More Correspondence From The Cocoon

'Sup, it's ya boy Hidey-Hoh again. Since writing that last piece, my chest has been free for other stuff to get on it. So I'm writing a follow-up.

"Do I know? No."

Been blazing through [mostly] early 30's movies on Criterion Channel before they leave on the 30th. Some favorites include Union Depot, Three on a Match, Blondie Johnson, Lawyer Man,
Footlight Parade, and Night Nurse, which as of writing this paragraph I finished watching about an hour ago. Wowzy. Fucking great picture.

I've been a good little cinema boy this month, haven't I? And cinema's been kind to me in return. Also among that Criterion criteria, I've been moved by the gothic passions of Peter Kominsky's 1992 adaptation of Wuthering Heights, and had a real groovy scream with Dracula A.D. 1972.

And outside of that app, I sat stirred in constant awe, joy and tears by not one but two watches on a single digital rental of a movie I honestly should have bought the blu-ray of the second time I saw it some years ago, 2008's Speed Racer.

I remember '08 for Iron Man, The Dark Knight, and Hancock Four Christmases Pineapple Express. However, Wikipedia tells me that The Academy nominated The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Milk, something called The Reader, Frost/Nixon, and White Director Brown Subjects Slumdog Millionaire, which got the statue. But fuck all* those nominees; Speed Racer is the best picture from 2008. It is peak cinema. To quote itself: "It's beautiful, and inspiring. And everything that art should be." I'm gettin' choked up just thinkin' 'bout it.

The things I've missed the most this month are the Instagram group DM and various posts from the people I follow. I miss watching new episodes of the BlameSociety shows: Beer and Board Games, Welcome to the Basement and its satellite Unboxing show. And of course, most of all, I miss my Slack group dearly. Mi familia. It's gonna be so weird to jump back in some day and find like, three inside references I didn't witness.

I don't really miss the cheap dopamine hits from simply checking social media, or receiving notifications on my phone's lock screen. I've weaned myself away from Facebook a couple of times over the last bunch of years for various reasons, and even recently I'd only been checking my notifications, and not visiting the home page (this is exactly the same with Twitter. I don't want to scroll indefinitely or see some rage-triggering information!) Apparently since 2018 or so Facebook has started deciding I should see my friends posts and shared posts in my notifications? When did it get that idea? Look, I love my friends, and I don't scroll the home page...but why is this a notification for me? Put that somewhere else where I probably won't look at it and that's why you put it in my notifications, you sneaky pricks.

Anyway, I definitely see less time spent on the computer or my phone, and thus more time to do...whatever. But other than letting my thoughts and attention focus on what is in front of me more, and giving me that extra time, I don't really feel much of a difference between the two. I guess I'm not addicted to it as certain generations may generalize other generations to be.

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This has been the shortest month of Quarantine.
It really doesn't feel like the mid-20 dates. That's that micro-arrested development. The time-freeze of my design, this cocoon of avoiding news. As Patrick H. Willems pointed out in a video essay about time loop movies, a lack of novelty makes our memories blur the days together. It's still early November to me, so my strange experiment is working. Take notice, psychologists. As of writing this paragraph, it is 2:10pm on Thanksgiving Day. My ever-snoozed alarm went off again two minutes ago and I noticed that I was meant to have arrived at my family's house between 1:30 and now.

Before you call me hypocrite, hear me out. The safe plan was I'd sit on the porch to eat while everyone else sat in the living room, separated by the big front window like a prison visitation. Fuck the cold, you know? Safety first. It's not even that cold. I haven't yet experienced a real deep chill of winter yet. Haven't busted out the new hot cocoa that I got a while back.

Oh, I guess I should update blog-only readers that I moved out, and into a house with three friends of mine, last autumn. If I was still publishing HOH Magazines at that time I'd have written all about it. If I was still writing in my personal diary I'd have written all about it. As it stands, it's just a Thing that Happened. (I'll get back to both writing formats eventually.) Anyway, this sentence here comes at you at 4:09pm, and an even safer option has emerged: my family's just gonna pack food into little containers for me to eat from over here, including leftovers.

