I’ve been thinking about this a lot since the recent news of the proposed then abandoned “convenience charge” that Verizon supposedly wished to impose on its customers who chose to pay their bill online or by telephone. Now, I won’t get into the ridiculousness of a company as large as Verizon needing to charge a “convenience fee” for paying bills online to stay afloat (especially when every other company under the sun is practically forcing online billing on its customers to cut back on mailing costs), as I’m sure that point has been obvious to everyone familiar with the scenario. What strikes me more about both the Verizon convenience charge and Bank of America debit card fee situations is a little further below the surface. I’m not usually much of a conspiracy theorist (though I do think they’re fun to think about), but the more I think about these situations, the more I start to feel like a Jeff Goldblum character (pre-Law and Order).  

I think Verizon and Bank of America, for their ultimate, long-term advantage,  intentionally drew the ire of their customers so they could instill false senses of hope and power in the American consumer. 

Think about it. I’ll use the analogy of a toddler who is up past his bedtime. He’s clearly tired. His eyelids are tiny anvils. Most likely he’s stationary after having exhausted his second, and maybe third, winds. He’s staying awake for one reason: his mother told him to go to sleep. We Americans are rebellious and independent from the start. We want things our own way, and we want to feel like we have an influence over our lives, from the smallest decisions to the biggest. It’s a nice feeling to be empowered. The little boy is just discovering his independence. He doesn’t have to go to bed just because his mother told him to. He has the right and ability to defy. We all appreciate that right and ability. It’s one of the biggest pieces of the “American Spirit.” Each year, millions of Americans celebrate Independence Day by lying to salesmen and proceeding to break minor laws about firework control repeatedly in back yards, streets, and parks around the country. 

Eventually though, after weeks or years of sharpening his skills of defiance, the boy’s mother stops forcing the issue, or the rebellion loses its fun, and the boy goes to bed at a reasonable hour without prodding. He’s given the false sense that he’s won the war and set his own bed time, but the fact is that it’s a product of a daily conditioning that’s been going on since he was born. We sleep at night, and wake up in the morning to go to school or work or whatever else we do. The same boy that threw a fit at age eight when his mother suggested he sleep when he was tired will be begging for a bed on a Saturday morning with he’s sixteen. But it will be on his terms (or so he’ll think). 

That’s what scares me with these recent situations with Bank of America and Verizon. It’s a lot easier to accept potentially negative consequences when you think you’ve got the power to change them or that it was your power that created them. Sure, I’m glad to not have to pay a convenience fee every time I pay my phone bill online for the time being, but I’m also extremely concerned about what exactly I’m being set up and conditioned for. 

A quote that is particularly striking me this evening, and one that I’d like to meditate on a little bit, is spoken by the title character as he faces some characters he’s known in the past who confront him about his failed ambitions:

It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man—that question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing at the present moment in these uprising times—whether to follow uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and re-shape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I failed. But I don’t admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though that’s how we appraise such attempts nowadays—I mean, not by their essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes.

I think one of the reasons I liked this novel so much was because of quotes like these, and the entire predicament of the title character. He’s a man stuck between two worlds, born into one, and trying desperately to force his way into the other. Though, in the end, he fails, his ambition is admirable, and he is somehow, for the most part, able to maintain a shred of hope to nearly the very last, finally becoming jaded just before his sad and premature death. This hope is something I hope to also maintain through to the last, and while my results will hopefully be less tragic than Jude’s, I know that these failed ambitions are a very real part of life.

Where Jude and I grow apart in our worldview, and where I am perhaps most disappointed in him as a character, is in the paragraph that follows the above quote:

However it was my poverty and not my will that consented to be beaten. It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do in one; and my impulses—affections—vices perhaps they should be called—were too strong not to hamper a man without advantages; who should be as cold-blooded as a fish and as selfish as a pig to have a really good chance of being one of his country’s worthies.

While I agree that it seems vices are much more difficult to overcome for those of the lower economic classes, I simply cannot, or rather, I will not, accept that Jude’s ambitions failed on account of his poverty rather than his will. Indeed he had more will than many, and likely more will than many more financially fortunate men who in fact achieved the goals he originally set for himself, but his continual acquiescence to vice is ultimately what does him in. Sure, we all have our vices. I am no different. But we must, at some point, learn to resist them at critical junctures where our opportunities are made available. Perhaps this difference of opinion is a product of the different times in which our lives our set—-the United States in 2010 is certainly much different from Victorian England—-but I, perhaps naively, choose to believe that a person of any socioeconomic standing can achieve his ambitions if his will is strong enough both to continue pursuing the goal, and to withstand the temptation of vices (at least when it is most necessary) that would serve to derail him, at least in the time and place that I am so fortunate to be living in.

