All posts in category horror of humanity

a philalethe and a panmnesiac walk into a bar

Scripturient fugues scrape at this summer torment, as I sit saccadic in my seat, genuflecting to twin telescreens, the slim dark overlords of these waking hours. Glistering dreams spawn from stem and cortex under cloak of darkness; if not coaxed out quick, consciousness crucifies them upon the day’s brutal y-axis.

Late at night I hail the sidewalk slugs, grown fat on summer’s bounty, no longer convening, but navigating solo in their slow deliberate way, yearning perhaps for a more saltigrade life. I try to lead Farley’s falling paws away from their soft yielding bodies, but theirs is forever a doomed existence in this urban setting. I can only do so much.

Revulsion spawns in less innocent corners, as I perceive the proboscis of humanity probing at inappropriate places. Get thee away, proboscis! See how your callous actions rub salt in your own wounds, spinning on until one day you’ll all lie screaming, salted strips of dried-out flesh stretched on a burning hot bed of asphalt. Or something…ahem.

Never mind, it’s time to molt this dacrygelotic husk. It’s time to cram these junked-out hours in a dirty suitcase and hurl it in the harbor. The air is like bathwater and I will yet swim in it, for I have no choice. And yet the psithurism of the autumnal approach beckons. I still hear it, muted and steam-wrapped as it is.

4 Comments

by sean on July 24, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in bleah, breathing rights, city life, cynicism, doom and gloom, farley, horror of humanity, human behavior, human nature, inner life, lucus a non lucendo, parts of the whole, philosophastering, slugs, summer, urban nature

Posted by sean on July 24, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/07/24/a-philalethe-and-a-panmnesiac-walk-into-a-bar/

hiding under my deck from the insect overlords

Channel 6 anchorman Kent Brockman mistakenly reports on a master race of giant space ants.

Welcome to the Kingdom of Ants. I don’t know what goes on here, but I like it. Actually I don’t care for ants. I particularly don’t like when they start that business of traveling in lines. Nor do I like them crawling incessantly around on my kitchen counter or invading the hummingbird feeders (even though there are no hummingbirds this year? where are they? hello?? I created an urban paradise for you and you never showed up?). But enough about that. I enjoy the idea of an Ant Kingdom. Do you remember the Simpsons episode where Homer gets sent into space? He bumps into an experimental ant farm, letting the ants loose into the space shuttle. Footage of the accident, depicting ants looming large in the camera lens, is picked up by Springfield’s Channel 6 News. Anchorman Kent Brockman subsequently reports that the shuttle has been taken over by a “master race of giant space ants.” Brockman goes on to state: “I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.” On the wall behind him, Brockman has hung a homemade “Hail Ants” sign. Now that’s funny. My roommates and I hung an identical sign in our apartment many years ago. But in reality I’m pretty sure I would not enjoy living under insect overlords. They would likely make me march in lines, which I would hate.

Brockman shows off his obsequious nature.

Mondays are so absurd. Lately I’ve been away from work more than I’ve been at work, which makes being at work now seem all the more ridiculous. I’ve got this sticker at home in a box that says “Why do you work?” I hate that sticker. That’s why it stays in the box. It’s so cold at work and it’s so hot at home and this is a source of perpetual confusion for my body and my mind. This morning it was raining so I suited up in rain gear and then the sun came out as I rode to work sweating in my non-breathable rain gear, as was expected according to this fundamental rule of bike commuting. This evening I rode into the alley and the kid whose grandmother always screams at him was walking toward me, banging a long metal pole of some sort against the pavement. And it was like that scene in The Warriors where David Patrick Kelly clinks the beer bottles together, yelling “Waaaarrrrrriiiorsss, come out to pla-ay!” except substitute a little kid for David Patrick Kelly, a long metal pole for the beer bottles, and a cold blank look for “Waaaarrrrrriiiorsss, come out to pla-ay!” I got off my bike and I was sad.

But I digress. Here are two mostly unedited short pieces I scrawled in my notebook a few months back while riding south on the light rail. I’m not exactly sure where I was going with these at the time. I think I was pondering the 1950s and the beginning of the suburbanization of America. Maybe imagine these as entries in the American Handbook™ that we give to our insect overlords so they’ll understand us better. If we’re lucky maybe they won’t force us all into subterranean caverns and we can keep our decks and our pools and our acres of green green grass.

Deck: A deck is a popular structure attached to a house. When people tire of feeling closed in, they retire to the outdoors, without leaving behind the comfort and security of their home, the deck being an extension of the house and not a separate entity vulnerable to attack. Homeowners enjoy inviting over acquaintances to sit on their decks with them. Often this is accompanied by a meal cooked “en plein air” on a grill that sits proudly on the deck. The man, clad in a masculine-themed apron, always controls the grill. It is his domain. His wife brings him platters heaped with sanitized animal flesh, which he slathers with sauce before neatly placing on the foil-covered surface of the grill. After the meal, the deck people continue drinking themselves into oblivion before finally driving home and/or passing out in their bedrooms.

