By JP
Malig
ANGER seems to be the
sole emotion that I feed on these days. No, make it rage. Homicidal rage, to be
precise.
What ticks me off? A lot. A life bereft of privacy, work being copied and
plagiarized by nincompoops and dimwits, hacked Internet accounts, stupid radio
disc jocks, inane television ads, spam in my e-mail accounts, deleted messages
intended for me, more stupid tabloids, the world according to
Nietszche.
On a postitive note, I’ve been feeding on the excess rage and am
channeling it to writing productively again. What do I write about these days?
Manuscripts of new articles, essays, poetry and even short fiction again. At the
moment, I have finished several pieces I worked on at home these past two
weeks.
It keeps me in control. It allows me to release the rage without
murdering a stupid moron and ending up in jail in the process. Just me and my
old trusty typewriter, as I clack away on it in my room at home often until the
early morning.
Poetry – handwritten – eases the solitude. It
numbs the otherwise surreal world of “Ed TV” meets “Enemy of the
State”.
I’ve also been catching up on a bit of reading, mostly on religion and
faith, contemporary literature and urban sociology – not necessarily in that
order.
Nope. No Prozacs. Grow up, will you?
According to American urban/suburban planner and sociologist Christopher
Alexander, what I’m going through at the moment is a classic case of
pathological individualism or autonomy-withdrawal syndrome, one of the worst
consequences of modern life.
Most people, Alexander says, use their homes to escape from the outside
world and practice social withdrawal as a form of self-protection. Eventually,
withdrawal becomes a habit. People reach a point when they become unable or
unwilling to let others penetrate their own private world.
Alexander adds that extreme individualism and autonomy commonly develop
unconsciously or as a consequence of self-protection from
stress.
Stress, you say? Life has been a stressful cartoon show for a lot of us
and I honestly empathize with a friend who still overdoses on Saturday morning
cartoons.
Seriously, it has always been a struggle to keep the angry young man in
check. Buddhist readings allowed him to grow up, but it seems he is regressing
again. Same verse as the first few episodes, only worse.
I think I’ll just stomp to smithereens the radio I tore apart a couple of
weeks ago.
25 June
2000