Perhaps I have not yet lived enough.

But I  wish to maintain this hopefulness, be it naivety, stupidity, or gross optimism, so that I can continue to believe in the dreams on which I and my contemporaries have been raised. Should that hope, that dream, that belief system that is so instilled in children of the working class by parents who hope their progeny will have it better, fade away and cease to exist, I, like Jude, will fall into irrevocable obscurity, and I should think that I would meet an end lacking none of the epic tragedy so described in his final pages. 

So I’m thinking about what these two things had in common and I’m left with this: the working-class. The class which I’m proud to be a part of and that consists of all the people with whom I grew up with and most of the people that I’ve become close friends with and the people who I want to stay in touch with regardless of how much we have in common because there’s one unspoken and unseen bond that is just there and always will be.

I want to study and write about the working-class in literature.

So I started to do a little research to see where this kind of study was going on so I could read some stuff to get my feet wet, and guess what the first freaking page that pops up is? This. Yup. Fucking YSU. Unbelievable… except… not at all.

So I do a little more research and find this. Yup. Pittsburgh. Not even a little surprised. Not sure why this never occurred to me in all my months/years of soul-searching, but it’s been a pretty wild trip and I wouldn’t trade it.

Who says we’re not all products of our environment? Thank god for that.

Here goes nothin’.

Recently I’ve been thinking about the following belief that I hear being passed around by people whose minor screw-ups have left them feeling down, or who have given in to a rekindled old flame, or who made good on a broken promise, or whatever: that everyone deserves a second chance. While I definitely see where this kind of thinking comes from, and I cannot refute the belief that, at times, second chances can be warranted and make all the difference, I have to ultimately disagree. Not everyone deserves a second chance. In fact, I think that most people don’t deserve a second chance, and it’s a mistake to just hand them out for free.

Second chances, like everything else in this life, should be earned.

Sure, sometimes people screw up and it’s either a mistake or the product of some kind of unalterable unfortunate circumstance that causes that person to act outside of his or her normal range of behavior. Even in this case, the mistake should not be overlooked. If someone wrongs you, they’re certainly capable of doing it again. Suppose that same circumstance arises again. Will that person a.) learn from his or her mistake, correct it, and respond accordingly, or b.) allow that unfortunate circumstance to again dictate a harmful response or action? How the person responds to this criteria should dictate whether or not the second chance be granted.

I know that life is a long time, and nobody’s perfect, but just as those good seeds who work hard to correct mistakes and improve themselves day-to-day who deserve every opportunity to succeed and atone past sins, there are those who will simply take advantage of each opportunity that is presented unearned, who do not deserve these second chances.

I’m reading For Whom the Bell Tolls for the first time, and it’s reminding me of why Hemingway is my favorite author to read. Chapter Thirteen has one of the best descriptions of love that I’ve ever read paired with a meditation on quality of life and trying to get the same out of seventy hours that you’d hope to get out of seventy years. That’s some good stuff, and it’s serving as my motivation for the day.

Why not try to get seventy years’ worth of life out of every seventy hours? It might be tough to keep this pace up for long, but I think it would be admirable to try. I’ve always been of the opinion that really living life is about experiencing everything it has to offer, the ups and the downs, and this fits right in with that. Since we never know how long we’ve got, we might as well try our best to cram as many of those experiences into as short a time as possible. So what if we age quicker because of it. I know I wouldn’t care much to die a few years earlier at the expense of having lived a life full to the brim with experience. Hell, I think I’d trade ten years of floating along for one year chock full of everything I wanted to do.

The cliche that comes to mind from my days as an athlete is “leave it all on the field,” which basically translates into holding nothing back and giving it everything you’ve got while you’ve go the chance to give it. And so, with Hemingway’s Robert Jordan as my inspiration, I’ve decided to try my best to live intensely in every way possible. Not that I’ve necessarily been holding back on any of my emotions or feelings, as I’ve actually made great strides recently in embracing these things, but I think there are times when I, like most people I know, get a little content and relaxed and take some time—days, hours, minutes, whatever—for granted.

