One Night at Livewire

Here is something from my archives of blog starts. I think I wrote it last October before Zebulon’s turned to SoHo. My friend and former neigbour Carol would point out that I haven’t really gotten anywhere in a year.

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Livewire is a literary salon hosted every Tuesday night at Zebulon’s Lounge in Petaluma, California. I go sometimes, hoping to become part of a greater community of writers. I end up just being part of the greater community of drinkers. I arrive around 7h30. The first person I see is the contractor who thought it was totally appropriate to take over one month to do a three day job at our rental and at the end of it all, wash his underwear in the washer and dryer AFTER the new tenants had started moving in. What am I supposed to say to him? I move on.

Talk a bit to Jake, the bartender. He is doing a Masters in Psychology at SSU. Also, he is collaborating on a screenplay with various other Zebulon contributors. I ask him how that is going. He says nothing happened over the summer.

The fellow sitting next to me is introduced at the mic. He reads a story about wanking off to bare breasts in the movie Leprechaun II. How personal. How universal at the same time. What heterosexual male wouldn’t wank off to a free pair of bare breasts?

End up talking to Leprechaun-movie guy. During his reading of wanking off to whoever’s bare-breasts appear in the Leprechaun movie, he mentioned that he is working on his Masters of Philosophy. We talk about post modernism philosophy. When it started. What are the significant historic events that define the period? What period are we living in today? Who’s defining it? From which perspective do you define it? I tell him what my friend (in a pub in Ireland) once said about the USA and what a photojournalist from Southern France said about the USA. How these totally separate and different people essentially said the same thing: That the US (as a nation) acts like a rich, spoiled, insolent teenager. Somehow the US believes that “they really can change the world, and they believe in the life force of the planet, and admit that somebody’s killing it–but it isn’t them.”

The photojournalist guy in Southern France said that the rest of Western Civilization is simply waiting for the US to grow up realize that it needs to help itself first. I added that I believe the social fabric of the US is so deteriorated and frayed that it is almost beyond repair. How can you not see that by denying basic levels of public education, you are essentially inbreeding stupidity? I end up convincing myself that they can’t see it because they choose not to see it. Because they somehow think they it is their job to save the world and that it is their responsibility to take care of other nations without first taking care of themselves. And–as much as I could blog about how the entire nation of Canada doesn’t want to deal with its own insecurities caused by its Leviathan neighbour (and I will another time), I could blog that the US–as a nation–is simply one, big, codependent entity.

It’s the same old story–just on a grander scale. Focus on larger, external issues so you don’t have to face the real pain of identifying and dealing with internal issues. In fact, run around denying that you even have issues. It’s easier to just blame other nations or other groups or other people for everything that appears to be wrong instead of simply doing your own personal, introspective homework.

I am sorry Leprechaun-movie guy. I really enjoyed our conversation. It turns out though–for me–it is easier to identify with an entire nation denying codependent behaviour than it is to identify with wanking off. How sad it that?