It’s really on a matter of time before the tank runs dry. So, in a culture where it’s all about bottom lines and corner cuts to aid profit margins, which cost then becomes greater, loss or regret?
In a world gone bankrupt, what’s the harm in risk when there’s still time to heal? What’s the point of being safe, only to end up mummified by wires with all the money in the world to keep you alive until someone else with more money comes along and the greedy vultures wheel you down in the basement to live out the rest of your days in the dark and cold? That’s just outright madness.
As long as there’s time, loss can be balanced out, but regret? That’s a permanent blemish on an otherwise pristine credit score. So why slave away until the years of retirement, squirreling away nuts for the endless winter, completely ignoring the fun of spring, summer, and fall? Death or, worse yet, an addled mind, is the only surefire diagnosis for a prescription of that caliber.
It’s that kind of thinking, waiting forever, hoping that one day the price will be ‘just right’, that has those among the world who simply go out and spend labeled as frivolous - if not just outright deranged. It’s a kind of living that’s just too fast, too strange, for the average person to really understand. It’s a real ‘no holds barred’ kind of fight for everything and everything, that’s driven more than one hapless bystander into a lifetime of binge sleeping. Dreams, after all, are the hopeless mans mung bucket. It’s where all the overflow of unused hope ends up, and he’s left drooling for the scraps, rather than going straight for the source.
Still, even those bottom feeders are a step ahead of those would rather covet an existence defined by pristine health and material possession. It’s those mad fools who’re the really terrifying mass in the crowd. They tend to be fiercely territorial, and always like to keep buckets of polished rocks on hand – just waiting in the wings for whatever might challenge their particular flow.
It’s those people who embody that primal, wolverine, mentality in a way that I almost consider sacred, if not for their application. Still, I hold out hope for them. For now they’re just the holdouts, defending the walls of their personal Alamo’s, stocked to the gills with over sized televisions and barbecue grills. This, as a point of fact, is a very dangerous practice for them, as the smell of meat will often drive the locals into a savage frenzy.
It could be said though, that such a frothing chaos is healthy for the sound mind. It’s just the kind of thing that might, with a little bit of luck and a dash of that old world magic, serve as a catalyst. It’s like the first bite of a cattle prod that sends the whole herd into a hurried stampede of action.
Those on the outside of those walls, or at least those who have no desire to try and be on the inside of them, are always welcoming to this kind of horde. It’s a numbers game after all and the more of them who’re willing to come play a different game, the better. It’s those on the outside who understand the importance that hope without action, is effectively useless. They see hope for what it is – the driving force behind every great play in sports history, that list bit of fuel in the tank that eases you into the driveway, it’s what give you that strength to really pull through, no matter what life’s throwing at you.
So, here we are, outcasts in the desert, waiting on the mad rush of barbarians, drunk on the smell of cooked meat, to welcome them into the tribe. It’s here and seemingly only here, that the old wisdom from those earliest days when we were wanderlust gathering people still seems to have a real sense of weight. It’s that luring call that echoes off the canyons of our souls, harkening back to those long forgotten days. It’s the rhythm of tomorrow that stirs the heart back into motion, where it’s not just beating – but dancing.
We’re the people who never ask “What if?” but instead ask “When?” We know there’s time, we believe in making it. We’re the miscreants and degenerates your parents always warned you about. We’re the ones who you were always told would never go anywhere in life. We’re wishful thinkers and daydreamers. They’ll tell you we’re pariahs of the natural order, piranhas of the structure, all singing some strange, freaked out, song because we’re all so totally twisted on drugs we couldn’t tell you what’s evening happening.
The truth of it is that our drug? It’s just hope. It’s rawer than anything they’ll sell you at the corner store, and causes more smiles than even the most potent anti-depressant. Hope is my anti-drug. It’s the music that moves us all to dance our dance, and sing the songs the rest of the world seems to find strange. It’s hope that lets us count ourselves among the truly rich. It is hope that has helped keep us together in these times that seem almost too weird and strange for our eyes.
It’s hope that has helped us evolve from the hunched desk monkeys, still slinging fruit, into the upright free runners we are today. It’s hope that we’ve used to paint the banner under which we all ride, changing the colors whenever we get a little to close, and the Cowboys have riding out to try and gun us down or reign us in. It’s hope that puts air in the tires – which is good…because we have the gas, and there’s plenty of road for us to burn yet.
"Never underestimate the value of a well placed surprise; it’s just the kind of thing you need to keep you on your toes. That kind of training is ultimately invaluable when you find yourself teetering on the edge of madness." -N. Alexander
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