So, here’s to taking a more active role in experience-making and the continued embrace of each and every opportunity for life.

Everything always happens at once. That’s a theme of this world. Everything is always happening. All the time. That’s a big thing to think about. It becomes especially apparent in my little, relatively meaningless life when all of the things that I think are “big” at the moment start to pile up and culminate into one afternoon or morning or hour, and I get overwhelmed with the feeling that I’ll never get to it all, that I’ll never get it all done, that there’s just not enough time in the day and just not enough power in my brain and just not enough motivation in my gut and I’m screaming at the people who can’t drive and I want to start fights with random strangers who haven’t even looked at me funny and all of the little world that I’ve built for myself seems to be crashing in on itself and I just don’t think I’ll ever be able to lift it and then…

Stop.

That’s when I take a little time out. And that’s where I am now. I’m taking a time out.  I’m sitting and writing and thinking, but not about the same things I was thinking about before; I’m thinking about this. Right now. Right in front of me. And that’s a good thing to think about.

I just finished reading To the Lighthouse again, and I liked it even more than before. It’s one of those books that rolls along like a snowball, picking up new meanings and adding them to its mass with each read-through. The thing that particularly jumped out to me during the class discussion last night was the use of perspective to show that “bigness” and “littleness” and meaningfulness and triviality are all relative. The first section takes up over 120 pages, yet very little happens. Mrs. Ramsay makes a dinner and James doesn’t get to go to the lighthouse. That’s pretty much it. The second section takes up 20 pages and everything happens. Death, destruction, chaos. Ten years in twenty pages. The trick to it all is that the first section is told from within the minds of characters who assign great meaning to events that, when paired with the events of the second section, seem incredibly menial. But to the characters, these events aren’t menial at all, they’re life. That’s what we get. All we’ve got is our one little perspective and sometimes, sure, it’s good to try and step back and see the bigger picture, but that’s not really what we’re made for. We naturally get tunnel vision and focus on making dinner, or taking a trip, or writing a paper, or making a presentation, or any of the other trillion little things that we do in a given lifetime.

So, when I got overwhelmed today with all of these things that are so close in front of me that they looked like goddam planets hurtling towards my precious little atmosphere, I stopped and took a shower and wrote this entry to bring myself back down to earth. Because the next thing you know, ten years will be passing in twenty pages.

Seriously. My apartment is fucking freezing. This probably has something to do with the plummeting temperatures, my shattered kitchen window, and my malfunctioning steam heat. Yeah, that’ll do it.

Rather than reading Heart of Darkness, or Sister Carrie (both of which are due to be completed by tomorrow), I’m trying to write another (hopefully more coherent) entry on this much neglected allotment of cyperspace to which I stake my claim. That said, it’s going to be a busy semester.

On top of being freezing, my apartment is in pretty sad shape. I’ve got one thing hung up on my walls: an LP (Oasis’ The Masterplan). I’d like to get some more and hang them up around the place, spaced out evenly and breaking up some of the white space, but I don’t have any more frames right now. I’ll have to get some. Add that to my list of things to do that I’ll probably never get around to. I’ve got a growing desire to settle into a place. This place is fine, but I know it’s temporary. I don’t know if it’s a part of growing older, or if it’s some sort of effect from the winter weather, but I’m recently feeling very “nest-y” (to steal a term from my girlfriend) in that I really want a more permanent living situation. The trouble with all of this is two-fold: 1., I don’t have the money to buy a home; and 2., I’m in a very temporary situation as far as livelihood is concerned in my second of four semesters in a master’s program. My roots, for now, will have to remain firmly ensconced within the recesses of my shoes, as I remain unbound and free to roam as life would dictate.

One day, I’ll have walls covered in LPs, a garden that needs tending, and a driveway to wash my car in. I look forward to this day.

Eighty-six four hundred seconds in a day.

It’s celebration time in Tennesseeee.

Coffee flavored soda pop bottle.

A lioness in the wilderness.

Limitless potential.

Chris Young.

I feel like the Easter Bunny in the Dr. Pepper commercial. Buggin’ out. There’s a dog on your roof, man!

I need groceries. Meat and cheese and milk and bread.

Bang your head; metal health’ll drive you mad.

Buying what I’m selling, light it up. It’s gonna be a long drive.