Pool: A pool is a status symbol popular among the wealthy. In-ground pools are the only ones that anyone cares about. If heated and covered by a screened room to keep out bugs, so much the better. Teenage girls enjoy laying out by the pool as their bratty brothers plot to splash them with water or inflict some other heinous act upon them. Rich mothers bring trays laden with glasses of cold lemonade to poolside. Their daughters sip daintily before applying more tanning oil. Their snotty sons then sneak up and snap the bikini tops of their pretty daughters. When the man of the house arrives home from a tough day at the office, he may, if of a certain disposition, change into his trunks and swim a few laps. But first he tousles his son’s hair in greeting and gazes briefly and uneasily at his daughter before finally kissing his wife on the cheek. He may then pop open an Amstel Light if feeling particularly spent.

Stay tuned for more entries!

Maybe. Depends on if the ants come, I guess.

8 Comments

by sean on July 9, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in absurdity, american handbook, ants, confusion, decks, horror of humanity, insane humans, insect overlords, mondays, pools, simpsons, temporary insanity, work

Posted by sean on July 9, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/07/09/hiding-under-my-deck-from-the-insect-overlords/

my thoughts dried up so i wrote this instead

When you isolate yourself, you have no one else to blame when things go awry. There is some small comfort in this. It is possible to go days without talking to anyone. This can be a magical combination of your own self-imposed silence and a general indifference on the part of others. Together we can make it work. The woman in the alley enjoys screaming hateful words at her grandson but she is sweet as pie when I say hello. This dichotomy hurts my brain. The alley is loud in the summer. The ladies across the way gun their motorcycles at all hours. The level of their inconsideration for people living together in a confined space staggers me. Small children yell and sing and talk like adults. I brood at the kitchen table. If it weren’t for the swatch of overgrown vegetation threatening to engulf my porch, I would have to see, as well as hear, the denizens of the alley and that I could not bear. Meanwhile, in the plus column, the city installed four solar-powered compacting trash cans on a main street in the neighborhood. I was overjoyed to throw my dog’s poop in them. Then they took one away. It was the most conveniently located one. Why. On another street near my house the city erected an expensive-looking fence in the median. A few weeks later they removed it. Why. Every day I see the thousands of dollars I pay in property taxes hemorrhage out onto the streets in the form of Kafkaesque activities such as this. It pains me. I could make much better use of those thousands of dollars than by funding the erecting and dismantling of fences. Segueing into the employment realm, it’s summertime at work which results in a curious laissez faire attitude toward attendance. I like it but it confuses me. I am always suspicious of it. Yet there is a natural relaxed cadence I cannot ignore, and so I allow it to carry me in its wake. When I feel agitated, I look at the little pictures in the dictionary and this soothes me. Last night I had a pleasant time in dreamland, but I forgot most of it upon waking. I don’t like that. I need to remember my dreams or waking life seems vacant. Do you ever wonder about the nature of friendships? They are curious things. Coming and going, rarely staying. Sometimes they wane; sometimes they wither. Sometimes they fail over the stupidest things. And you wonder if it could have been avoided, but in reality if it was a strong friendship it should have been able to withstand most of the nonsense we manage to self-generate. Which then begs the question of why the friendship existed in the first place. Convenience, perhaps. Boredom. Desperation for human contact [see: possibility of going for days without speaking to anyone, as outlined above]. I have had many friendships through the years, for all of these listed reasons and more. Not many have lasted, but the tiny few that have are worth more than gold. The question is then, do I now need more friends? What purpose would they serve? It gets harder to make friends as you get older. It’s horrible but I find myself more judgmental than I used to be of people when considering them as potential friends. I am also perhaps even more guarded now. Friendship requires time and effort, both valuable resources that I don’t expend lightly. How can you know if it’s worth it. Most of the time I am content to be by myself. I also have a dog now. The ultimate friend. Always dependable, always happy to see you. Can’t go to the bathroom without your help, which is a little weird. Doesn’t talk, which is both good and bad. Sometimes I wish he’d talk, just a little. See, even though I am content by myself, I have this annoying urge to reach out sometimes. It’s irrepressible. Sometimes everything can’t be found in books. Or nature. Most things, yes. But not all. This is the curse of human nature. We are not 100% autonomous. And I am so restless. This incessant unease shadows my every move. The panic. The urge to drop out. The crushing confinement of your own mind. We’re all so spread out. Held together by weakening links. I trip over my own shallow roots and fall face-down in a mucky bog. Roll around and let the clay harden on your skin. Let it cover all that you see as wrong. It feels so good.