Isn't it funny that my backup plans are safer than my regular plans? And my regular plans are safer than the government's plans? What government? Who fucking cares?

Yep, still no exit strategy. But ever since my last blog post, I've been mentally preparing for the worst news. Like I explained there, I don't need to prepare for good news; only protect myself from bad. That's what the cocoon is for: to protect the mental caterpillar that cannot handle such a cruel reality on top of an already cruel reality.

A meme from roughly this time, last week year

Gotta brace for dread and doom and death. Because you don't need to count ballots if the world worked the way it's supposed to. The person who is a politician and has some scrap of soul is supposed to get the job of president. The other person who is neither and has a vacancy so voidful that even God isn't there...is not. That's the most obvious choice in history. A binary so black and white that your eyes need days to adjust when looking between the two.

  

So if there's anything wrong in the world (there always is) I do not want to know how bad it is. Much like Westley in The Princess Bride gradually inuring himself to a poison I have been basically doing...well, that, for whenever I decide to get out of this antisocial chrysalis. I have no butterfly wings yet: this silk wrapping is only to protect my soft squishy form.

I'm hoping to grow some kind of wings, like The Count of Monte Cristo, another recent Criterion Channel viewing (I chose not to revisit V for Vendetta on the Vth, but saw this on the Channel and said "Yes please.") Edmond Dantès was in a prison not only of stone but also of anger. Directionless, that fire can spread and destroy everything. The film makes a point to differentiate the concepts of 'revenge' and 'avenge.' I mean yeah, different words, but I'd never really seen anything that utilized the differences. Dantès was wronged by three men, but he also finds reasons to get back at them on behalf of their other victims.

He uses his fortune to do good on behalf of others. Interesting concept, that. The old man he meets, who was digging a way out and told him about the treasure in Monte Cristo, taught him many lessons, with a vital goal in mind:

“Patience… What a long road you have to travel. Be thankful your digging tools are but bits of crockery and iron. It will take time — pray for it to be a long time. So that when you emerge into the light, it will not be as a revengeful horseman of the apocalypse, but as an avenging angel doing the work of God.”

I'm six million dollars short (give us dat stimulus, you bitches) but I'm halfway on the beard. Let's hope I'm ready on that third thing by the time I find out how owed I am by this mentally deficient world.

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I've decided to wrap this post up by dumping a bunch of tweets at the bottom. Several screenshots saved to my phone over the years. Ideas that are good, things I agree with, and important stuff to keep in mind. If politics is going to be so infested with intellectual degradation I will kind of just leave it at that. You know what I mean? I don't feel like doing screeds after this. I don't feel, outside of hip-hop, like engaging in conversation anymore. There is no conversation. The truth is out there. I'll just retweet it. Everyone I know and everyone I see knows what to do. We're all well-informed and those of us closer to direct action are more informed. And those of us who burned down Minneapolis' third precinct are like the Buddhas of praxis. It's a nice tidy pyramid of understanding. A "spectrum" that is "political," if such a thing could exist.

This is how it's been for decades, of course. Especially our four years of death, when I didn't need any news because, again, another Big Obvious Binary was the absolute truth: "This man needs to be arrested for crimes and not be president ever."

That was the Level 0 step that needed to be taken for any history to progress, for any politics to proceed. For my life to get back on track. And I'm still waiting, you cowardly fucks.

Cowardly fucks. I tweeted "death to America" a bunch on October 28th, but this is the one that got flagged? I've been tweeting that exact tweet for literally 68 posts in an unbroken thread of random Frinkiac screen-grabs with my wish to arrest written in caption on them. Couldn't let me get to the nice number, is that it? I kinda like being suspended because I don't have to gaze into the abyss, but I wish I could still Like tweets to spread the Love. Anyway let's quickly break down I am not legitimately suspended:

A. "Death to America" never was a thing 'people from da Middle East' said towards you or I. The reality is they mean it just as you mean it and as I mean it: directed solely at our corrupt and evil government. The government is evil. Death to evil. Death to America, get it? Cool.

