It's here again. I N S O M N I A . My old friend. I remember back when I was alcoholic I'd drink a shit ton to pass out but then I would inevitably be up again and drinking again. Fill a tumbler full of red win and drink and write until I felt like passing out again. Well, here I am again. I MUST write. It saves me.
I had been wanting to write on bourgeois for a while. I got a mind full of Marx and a heart full of the C.N.T. and F.A.I. Proletariat 'til I die! But, then I got invited out to play golf by a multi-millionaire friend. I was raised at the country club. I like the guy so I did not want to refuse. It was a nice country club. I'm glad he paid. I am too poor to be playing golf really and I think he knows this. It would have been a big expense for me and it's a drop in the bucket for him. That doesn't mean I feel entitled to it but I think socially in that situation if a multi-millionaire invites a broke guy out to play golf he's got the bill? So, my friend was not the wage slave he was the OWNER of a business for 30 years until he got tired of California sold his share of the company and moved here. Then some Army corporate sales guy joins up with us. You don't find too many non-conservatives on a nice country club. Can I really blame them though? I was thinking in their shoes I might be a conservative too. After a few beers after the round the sales guy was opening up about how he didn't like his job and felt trapped. He called it golden hand cuffs. He's got shares in the company and compensation and he hates the traveling and he's got his family. He was 44. It was kind of interesting to see. It's something that I kind of learned at 30 and am continuing to learn. This guy is not really trapped by "golden handcuffs." He's trapped by property. He's got the 2 kids, he wants the certain house, he wants to play golf at country clubs. Which by the way there is no fucking sport more bourgeois than golf? Fucking manicured landscaping, all of it to get a little ball in a little hole. There's the immaculate club house and all the wage slaves and all of the tipping. I had a blast though. I can't lie. Out on this immaculate piece of land smoking a fine cigar among fellows.
I am like pseudo-fake proletariat. I grew up privileged. I was technically below the poverty line last year but not really. I live with my parents in a 3 bedroom townhouse in a neighborhood full of rich retirees and rich professionals. I don't pay rent. My parents probably covered about $1,000 worth of food last year. But, I can see the bourgeois for what it is. The vulgarianism the phillistinism. I wonder if people on LP have this dream of the house, the 2.5 kids and the white picket fence? I never did but I've probably said it a few times I had the dream of being the business unit president and living in a penthouse in Lincoln Park, Chicago. I really felt for that salesman we golfed with. He was talking about having a meltdown with the marketing department. People get accustomed to a certain way of living and they can barely keep up and anything outside of "growth and development" is unacceptable. We all except growth and development just like the corporations. If everyone grows and develops the corporation will grow and develop and the owners will pile up capital. Human development has nothing to do with money or how much stuff one can acquire.
Being out golfing though made me kind of cynical. It's such a different world out there on the country club. I knew this as a kid but I didn't really know. I had never struggled. I had never truly struggled. I reject the bourgeois. I can understand the bourgeois but I reject it. The scammed class but the proletariat is the scammed class too. My friend is not really scammed. He owned his company got out and now lives comfortably in a multi-million dollar house overlooking the water. He's got capital to spare. He doesn't really spare it. That's party why he moved to Charleston. The policy for retirees is some of the best in the country. See rich people know stuff like that.
I can dream of a classless society but I still think we are pretty far away. It will help when all the baby boomers die. Even the lefty ones... See, that is one of the reasons I can get by in political discussion because I dislike most politicians so if anyone says anyone I probably dislike them. I think the only one I like is Bernie Sanders and maybe Elizabeth Warren. But, like lefty baby boomer love Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. Actually, I started talking shit about Bill Clinton today and even my conservative friend's face kind of winced. Bill Clinton was just a neoliberal economics BITCH just like every other fucker in office for the past 30 years?
The air conditioning just kicked in. It feels good. I have air conditioning. How much of the world doesn't?
Black swallowtail and magenta flowers,
My bipolar gives me superpowers,
Manic like the sun,
Makes life more fun,
The sleep disturbances could be a sign of manic but I am tired and not energized. That cigar made me high today. I should probably avoid that poison. I was already thinking about smoking outside of the AA meeting. Coffee, God, and cigarettes it's all that I need.
I remembered a great word that goes along with bourgeois: Poshlust.
Nabokov on Poshlust:
"poshlost is not only the obviously trashy but also the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive. By describing something as 'poshlost', we pass not only an aesthetic but also a moral judgment. Everything that is true, honest, beautiful cannot be described as poshlost."
United States. Jun 07 2018 10:16. Posts 8520
