Okay, so that whole guest writer thing was kind of a bust. I'm going to get on their asses about that soon. Or maybe this is the way it's meant to be, guest writers sweeping in for a post or two, then disappearing, never to be heard from again. So they can tell their stories, whatever stories those might be, and then are gone, and when you walk down the street, you can look in the eyes of the people walking past, and never know quite for sure if you know their tragic tale, and that doubt is enough to make it real, because even if you don't know their tragic tale specifically, you know they have one, and yeah not all tragedies are the same, but you can still relate, you can still say, "Don't worry, I know, you're broken, I'm broken, let's have a broken party."And then you make out for a while.
Yeah, anyways, I was holding back on posting because I was waiting for someone else to, so I wouldn't double post and all that jazz. But yeah, I guess it's just you and me again, just like the old day, the good old days, back when there were, like, dinosaurs and shit. Dinosaurs are fuckin' rad.
Anyways, as you may have noticed, a bunch of the questions I have gotten so far (speaking of which, ask a goddamn question, peoples), just in general, have been about writing, and why I write, and et cetera. And the only real answer I could give was, "because writing is the tits." But apparently that wasn't enough for you people (WHY IS IT NEVER ENOUGH FOR YOU PEOPLE) so you made me repeat that, like, 5 times.
And I think I kind of understand now why it isn't enough, why that answer doesn't satisfy. I mean, I'm not saying that just doing something because it feels good is a bad reason for doing it. Hell, that's why I do, like, everything I do. Hedonism is the shit. Of course my hedonism seems to be less about crack and alcohol and more about meditation and alcohol, but I digress. The point is I haven't gotten close to the point yet, because the point is that it's cool to just do something because it feels good, but it's also like if I'm in the right mood, I can just as easily and have just as much fun writing about, like, fuckin' flowers and birds as I would writing about domestic abuse or something. And okay that came out wrong but I hope you get the point. I'm not saying I like domestic abuse, and yes that is a hard subject for me to write about both because it's hard to think about and I (thankfully) have no experience with it. I think I was hit once by my parents and that was when I dyed my hair blue without telling them first, and that was more like something I'd do with my friends. What I am saying is that the subject matter of my writing has very little to do with my enjoyment of the actual writing, except that it's funner to think about flowers and bullshit like that than problems in the world.
And yeah, the world has a lot of problems. That's a given. Everything, or almost everything, is pretty terrible. I mean, we can all do our part to help things out, I'm drinking fair-trade coffee right now, for example. And I'm mostly doing that because the coffee business is scary as hell and it's tasty. But even fair trade coffee is killing us, poisoning us, because of how far it must be shipped and the comparatively low shipment sizes which means that less is on each boat which means more boats are needed which adds carbon emissions and greenhouse gases which'll lead to Greenland splitting apart and sinking and oh god we are all going to die. Being a good person nowadays has become a bit of a Sophie's Choice, because we can either fuck over the third world, or fuck over the environment, and even that's ignoring the problems in our backyards. The pain and poverty and suffering even in places like Montreal is absurd.
What I'm saying is that the world needs saving. That is a given, that is a presupposition, the world needs a saviour, it needs righteous might, it needs a riot, a cleansing flame, it needs anger and fury that'll be aimed towards destroying all the right things. What I'm also saying is that I don't think I can be a part of that charge. I know people who are political, who are passionate, who care about the problems of the world, who attack homophobes and save the environment, and I agree with them, (how could I not?) and I support them, and I sign their petitions, and I try to help where ever I can, but I was never able to actually join their groups, to discuss these problems, to hold the petition up to other people to sign. And I don't know why, I don't know what sort of fucked up person that makes me that I can't care enough about this, to devote my life to solving these problems, to relieve this suffering. But, for whatever reason, through some fault in my character, I can't, I can't save the world.
But I realized today in the shower what I can do. I can't save the world, but I can help remind people that the world is worthy of being saved. I don't know man, it's mad easy to see the world, with all it's problems and pain and suffering and say it's past saving, that there's nothing we can do make it beautiful and whole again. But okay I guess that's the point of what I write, in a way? I write about birds and flowers and true love and kittens and magicians because that makes me happy, and because that's part of the world, and the world is awesome and fantastic because it has to be to accommodate such awesome and fantastic things. So yeah I guess that's not why I write, but why I write what I write, or why I will write what I want to write, or maybe this is just another excuse to not actually become politically active. Anyways, the point is, I am not going to save the world, I just want to remind people that the world is worth saving, no matter how broken and wonderful it gets.
PEACE OUT!
lee
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