B. I am not violent. I am on the side of life. I intend the corrupt system be destroyed in a way so as to expand the life force of those around us. Grow in sync with nature, be a neighbor, etc. I don't mean no harm but I truly mean all the disrespect.

C. Telling the senate and house to do their job over and over again is not harassment. Usually bosses will check in on employees regularly to make sure they are doing work, and often will tell them of new work that is to be done. Naturally if they don't do something they're told, the boss will remind them, or even punish them for being insolent. Since I am merely 1/328,239,523rds of their boss, I can't exactly punish them. So reminders, it is!

D. Sorry, 1/327,970,795ths of their boss, since the man they refuse to arrest has allowed approximately 268,734 of us to die for literally no God damned reason. God damn him. And God damn** those who had the cuffs but not the spine to put them on.

Point of all this is, I don't need to use my own words to speak the truth. Never did. It is all around us, buck naked. The collective consciousness is a potluck and there's plenty to put on our plates. So, these days my official position is really boiling down to this:

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Anyway,

I don't need to fill this post with paragraphs to complete my communiqué. I can let images do the talking...although Blogger is a little tricky to format images on. So we'll see. The point of this Community frame is that there are enough good people, on enough of the same page on a lot of things, to outnumber the bad.

So what are we waiting for? I don't have the answer to that question. I can merely ""harass"" those yellow-bellied bastards who ""work for me.""

I don't know everything, cousin. In fact, I know I don't know everything. This Socratic Wisdom 101 allows me to absorb the collective knowledge and feel the love in the spirits of those around me (digitally at least) so while I'm anti-egotistical, I do get to say that I know a fuckin' lot, and I hate being right about everything from the bottom of the totem pole. Here's just my dumb crude thoughts on a few ""Hot Topics"":

• Healthcare - Free. Healthcare is where babies come from, so it's vital upon vital. Non-negotiable. Tax the rich. Full stop.

• Prisons - Nope. Stop it. Bad.

• Education - Fund it. Tax the rich. Donezo.

• Higher education - Free. Fuck you. A diploma is a status symbol used and abused by assholes, but the education is good and should be available to every. single. person.

• Weed - Legal. Duh. Where the fuck you been?

• Police - Nope. Lmao, WRONG. Get rid. Money for community, assholes, try it sometime. 

"Suck my dick and choke on it, I yield my time, fuck you!"

• Money - No in politics. Lobby with the merit of yuor words, bitcch.

• Civil Rights - They're all right in my book, buster.

Or to put it in more pictures that I didn't create, i.e. the thoughts that are already in the vox popular culture:

That last one reminds me of a Watsky quote: "I don't think it's un-American at all for us to ask for even more now." The bare minimum is a lot more than They are willing to give us, but it's really not. much. at. all. Why is it 'too much' to evil people with damaged craniums? Because it costs pennies, but also a concession that we are on this planet to look out for each other and our environment, and anything below that baseline is undesirable and not cool. We are connected. God is other people. To quote Griffin McElroy roleplaying as a giant bear***, "pride and glory are the enemies of true strength." Help is strength, giving and receiving it. Being kind, ever heard of it?

This is baby stuff. I can sit back and put these in the fridge for when They're ready to eat because these opinions will never change. Because it's not just opinions. It's ideals. And not mine alone. I developed them by this little thing called reading the room. Listening to smart, cool people, and vibing on what sounds right. What tastes nutritious.

One major political party is addicted to every bad decision and ideal in the book. They are death. And the sooner they die without taking the rest of us, the better. I just can’t stand to watch other apes not make the obvious choice, favoring the worst choices ever (and this is both parties’ problems, unified in sadomasochism. The other major political party loves to avoid personal introspection because they have a Really Evil Punching Bag that they like to keep around to make themselves look good.)

Coincidentally these two tweets are from the same day.

I can stand in the way but only to my own mental devastation. I take the lashes but block no roads. Hit by the train but not stopping it. Righteous roadkill.

  

So I’ll stand off to the side. But not to watch the train wreck. To focus on my own sphere of control, my own shit. Feeling good. Fuck news. Bad news is bullshit and I’m here to say you can end it.

Just stop fuckin' carin'.