9 Comments

by sean on June 26, 2012 • Permalink

Posted by sean on June 26, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/06/26/my-thoughts-dried-up-so-i-wrote-this-instead/

review of people magazine

“The horror! The horror!”
– Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

I feel like Kurtz today, holed up behind blackout shades typing in my lair as the heat blazes outside. I have been doing a disturbingly exhaustive update of my reading lists on Goodreads. In doing so, I pulled out some old papers from library school. While working on my degree, I took a course called “Popular Materials and Programming for Adults,” taught by the wonderful and esteemed Dr. Linda Walling. Now, I love Dr. Walling and consider her a strong influence in my librarianship, but she made us read a lot of terrible things in that class. Her theory was that in order to properly serve the adult population of a public library, you needed to read outside of your comfort zone. Did I mention she made us read a lot of books? As if graduate students have time to be reading 25 extra books in a semester?! But I digress. As part of this agony, she requested that we also read a couple of “popular magazines and newspapers.” I chose People magazine as one of them. I have entered the review I wrote below. If you’re curious about the books I read in that class, you’ll have to find me on Goodreads. You need to sign up in order to see my page, though. If you don’t know about Goodreads, it’s a site for people who enjoy obsessively recording their reading habits. If you’re into that, I’d encourage you to join. Then we can be obsessive together and hopefully find out about interesting books from each other. But enough banter…here’s the review:

More celebrity voyeurism [note: I’d just reviewed National Enquirer]. This time a little less sensationalism and slightly padded with “touching” human interest stories and slightly informative biographical sketches. Lots of ads for such items as Godiva ice cream and the latest Maeve Binchy novel. Sleazy pictures of Hollywood stars are mixed in with stories of family courage. Lots of pictures and short articles target the short attention span crowd. As it turns out, I’m not a member of that crowd, and would prefer to peruse the latest batch of zines I find stuffed in my mailbox. Oh, and I found this magazine in a box on the side of the road (I couldn’t bear to spend $2.99 of my hard-earned cash on something that’s going to end up in the recycling box) [prof’s note: That’s OK with me – why support them?].

10 Comments

by sean on June 22, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in horror of humanity, librarianship, libraries, library school, linda walling, obsessiveness, people magazine, reading, Uncategorized

Posted by sean on June 22, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/06/22/review-of-people-magazine/

shadow forecaster

The wind rises and scatters my attention span. How to greet a late January day warmed to the low 60s on the Fahrenheit scale? I feel a twinge of guilt enjoying it, knowing how unnatural it is and wondering much of this is our fault. Birds are migrating sooner, only to find food not yet abundant in their summer haunts. Southern insects are expanding their ranges northward. [Gardeners, take note!] Mother Nature’s long-established cues are failing her denizens. Are these little and not-so-little signs of impending ecological collapse? Perhaps. It would make sense. And surely we deserve it. Too long have we moved at the speed of profit, with blinders plastered to our fat heads. Our slavering consumerist jaws know no bounds. We think with our wallets, and we don’t remember any other way. We forgot how to mend and learned instead how to slide cards through readers. The problem is colossal in scale. The solutions too little, too late. So maybe all we can do now is pull up some chairs and wait for the end of this chapter of life on our planet. Bleak, perhaps, but it could just be my shadow speaking out again. Some days I let it do all my talking for me, and I just sit back and stare at the clouds.

this is how we fail

As if I needed another reason to hate Wal-Mart.

this slate can never be erased

Foment angst so there is a thing to describe, not straight nor flat nor dull nor the same as before, but colored instead with the red of madness. Like Dillard says, stalk the gaps. But sometimes there’s waiting to be done. Blank days, empty months, they shape themselves into forms you will recognize in time. I can’t even pretend to care anymore about the empty words flaking down around me, stuffing my mouth with cotton ideas, my head so ready to explode its vitriol across the table, spreading over your useless papers, seeping through the fabric of your dress pants. My internal voice so hoarse from screaming the vilest curses I can barely think just a word when I finally throw my leg up over the handlebars in defeat and make it all a shrinking dot behind me. I’m hollowed out from the inside, your words carved out whatever mattered and replaced it with a frothy foam devoid of substance. I sit and wait, sit and wait. There may be nothing out there, nothing at all, but I still sense the madness, up in the corners, in the late night hours, triggers ablaze in the dark circles around your eyes. I seize upon it and bite down to suck it dry. I will fill myself back up, every time, no matter how many times you empty me.

random

Nicest day we’ve had in weeks and I’m stuck inside waiting for a tardy contractor. As I wait, someone intermittently uses a loud drill next door. Sometimes homeownership sucks. Muggings and robberies are up, in both the neighborhood and the city at large. This depresses me on an epic scale. Drilling next door probably indicates installation of new deadbolts. Bars on windows, steel doors, quadruple locks, where does it end? How safe can you be? Muggers lie in wait looking for opportunities. We really have no control over it. The problem is systemic: the haves and the have nots forever divided. No reconciliation possible. Only solution is to take to the woods. The cities are doomed.

