By Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com
Basic Assumption: You the reader/listener have brains.
You used to think “When I leave High School my brains will be appreciated”.
This naive delusion helped get you through the psychological torment dished out by the bullies,
And all the other horrors that happened thanks to those deeply frazzled & disinterested teachers.
Then by the time you’re a couple of years into ‘work life’ you realize ‘High School never ends’.
Of course this was to your horror – a slow kind of creeping crystalizing horror.
Yes sadly on this godforsaken planet, most people of all ages will still hate you if you have brains and good ideas.
Your already existing decades-long-friends certainly don’t want you to have brains.
In work you realise that people would rather have the whole company fail than reward your brains.
Of course a big part of you lies to yourself – you say to yourself:
Maybe if I do this project REALLY WELL it’ll change.
Of course it never does – you were deluding yourself.
The kooky management kept promoting people with dubious IQ’s to be your boss or to boss you around.
And so the years and decades roll by.
The money stays shit and the promotions never come.
You keep doing the work of seven.
You keep doing the work of your boss.
You’ve become the ‘high price external consultant’ that is totally free.
Of course you start to drink or do drugs or womanize (or ‘man-ize’) – that’s a given.
In fact it’s almost the wise choice since you do work in a literal madhouse –
For if bad decisions are routinely made over good & intentionally so –
Then don’t be a fool to think that this isn’t a form of madness.
Why wouldn’t you blow off steam on the short weekend breaks from the asylum?
You would be stupid not to lean on at least some form of escapism.
And then suddenly the ‘cubical dilated time’ says seven years has past since you had your first day,
And you take stock – you realise you have psychologically checked out forever.
It was all like a loud dripping tap into an empty but plugged bathtub in the room above your head –
The annoyance seems endurable so you don’t make plans to remedy it –
But it will assuredly fill and then overflow through the floorboards and onto your cold head.
At this point the light has long left your eyes.
You’re probably overweight.
You probably de-facto-married someone who is also a cubicle-prisoner (with wasted brains too) just like you –
After all misery does love company –
And there’s no way you could marry the empty platitude enemy (your jailer boss the ex high school bully) is there?
Or maybe you just ‘did it all alone’ to wallow ‘Schopenhauer-ingly’ in the ambiently-anguished-atmosphere.
And as a Late-Twentieth-To-Early-Twenty-First-Century-Dweller it is almost redundant to mention this but I will –
The Corporation’s Henchmen (formerly ‘The Quacks’) have certainly loaded you with deadly anti-depressants.
Yep – I’m sorry to announce this BUT….you screwed up.
There’ no getting away from the fact.
You fell for the plan.
You fell ‘hook line & stinker’ – as the wise last century’s cartoon characters did say.
Yep – you foolishly agreed to ‘Stay in High School forever’.
Of course in theory you could have left Cubicle Fluorescent Light High School –
But they told you business was to risky and by the time you realized it wasn’t –
It was too late –
By then you were past the point of no return.
You succumbed to the ‘non-event horizon’ that is your forever ‘corporatized penal life’.
Yes the World ‘got you’ as is the plan for all us ‘Neo-Dickensians’.
I mean lets take a breath – let’s not be too harsh – they do run a great devilish ‘Mephisto PR game’.
You have to be born into an ‘insider family’ to know it before it traps your soul and your eye-glimmers.
Yes – It was a shame, it is always a shame.
You (like so many with brains) were full of potential.
You could have been something great.
Now you’re closer than ever to retirement.
The last thirty years have gone forever never to return.
And through the decades under lock and key you didn’t even have a hobby either.
You could have read the worlds books.
Knitted up a storm of bright jerseys.
Learnt to be a potter.
Got into web design.
Learnt how to speak as the Spaniards, The Russians or The Japanese do.
Done some woodworking or furniture repair.
Hell – you could have made a billion wonky-quasi-flying paper planes.
But you didn’t even do that.
But being a cerebral outsider that never finally quit the bully-favoring-cubicle-rat-race wasn’t your biggest mistake.
What you needed was a persistent low level chronic dose of freedom on tap.
For all you truly needed was not a giant company of your own –
It was not a trapper’s cave in the woods far from civilization –
But it was something small that was entirely yours.
That you could build upon.
If you had jus done that – you would still have a tiny glimmer in your eye.
And it is true that a single spark can burn down an entire tree, forest or national park is it not?
If nothing else you must have a hobby – as glib and sanctimonious and as that seems.
Now excuse me – I have (my equivalent to) a paper plane to catch.
You see – I wasn’t quite as stupid as some were,
For with these words I have retained a hobby.
But with all this quasi-sermonizing I don’t think I’m being mean either.
Just think of me as a farmer of your un-paralized and formerly non-extinguished urban eye-glimmer.
My goal is to bring a tiny part of you back to (a real) life.
Surely at your age some of you is allowed to leave Urban Cubicle Dreadnaught High School?
And I don’t think that’s too much to ask – do you?
Don’t dare lose all of that fading glimmer in your wandering screen-jaded left eye.
So go get yourself a noble hobby – and remember ‘bomb making’ is just as good as any.
You didn’t think I’d end on a mature note did you?
(Ah you know me too well!)
Anton Martin Smith Writer 