...Not by being apathetic or unengaged or non-political. I’m not removing myself, I’m not “staying out of it,” and I’m not going to be politically inactive. I'm trying to rip myself away from the flesh of anger, of which I am made, so that I don't go mad. And I’m waiting for the collective asses to get in gear. I don't know what that looks like, I don't even know what that means. But I'd like to be done hating myself and feeling guilt, grief, dread, doom, anger, rage, hatred, anxiety, depression, and constant pain because of things I cannot control.

No, I haven’t ‘reached enlightenment,’ but I’m enlightened enough to know comfortably where I stand. And I don’t need to move, not one inch. The world needs to catch up to us, because I need some world to stand on here. Cheerleading is all I can do and my cheers fit on a fucking business card. I can just hand those out so I don’t waste my voice talking repetitions that you and I already know are things that need to happen. Why keep telling people how to bake cookies when you can write down the recipe and, when they want to stop eating raw eggs and dough and making themselves vomit and shit themselves every hour of every day...they can look at it and go “Oh, cookies would be nice.”

I'll grant that I don't really know what the praxis of this half-baked idea even is. I don't know what it looks like, what actions I would have to do to satisfy this vague, nebulous whim I've spun around my vulnerable caterpillar self. I just want to find a way to not be stabbed through the heart with a rusty fishhook if the news is bad and the world is out to kill me and everyone I care about. So I'm attempting an attitude in hopes it leads to actions that don't harm me. So I'll scrounge around in the dark until I find out.

If this sounds ineffective to you well fucking point at all the effect I had before, buckaroo. Find it, and show it to me. Maybe it’s next to the remaining fucks I give.

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I'm heavily bruised because my heart is kind and my mind was raised well. This world punishes us because we choose to be ourselves in it. But I will not not be me, see? To quote Speed Racer:

"It doesn't matter if racing never changes. What matters is if we let racing change us."

...It works better in context, when you know that 'race car driving' is a metaphor for 'art' and 'life.'

But yeah, I'll be me. Come at me, world. I will stand right back up and turn the other cheek. And if you know your Bible 'turn the other cheek' does not mean 'forgive' or 'look the other way.' It means you're saying "Strike me again, I dare you." When the world breaks your legs, you go and beat it with your crutch. So I'mma be over here working on me. Something that’s actually worthwhile.

Snapchat from November 5th, 2018

So that's where I'm at. It is ""Thanksgiving"" at 5:11pm and I am hungry and listening to Donald Glover spit some truth: To be beautiful is to be haunted. We're all in this together, we're all in this alone. Whatever the case may be, I'm still reclusive for now. Still got no butterfly wings. Still got no second stimulus check, or third, or fourth, or fifth, or sixth, or seventh, or eighth, or ninth, or tenth, or eleventh, or twelfth, or thirteenth, or fourteenth. Still fucking up at being my best self, but letting my raw love for nature, humanity and existence permeate from my nerve endings to my actions. The baste this turkey is cooking in. The stuffing it is filled with. The cranberry sauce that goes with everything. Heck: everything goes with everything. There is magic chemistry in the Thanksgiving Day meal. You can stack one of everything left over in a sandwich and each bite is glorious.

And sandwiches are the highest form of food. Fill yours with good stuff.

...Yoip, I'm hungry so my mind is promenading down Stomach Avenue.

I'll let the tweets do the talking, enjoy the dank memes. Have a good, and safe, holiday season.

––––– The Soap Box Gallery –––––

Presented by David Hoh

Sponsored by Kesh®

— David "The Pants" Hoh 

P.S. The reheated dinner and refrigerated pie were deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelicious!

*Except Frost/Nixon, you're cool. I've seen ya. I've heard good things about Milk, too (literally -- I own two songs off the soundtrack on iTunes.)
**I'd much prefer God bless us, every one. And I wish that, too. But if Capitol Hill can't dole out justice (if only there was some way to check, or maybe even balance, other branches of government) then I will speak to the Manager. Whatever works.
***The quote is from Episode 68, but I'm not gonna hyperlink someone in that deep. If it's any consolation, the entire listen is worth every second of your time.