VIOLET, LA. it’s something interesting to be in the path of a madman. a con with psycotic destructive tendencies. a person (who will remain unnamed) has sent me away from HOPE, his wish was to drive me crazy and see me go. i saved him some effort, and myself the frustration of letting him take my happiness, so i left voluntarily. i refuse to work with or around him, or even to talk to him.

i moved myself to Emergency Communities (EC), a relief organization running a kitchen inside of Camp Hope (which has nothing to do with our H.O.P.E.). i’m in transition, and am thinking about working full time to occupy my time away from HOPE until i leave for the north in october. i need the money anyway, and simultaniously i may fulfill my daydreams of being a deckhand on a mississippi river barge. with october comes travels to maine and vermont and some excitement in new york city. ideally things will have calmed down at HOPE by november. i wish i could care about the outcome and well being of this unnamed person stated above, but i don’t anymore and it’s no longer my place to try. i have to let go of this one.

EC is nice, a getaway from my usual routine. sleeping alone on a mat, no close friends, simple, routine work. sweeping floors, washing dishes. perhaps this getaway is what i need anyway to quiet my mind, lose some responsibility over HOPE, regain a sense of myself.

so i went back just now and read my first entry into this journal [note: written journal, not this blog]. and i thought, at the end of my reading, that i should add my thoughts on civilization and how i’ve been inspired by reading the first few pages of derik jenson’s book, endgame.

Henry, the book’s owner, and i talked about endgame’s preface. Henry bought the book at the (literally) underground bookstore in minneapolis–mayday books, i think it’s called. we sat on my friends porch above a falafel shop on cedar avenue and talked. we joked that if you agree with derik’s twenty points stated in the preface–describing concisely just how civilization itself is, by character, unsustainable–then there’s no point in reading the whole book. you can just stop right there and tell everyone you’ve read the book because you already agree with the author.

the realization of civilization’s self-destructive nature makes me a bit depressed. but then again, it just confirms all the thoughts and questions i’ve had about the past, present, and future of organized human existance. it’s destructive by character and our lives are and always have been a speeding downward spiral. with every wonderful thing we experience or observe, there are two or more horrible things behind it, or even plainly right there to see. we are failing and always will be, buisness as usual.