Well, this is going to be one weird post on my part.
I'm somewhere between amused and confused. A lot of happenings have been going on recently. And I've come to a dire conclusion that is not so dire - that being the whole point.
Also, I concluded that Al Pacino does not exist, and I am lucky I concluded that before discovering that my local Blockbuster had no copies left of "People I know": of course, there are no copies at all, it's just one big hoax, and it's now obvious to me.
But let's follow some logical order in here. As my close friends know, I've always chosen a lifestyle of very high ups and very low downs, centered on intuition and whim. For the italians and the literate (!), I was looking for D'Annunzio's vita eccezionale, and I was also pretty lucky so far.
I happened to take pride in being someone who could get filthy drunk at a punk show, collapse on the floor and go on to pass the nation's toughest selection for young economists, the one that earned me my current job.
In the process, I now realize I was destroying my vital functions: I didn't have mercy on my liver, to be fair, and I felt generally unwell since maybe the year 2000. I must now admit that Wolfy was the chief warner, hats off to the guy and his forethought. If he only could apply some of that to himself.
But I digress. To cut a long story short, the last weeks showed me that this is not quite the way to go. I don't know where to start but I'll bundle up a bunch of things and hope the message is clear.
Last week I received the results of my employer's psychological assessment of my humble self. They say I'm clever and quick but, alas, not really apt at weighing the causes and effects of situations, at least in some cases. They say I come up with original solutions, and I am a good planner, but some thought would nicely complement the instinct - I might make good decisions, but it's best if they're out of some intelligible process than if they're out of my incredible ability to catch the essentials and turn them into arrows, as someone might say.
I was a bit surprised by this part of the feedback form, since it never crossed my mind that i could be impulsive in job matters. I know that I am in personal ones, but it struck me as peculiar to be so classified in another context.
But this has to be considered in a specific light. I talked with my dad about the whole thing. He cracked some funny jokes but then he got right to the point: all the huge public institutions first want to normalize their men (and women), to make them fit in the machinery, and then intuition and boldness are recovered when one has to become a proper leader, a ranking conductor. He's been an officier in the army and he said that the same used to happen there: everyone had to be turned into a good soldier at first, and this entailed a stifling of personal inclinations and innate power, and then the best were picked out, and set free as commanders. The difference, he tells me, is that after some time (maybe in the 5 years range, maybe more) the force of one's sheer intuition and the natural crisis management skills come with added understanding of how other people feel, how they react, and how one should address them to lead effectively.
Another part of this process came in a totally different guise. As I have posted here some time ago, I was trying to set up a small record company with a friend. I discovered that my employer forbids me to take part in any profit-oriented activity besides some specific fields (university lectures, op-ed pieces for newspapers and the likes), and I cannot own a company. If I want to partake in one as a volunteer, and my company is exposed to the public eye, I have to ask for permission from the hierarchies. I am just imagining the day I write a letter to some high ranking guy in the Personnel department presenting my involvement in records whose content is "Fuck the system and all it stands for". Yeah right. I would fire myself upon reading similar stuff.
Add this to what I already wrote about having to spend money for smart clothes, and there's a disconcerting situation.
The disconcerting part is that I don't feel sad. I feel this is a consequence of a choice I have made based on very solid ground: I like this job, I like being financially independent, I like being in a city far from where I've lived in the past, and I like being exposed to relevant stuff to which I would not have any access if I were elsewhere. Therefore, my whining is not whining proper: just thinking.
And this thinking leads me to a couple of interesting facts. Number one: I have got here on the basis of a massive effort fueled by pangs of emotion. These pangs were partly connected with the expectations of a glamorous life, that isn't coming anytime soon, and partly connected with desire for revenge against people I will probably never see again and anyway I don't care about anymore.
This lacks logic, to say the least. How come I was driven by something that was to disappear right after attaining the goal? This is "we're just out looking for our next fix" theory I dispensed to good man rahvin while we were in high school. But now I have a deeper understanding of this, I see the fabric, I basically see through: I know that a fix is only that, a fix, and as Irvine Welsh said, the sea is beautiful, but it leaves a ton of floatsam, jetsam and other debris, in the tones of delusion and, maybe, disappointment.
This is to say that, through a number of processes, I don't feel I am a compress-and-release kind of person anymore. Of course the change is gradual, in the "slide, don't fall" variety, otherwise I would be lying.
This has driven me to ponder about a man I happen to like a lot. This is the most confusing part. Having realized that being driven by passion as described in power metal lyrics (no, not the "axes, broadswords and shields" variety!) is something counterproductive and, in particular, something i don't feel like believing in at the moment, i'll have to find some other way around.
but not being in for the thrill is, alas, new to me. i still have to understand what the appeal of being middle class, in body and soul, is. i've been on the non-conformity base forever, i've been running for the outcast team for as long as i remember... and now i am slightly uncomfortable at the lyrics of the bands i thought i was going to publish (of course i'm going to help informally, but that's another story). so, understanding this job-wise is one thing, and relating it to my personal life is another one entirely. i don't feel depressed - this would be more like the past version -, i just feel surprised. and i feel a bit cold, as in lacking the élan... which is a good thing?
and now, to end my "stuff i thought i never would write" (well, this is still a dramatic sentence, so there's quite a number of bugs in the process i suppose), one more comment.
All these realizations slowly fell into place while I was watching "Devil's advocate", one of my favorite movies altogether. Friends must know why even if I never told them. I was loosely following the storyline, which I know very well anyway so I was not concentrating - I just thought that Kevin Lomax's arrival in New York is a stereotypical representation of all I normally would dream about a "new life" - lavish, ripe with perspectives, moral and intellectual challenges, and possibly ending in something really final (the poor guy kills himself in the end, true, and I wouldn't ever want to do that, but this is a minor detail). I also realized that I would normally pose myself problems in the terms of would I be lured into crossing that line? and what am I missing by refusing to be lured into it? what is there to life in the absence of that opportunity? and such, no matter the specific look of that line, that opportunity.
then i concluded, as already stated, that Al Pacino does not exist.
hyena (two, divided by bubu. bubu)
