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I later told Dusty Michael’s theory of history being dead and she went goggle-eyed. Dusty said conspiratorially, “Michael may be a crypto-Marxist.” (Oh God …) She kept blabbing, and it’s so weird to see Dusty’s mouth moving and genuine political words emerge. It just doesn’t mesh with her computer image. I get the impression she should be discussing exfoliation or tanning factors instead, but then, bodies are political, too. Or so Dusty has informed the office.
I surprised Dusty. I said that, “Since Marxism is explicitly based on property, ownership, and control of means of production, it may well end up being the final true politik of this Benetton world we now live in.” She said, “Hey, Danster—I underestimated you.”
It was interesting to briefly enter the political realm—as such.
what???
Dusty was trying to tell us all about “Mehrwert“—surplus value per unit of time/labor: “A worker creates more value than that for which he is compensated. You know?”
Michael went purple, like a Burger King manager who hears one of his employees discuss unionization.
And then Karla screwed Michael’s notions of production up even further by passing along a meme somebody spammed her on the Net that day, that any multiple of 6, minus one, is a prime number. Easy as this was to disprove, all work stopped immediately as everybody set out to prove its validity.
Karla pointed out that there are more Gaps than just the Gap. “J. Crew is a thinly veiled Gap. So is Eddie Bauer. Banana Republic is owned by the same people as the Gap. Armani A/X is a EuroGap. Brooks Brothers is a Gap for people with more disposable income whose bodies need hiding, upscaling, and standardization. Victoria’s Secret is a Gap of calculated naughtiness for ladies. McDonald’s is the Gap of hamburgers. LensCrafters is the Gap of eyewear. Mrs. Fields is the Gap of cookies. And so on.”
lol
Ethan says Type-A personalities have a whole subset of diseases that they, and only they, share, and the transmission vector for these diseases is the DOOR CLOSE button on elevators that only get pushed by impatient, Type-A people. Ethan pushes these buttons with his elbow, now. I’m starting to worry about all of us.
Susan said, “Playtex suck because they just get longer, not wider … When I bleed, it’s not a vertical thing … it’s 360 degrees. And it’s so freaky because when you put it in, it’s this innocuous little lipstick size, and then when you take it out there’s this long cotton rope at the end of the string! I’m afraid it’s going to hook my uterus and I’ll accidentally drag it out!”'
Todd sent me an instant mail, which blinked on my screen, saying, I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
“Sure, I know I’m a geek, and I know that predisposes me to introversion. And Microsoft did allow me to feed the introversion. But as you’re all noticing for yourselves, you can’t retreat like that here in the Valley. There’s no excuse anymore to introvert. You can’t use tech culture as an excuse not to confront personal issues for astounding periods of time. It’s like outer space, where the vacuum makes your body explode unless you locate sanctuary.”
Bug got quiet and put his head on Susan’s legs. “You know, Sooz, I would have come here for nothing. I never had to get paid.” Bug looked up. “Oh God, Ethan, you didn’t hear that.” He relaxed. “Well you know what I mean. I just wanted to leave the old me behind and start all over again. It’s not the money. It’s never been the money. It rarely ever is. It wasn’t with any of us—was it? Ever?”
I don’t think it ever was. We lay around and were silent while Bug pulled himself together. I put on an old Bessie Smith CD and we sat, alcohol scrambling our codes, our thoughts, our lives, if only for the remaining darkness, until work made its claim upon us once more.
ADMIRATION. I have admired many people. I have always considered myself a crooked tree, so straight trees earned my respect. Indeed, we should remember what happens to us before Christmas when we set out to buy a Christmas tree. Rows of lovely trees, and all of them look terrific from a distance, but close up, none of them really meets our desire for an ideal tree. One is too thin, another crooked, the third too short, and so on. It's the same with people; no doubt some of them seemed so imposing to me because I did nto know them better, while I knew my own defects only too well.
AUTHENTICITY. My great fear: that I am pretending to be someone who I am not I have been aware of the fact that I am pretending. But let us think about this: What else could I have done? My ego was unhappy. Had I been preoccupied only with myself, I would have created a literature of accusations and groans. Instead, I kept my distance from the substance I extruded [...] and this helped me artistically.
[...]
Authenticity in literature requires that we do the least possible writing with one or another audience in mind. We do not live in the wilderness, however, and language itself, along with its traditions, rules us and is accompanied by the pressure of expectations from other speakers of that language. I have experienced writing for my Marxist colleagues in my youth [...] during my many years in France and America I did not write for a Western audience, but against it. [...]
CHURCHES. People go to church because they are divided beings. They wish, for a moment at least, to find themselves in a reality other than the one that surrounds them and claims to be the only true reality. This daily reality is unyielding, brutal, cruel, and hard to bear. The human "I" is soft in the center and feels every moment that its adaptation to the world is doubtful.