Empire Notes: US Interstates and States of Grief

December 29, 2010

Traveling US interstate highways one suffers a confluence of so much contemporary madness and tragedy extant in the land … so much suppressed fear and aggression. Yet, through it all, the heart still yearns to see what lies over the next horizon. Although, lamentably, what is revealed, all to often, proves to be as sterile, inhospitable, ugly, and inhuman as what was beheld at the last.

“Who has twisted us around like this, so that no matter what we do, we are in the posture of someone going away?” Rainer Maria Rilke

Any situation, as is the case with interstate highway travel, in which to momentarily stop or even to slow down, one risks death should be regarded as an affront (if not anathema) to common sense and the longings of the heart. When the landscape we pass through has been reduced to a meaningless blur, our lives grow indistinct as well.
The apologists of the present system tell us ad nauseum, and have convinced most, that a similar disastrous fate will befall the nation if the engines of global capitalism were to slow down even a bit. Interstate travel is emblematic of the manner a system based on ceaseless production and manic consumption degrades the senses and inflicts a dehumanizing assault upon the psyche.

When stopped at an anonymous interstate service island or some off-the-exit-ramp retail strip — those inhospitable nether regions evincing a paradoxical mix of sterility and toxicity — the permeating odor of exhaust fumes and processed food makes us woozy. These places, only distinct for their ugliness, reek of how soul-numbing and joyless travel has become . . . a task now nearly devoid of any sense of the mystery, the option of exploration, or the possibility of serendipity travel once offered.

Travel has been reduced to a tedious ordeal, whereby our inchoate longings to escape the quotidian prison of our economically circumscribed existence are mangled and suppressed, only to rise as the hollow appetite of reflexive consumerism and the ineffable sense of psychic unease, so evident in the troubled American psyche.

Following their defeat at the Battle of Shiloh, the shattered Confederate ranks fled for their lives. General A.S. Johnston, desperate to restore order and rally his men to return to battle,  commanded a fleeing soldier to stop, demanding, “Private, why are you running?” The soldier replied, “General, I’m running ’cause I can’t fly.”

The act of being in perpetual flight (even the somnambulant variety) from consequences requires a great amount of energy; one must have the endurance of a marathoner sleepwalker to keep ahead of the sound of the fast approaching footfalls of reality at one’s rear.

Depression is what catches us.

I have been accused being a poet … I know I am a wanderer through the landscape of the heart.  I navigate by narrative, by words and feeling: It occurs to me: the term depression is a misnomer for feelings of despair brought on by powerlessness i.e., disconsolation over the death of an internal verity — or having our will thwarted by inexorable, outer forces. Grief is a living prayer of our vulnerable hearts.

The salesmen of the eternal, big happy … are just that — salesmen … One is required to respond to the intoxication of the sales pitch and is not to question the condition of their heart … The commercial come-ons insist that the heart’s grief and a lost soul’s emptiness and panic can be “fixed” by some new bright and shiny: a new appliance,  therapy, “hope and change.” By the incessant promotion of  the gospels of the hyper-capitalist sects of “Happiness “Uber Alles” what is, implicitly, imparted is … suffering is a character flaw that can be mitigated, elevated — even redeemed by consumerism, antidepressants, acquiring a positive attitude — all the specious homilies and vestments of the consumer state.

“The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.”–Carl Jung.

What kind of miserable malcontent would resist changing this social milieu and personal mode of being: Sitting stuck in commuter traffic; eating high fat, low quality food from a drive-thru window; languishing in a cubical … stranded in a low benefits, little chance of advancement job — until, of course, the job is outsourced; waddling around the mall … clad in off-the-rack, sweatshop sown clothing; dozing off in front of the TEEVEE with Cheetos crumbs stippled in the folds of one’s jowls. Aint that the life — or what? We must preserve the deathstyles of empire.

This mode of being is far removed from the norms of nature or the revelries and attendant sublimations necessary to engage of civic life … Wherein, ruthlessness and rationalization banish reason; ambition trumps merit; expediency pushes aside wisdom; and empty sensation masquerades as experience.

Like interstate travel, the mode of mind of the consumer state propels us forward to the next empty agenda, the next perfunctory task, the next meaningless purchase … But depression slows us down, inducing us to feel the grief inherent in our alienation … to cease the incessant, habitual hurdling forward and striving upward … to stop and investigate the mysteries of our hearts … to feel the sadness of the suffering earth …

“I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
–Samuel Beckett

Posted in Essays