"Oh, the subject [of my book] would not matter so much. It would be merely an opportunity for me to weave my thoughts around some theme and to enjoy the good fortune of having a great deal of free time. The chief thing in my case would be the tone - a tone not of scholarship but a decorous mean between respect and intimacy, between gravity and playfulness, a friendly communication and utterance of sundry things that I believe I have experienced and learned."
Magister Ludi
Hermann Hesse
The legacy that I believe I pay tribute to in this digital apocalypse is this 'decorous mean between gravity and playfulness." I have three stray dogs as my audience and soon a litter of doomed puppies will join us. This confederacy of dunces laugh at all my jokes in my decaying home, my van awaits other adventures. Queretaro...Oaxaca, Land of the 7 Mole. Guatemala, the legends of the Maya and Aztec ghosts. Futility has never been a strong characteristic but my mental decay has me convinced all is futile. What does one do and why? The mob mindset/conventional wisdom/The Big Con are all good excuses but when you strip them away and get out of line to get your jelly donut or walk past the neon spirits lounge, what then? Knecht also saw the futility...actually he spoke those words two days before he died...so he was honest when he saw his planned work in the light of history, a few jokes, dogs barking mad in the moonlight, floods and the ravages of time would erode his work like so many Maya Codices. What would someone think of his self-important lectures in 2000 years, if they survived? He didn't care. As he entertained himself with the words of dead and dying men so Oggy itches his sores with dead and dying words.
I'm coming up on a full year in the Oil Field with knees that need to be returned to Walmart. This industry has humbled me because it ignores everything but fossil fuel reclamation. Nothing else exists but this goal and men swarm the desert all day and night, they invade the waters, the earth in their quest. One million barrels of oil per day is not a goal, but a guarantee. And that's only in this small area of Texas. Do you understand what that means? Like digital memory doubles every few years, so does oil consumption. There is no intelligent design to it anymore, it's predestined along with any consequences. So, how many barrels of oil worldwide? Maybe a billion? A billion barrels of oil? After one year here in The Shit I know the dedication it takes to get that done and it's the kind of dedication that is unstoppable. It's beyond dedication; it's an all-consuming obsession. All of Saudi Arabia produces 10 million barrels a day. You and I, everyone we love, everything, will one day become fuel for future space ships... no, not that glamorous....future fuel to power washing machines to clean dirty orgy bedsheets. That's a guarantee.
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