Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Chapter One - 0

So begins the book of Gip.

I asked myself one day "Why do we exist? To consume the flesh of the world? The sweat of children? The tears of hungry mothers? We are thieves. All of us. You say you aren't a thief? Then you must be a fool. I am a fool too. Yet I decided to do something about it.

I didn't plan on doing what I ended up doing, and I sure as hell didn't plan on going where it took me. I think that is common for a lot of people, especially nowadays. I can say I was one of the original apostles of the the Prophet. Not a lot of people remember that these days. That's fine with me. I like living as much as the next person.

For me, the journey started before I became unemployed. I became "Aware" that something was very, very wrong in the world. My problem was I couldn't articulate it then. I tried, and like learning a new language by teaching yourself with books an audio clips I learned simple phrases. I look back now and think of them as identity passwords. For example I would be hanging out a microbrew with some friends. There would be a group of women who stopped off from work there. We would merge our groups, if we were lucky, and often enough we were, we would begin "Identifying" ourselves.

Some guys would go the sports route. The bike thing was especially big. That was a tough one to fake. You had to have the body to back it up. There wasn't a lot of fat bikers if you know what I mean. Then there was what you did for a living. In DC that was huge back then. Mating was done by first making sure your object of attraction wasn't broke. So you would talk about what university or whatever you attended. Then that would lead into what you did for a living. Then there was how you graded out politically. Sarah Pallin wannabees did not usually fuck stoners and vice versa. I was lacking in sports and universities so I had to make the Green, sensitive poet thing work for me. Since I was making decent money than my other failures were usually overlooked. At least for the first fifteen minutes of conversation.

The problem was I wanted to scream "The world is dying!" That didn't go over really well the one time I tried it. Especially as I could never remember all the cool statistics the Green doomers could recite casually. It was just something I knew in the very marrow of my being. So basically, yeah, I want home alone a lot. If I got an email address or, if I was Mr. Magic that night, a cell phone number. The rest of the social contact/networking options, well, the truth was I hated them. In fact I often forgot to charge up the Blackberry my job had given me. Like one of my bosses said when I told him for third time why he was unable to contact me on a weekend by my cell "I don't know if you're a rebel or an idiot Thomas. Start charging your fucking cell phone." I would reply "Okay. You got it" but I never did. I also did not have a Facebook page, twitter, text, or like cats. Once that became clear it was usually time to watch their eyes start searching the crowd for someone else.

edited

7 comments:

  1. Nova --

    I look forward to seeing where this goes. Know that in some circles, at least on the west coast, a "burner" is somebody who's a regular participant in the Burning Man festival out in the Nevada desert -- clothing optional, drugs likely, alternative creativity and symbolic destruction of the old.

    Or -- maybe that's entirely appropriate.

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  2. Hey Booomer,

    Nice. My first comment here! Yes, I am going to borrow a bit from that I think.

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  3. "you're" --> "your" fucking cell phone

    (You're welcome!)

    Great voice. But careful starting a religion -- you may end up like LRH...

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  4. DCRogers,

    Thanks. Oh, I will keep that in mind but I always wanted a reason to wear a monks robes.

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  5. I always wanted a big cloak myself. I had one as a kid out of black wool. Heavy bugger and you really did melt into the shadows with it. But then I outgrew it,lol.
    Q? Is Gip pronounced like gyp in gypsy? Seemed kinda like a Burner-style connotation...
    Cool- more stuff to entertain here, Thanks N.
    JO:)

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  6. More like Pig backwards :)

    Yeah, I always look at the cloaks at the Renfes

    Expensive and I can never justify to myself a reason to buy one...yet.

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  7. ... Oh Great!

    Now I have another permanent link to add to my internet options startup group...

    Actually I'm not displeased... Keep 'em coming Nova! You write really good stuff!

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