GRASPING AT TRUTH, MR. VOOS

Originally published on April 28, 1996

Ben. Welcome back. Yes, I did receive your last note warning of your transitional silent period. I also keep a hard copy (paper) file system, and so I was able to dig up your last note with ease. I would very much be interested in hearing all about your problems reaching me. I've been weathering a series of machine-sensitive download anomalies myself and the more I study a problem, hashing over software and hardware variables and contradictions the less I discover I understand. So you might as well throw whatever details you have the time or the desire to divulge onto the heap.

The last thread that you suggested we begin to articulate is the one which portrays our differences in taste, so here goes a short list of truly disgusting habits I have:

I enjoy cultivating and picking scabs off sores. Must have begun when I was a scab-infested kid. I feast on red meat, pork, shellfish and other salt-and-fat infested poisons. I am fifty pounds overweight. I drink cheap, watered down beer, preferably Carling's Black Label. I despise heavy brown beers. No liquid can surpass an iced tea. Never drink coffee. No drugs except an occasional cannabis noblesse oblige. I am a fascist neatnik in the household domain (everything in its place, and shoes off at the door) but tend to be somewhat a slob (wearing the same few rags day after day) when it comes to personal hygiene. I love women and have often stated over the years that I interpret the quality of my own life by the quality of the women in it, yet I also subscribe to many mysogynist fundamentals.

I am a coward, and have no aims to change the world for the better or the worse, yet I rage at the sorry state of American inner cities, particularly the fear-inducing gangster-driven neighborhood I live in today. I wish Jesus Christ would finally get his act together and clean up this mess he claimed to care about, or get off his high horse and shut the fuck up. I am against everything. I am against nothing, except what bores me. I am always bored. I loathe myself. I think I am a genius but what good is genius without a plan? I adore the American game of baseball. I despise what millionaires have done to the game. I do not watch boxing, very little football, even less basketball, no hockey, uh, soccer, just in passing. I quit playing sports as an adult because I quit leaving the house because my neighborhood is vibrating with thugs challenged by the color of my eyes and the thickness of my skin. I often know I am paranoid. I often know I am the paupered prince of the sublime cognoscenti. I believe the United States is the best country on the globe. I believe the US is in deep shit of its own making, and is squandering its birthright as a nation with all its emphasis on liberal guilt, and little on historic notions of personal responsibility. I believe all states must be consdervative, all populations liberal. I believe all political systems by nature are corrupt because human beings are corruptible, and are part of the animal kingdom where the fierce outmaneuver the weak as a matter of science. Religions ARE the opiate of the people, yet opium is a better gift to humanity than Darwinian logic. I am not apathetic concerning these passions of the political world but I am passionate concerning the apathy this world calls political action. Enough for now.

My last good reading was THE RECOGNITIONS by William Gaddis. I can't seem to read science fiction. I hate rock-n-roll because that is the only music I love. Yet it seems to render meaningless the battlefields of the soul defaulting to hero worship and a feverish fetishism of the tools of the trade. I do fancy sorrowful Appalachian music, circa 1920-30s. I've never wanted to own a gun until last week. I guess I am a burning conservative, or simply am incrementally with each passing year more afraid of random or racially motivated violence than I was in my innocent youth. Despite his opinions on just about everything and despite how his hirelings treated me over the phone a few years ago when I requested an interview for my publication (my plans to bus out to Kansas were hissed) I still can appreciate William S. Burroughs, although Ginsberg has lost favor with me. I am a book addict, but have had little time recently to indulge my habit outside of E-mail and computer manuals, and that's okay by me. I believe scientists are just as vigorous the liar as the mystics, and though I believe honesty is the only policy worth policing, I argue the side of the mystic against ruthless scientist, and the side of science against thumbnail mysticism. Most poverty in this country is self-induced and self-perpetuating, while the overlords all across the board are gouging the shrinking middle. Joblessness is a sin against self, yet I will not hold a job because of the exploitative and debilitating nature of the capitalistic set. I do however expect people to provide for themselves with work. Lazy bums do not gain my sympathy, no matter what excuses they think they are entitled to exploit.

That said, I do believe Ben, I have given you enough fodder (both explicit and veiled) to crush this relationship if you have a mind to do such a thing. Our differences, eh? The mystic's queue within me suggests that despite any cosmetic differences, even those of philosophic, political, artistic, or fleshly configurations, we will not discover many differences between us because like attracts like at this succinct level of coincidental modulation. In other words, we have sustained a conversation already more thorough and less pretentious than most people accomplish in a lifetime of chatter among themselves, with little reason other than a need for self-expression and a willingness to participate as another exerts himself in a similar fashion. Of course, I prefer to march to the beat of a humble arrogance opposed to the march of an arrogant humility. As to your revealed need for quiet introspection, I say carry on. Write when and what you can. Don't force yourself. Bottom line: I need you about as much as you need me, but like mortality, communication resolves chaos not nearly as often or as brilliantly as it disrupts order.

GT