by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com
Remember back to when you were at school?
Now I am not a mean man….BUT
At least half the kids were so disruptive & stupid,
That they could barely write their name at the top of the exam, test, or pop quiz.
And of course they sent some good teachers to their ends wits – and/or alcoholism & early retirement.
All those troublesome people left school and went into the workplace.
Contrary to what your mind wants to tell you –
They did not disappear at all.
They went into big faceless companies for ‘cubicle jobs’ just like you did.
It’s not that your were ‘dumb’ to do this – it’s that you have no choice when ‘coming of age’ –
That’s the de-facto law – you can sell out as a wage slave or not and live under a bridge.
And through some weird twist of fate,
About how the world has intellectual degraded,
Or just some giant cosmic inside joke,
They (the troublesome dummies) were far more likely to end up your boss than you theirs.
Ps and to make this clear: I’m all for ‘kindly dummies’ – ’tis the ‘bastardy dummies’ in my crosshairs.
–
You see no one liked a ‘brainiac’ a high school,
And I’m sure it’s not news for you – but they don’t like one after high school either.
You see the world is so backward that they’d rather destroy the day-to-day world,
Than allow someone with brains to be in a stock-standard leadership position,
In a stock standard concrete cubicle-land position,
In some god-forsaken-randomized-grey-cubicle-obsessed-zombified-mega-metropolis –
If you will excuse the flagrant artistic-license-inbued-verbosity.
Why do think it is that nothing ever works these days?
Why do you think terrible customer service is the norm?
Why do you people lose their shit and flip out at the drop of a hat?
It’s far more of a ‘bad gag’ than a ‘mistake-by-chance’.
Somewhere along the line the dumb kids were handed the ‘keys to the city’ and nice shoes,
And you were handed some boot polish while you sat in the dirt and read Kierkegaard.
And when they said ‘Yo egghead – shine my shoes’ – you complied meekly.
And as the years rolled by you grew sick of shining the boots of the dummies,
So you slowly dropped out of society.
After all – you were human – you could only take so much.
Now you sit in rags and read Schopenhauer,
Now you shine your own shoes but they have holes in them.
And as you wearily turn the dead philosophers’ pages you tend to agree wholeheartedly.
Sometimes you deeply reflect on yourself, the pages, and the world you’ve seen so far.
Boot-polish-days over – you allow your mind ‘total creative control’ to wander endlessly.
You wonder whether the story of ‘God vs Satan’ is actually true.
After all – surely all this suffering you’ve had is for a stoically good reason?
Sometimes of course it’s all a bit too much to handle –
We all have our good and bad days.
But luckily Marcus Aurelius is always there on your shelf, desk or floor,
To help you pay your rent,
And finally climb your sad carcass out of bed. .
Sure its midday or even later – but who really cares?
At least you still haven’t done yourself in.
After all you’ve given The Devil more than enough already –
Did you not play – via coercion mind – his stupid games for decades?
You bowed down to the dummies in charge for many a moonrise –
Yet you didn’t even go full-on ‘Postal’ – well apart from that one time anyway.
That long self-denial of your human needs was a minor miracle in itself – a true act of self-sacrifice.
As you think of all these things you don’t flinch.
You merely turn the page as you sit outside in the sun, wind, and then rain.
Christ! – Perhaps in the end you got what you wanted!
‘Degradation trip’ or not , you have survived – have you not?
Sometimes you wish you were one of them dummies and you immediately blush –
Despite there being no one around you – so far as you can tell that is.
You tell yourself things are good.
You’re now ‘happily living on the outskirts of hell’.
(that is away from Metropolis-Cubical-Zone Sector 23-G).
At least that’s what you tell your solitary friend,
Who visits once a month or so – if your lucky.
You’re pretty sure he’s (or she) is real.
Or have you just become another ‘Forty-Plus Frederick Nietzsche’?
(i.e. a formerly top-tier wise but now a shackled ‘madman’?)
And a madman of course never can see that going or have become quite mad.
It all depends whether they write about you one day or not.
But to hazard a guess, statistically you’ll probably be known as a ‘book-wormed weirdo’.
So learn to be happy with that –
As I have become.
The ‘Book-wormed-Weirdo rules ok?
Well he still draws breath anyway.
Anton Martin Smith Writer 