In 1960, John Steinbeck traveled the United States with his dog and wrote a book about his trip. At one point he notes, “I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.” Since then, we have happily continued to destroy all the natural places, with the exception of a select few that are so overrun they project a carnivalesque atmosphere. We have built a society so spread apart that most people see the automobile as the only way to traverse the uncomfortable distances between point A and point B. To not own a car is anathema. You are branded a freak and possibly un-American; at the very least, you are suspect. Similarly, to eschew the consumerist lifestyle that is so red-bloodedly American is also viewed with suspicion. Why wouldn’t you want to buy all the latest greatest stuff? You saw it on TV, after all, and it looked totally awesome. And everyone who had that stuff looked really happy. So why wouldn’t you want to be happy? Get out there and shop, sucker.

Often I think I was born in the wrong century, perhaps in the wrong country, possibly of the wrong race, and maybe even on the wrong planet altogether.

I just got back from a work retreat that I had been dreading for quite some time. During said retreat, I spent some late night hours carousing with a few coworkers who I hadn’t really gotten to know beforehand. I found them to be decent and fun to hang out with, at least in my inebriated state. I’m sure they were surprised by my sudden bout of gregariousness. I’m not a mean drunk, but I can be a saucy one. During the work sessions, I was surprised to sense a tiny flame of enthusiasm ignite somewhere deep below the layers of cynicism within me. But I know better. We can talk grand and eloquent away from the office, but reality is grim. Knowing how long it’s taken to get this far (still a sad state of affairs) makes it impossible to expect that even a quarter of our lofty ideas will ever come to fruition within the next three and a half years. And that is not cynicism talking; that’s just pragmatism.

The place where we stayed was a Bavarian-styled inn that was the type of place where the Griswold family would’ve roomed during one of their epically disastrous vacations. My bathroom had a disused-looking bidet in it and a space heater mounted in the wall that smelled like burning dust when turned on. Still, the king-sized four-poster bed was comfortable and the vaguely shabby past-its-heyday look to the entire place was preferable to the sterility of modern hotels. Not a good place to be a vegan, but I got by (barely). I wish I had photos to share, but the camera was left behind.

2 Comments

by sean on January 15, 2010 • Permalink

Posted in books, car culture, cynicism, home ownership, horror of humanity, human behavior, insane humans, john steinbeck, life, nature, reading, unease, work

Posted by sean on January 15, 2010

https://sd-stewart.com/2010/01/15/random/

at the fort

we walked along the edges of the marsh, picking our way through what the dirty harbor water washes up of the hideous effluvia of humanity, anything that might float, the plastic outcasts of society. i tried not to look down, to keep my heart from breaking again, to stifle the bile rising in my throat. we were there to look for birds, and we found some. swallows, sparrows, robins, gulls, herons, ospreys, orioles, a few warblers. it was another wednesday night walk at the fort. drier this time, but windier. birds wisely seek shelter from the wind and the constant rustling of leaves makes the trees look alive with bird activity, even when they are not. conditions were thus less than ideal. still, a good time was had.

tomorrow i’m going somewhere new and different to look for birds. i continue to wring this month dry while it lasts.

1 Comment

by sean on May 14, 2009 • Permalink

Posted in birds, horror of humanity, spring

Posted by sean on May 14, 2009

https://sd-stewart.com/2009/05/14/at-the-fort/

escape

Flew out of the city like bandit bears with a swarm of angry bees on our tails. At the top of a mountain, pitched the tent only to return an hour later to find another tent pitched next to it, despite the many other available sites nearby. It gets harder and harder to escape humanity. But, alas, this was not a backpack-into-the-middle-of-nowhere situation and, after all, on the first truly nice warm weekend of the spring after an unpleasantly cold winter, what can one actually expect. Surely not solitude with nature when still so relatively close to representations of civilization. Surely not the absence of every last vestige of human life. Surely not that. What one can expect, however, is depraved college-age youth yelling and carousing until the wee hours of the morning. Yes, one can count on one’s expectations in that regard to indeed be met. Even in the midst of such pure and innocent natural beauty, the horror of humanity awaits us.

I shoved all that to the back of my head, though, and we made the best of it. For example, I saw a Brown Creeper! I was excited about that. Chipping Sparrows engaged in esoteric mating rituals. Northern Flickers abounded. And on an isolated Sunday morning hike at Catoctin we met a couple of spry older men in training for their hike of Mount Kilimanjaro next month! It was a pleasure to engage in dialogue with such good folks, and it wove back together a few tattered shreds of our hope in humanity, which had been subjected to such vicious thrashing of late.

Bike parking at Catoctin: