health

What has changed. What has stayed the same.

Let me start with public matter that I should have attended to earlier. My big projects, the ones I was so cagey about all fall, have been announced. These include…

The formation of a new publishing project LBC Books
The announcement of three new books to be published by this new project (with 2 more to be announced, with dates, within the next week or so)
One of those books is edited by me. It has already been released

It is a little thing, but of course I am proud

Falling under the category of “no good deed goes unpunished” the announcement of the new book was met with scorn and dismissal (although not by anyone who wanted me to know their name). The fascinating part of this, for me, was a new line of attack. Aragorn! is too powerful and should stop doing things. Giving this the full benefit of the doubt (which I don’t) this criticism is long overdue. Anarchists have become lazy. I don’t blame AK Press or Crimethinc for producing all the literature that deserves to be read but the attitude that because nothing we can do is good then we should do nothing at all. Obviously most everything I do…

Quick Sidebar: It is absolutely ridiculous for me to say that “I” do anything at all. I can think of 3-10 people (and one in particular) who I absolutely depend on for every public project I do. I say “I” mostly because I feel like I have prepared myself for the slings and arrows and want to honor my accomplices privacy and different capacities. Not everyone wants to be called out on the Internet, or in stupid email chains, or on forums, etc…

return: Most everything I do is bad. Is corrupted by capitalism, alienation, and editorial control. I’d like to say that the authorial control I try to give people is enough, but of course it isn’t. I wrestle with demons with clear motivation. I believe that an anarchy worth my time is one vibrant, powerful, and bottled with genie(s). I believe this thing is worth making my time worth something so I trudge on.

I am touched by corruption and blow it off because thinking in terms of the sacred and the unholy is exactly the Christian problem that makes life unlivable. I despise Christians and the forces of boring, boring, life. I want to fight them all but my (and our) weapons are dull and rusty. We anarchists have not risen to greatness and have no one to blame but ourselves.

The transformation of the world by the productive forces was bound slowly to realise the material conditions of total emancipation, having first passed through the stage of the bourgeoisie. Today, when automation and cybernetics applied in a human way would permit the construction of the dream of masters and slaves of all time, there only exists a socially shapeless magma which blends in each individual paltry portions of master and slave. Yet it is from this reign of equivalent values that then new masters, the masters without slaves, will emerge.

–Vaneigem

Personal Stuff: The slurring of my speech seems to be getting a bit worse. As some of you may remember I had a few brain aneurysms a few years ago which have mostly left me none-the-worse-for-wear but does seem to have impacted my speech. It usually only happens when I’m tired, or under-caffeinated, or feeling blah but this past week the issue has noticeably worsened. It seems to be impacted by my choice of words. Certain vowel combinations or word choices and my lazy tongue keels over.

It is easy to get troubled by this. Along with my typing hand this is my main output into the world. Without it I will be misunderstood or perhaps worst, ignored. It is a wonderful irony that just as I am finding a voice, in the publishing sense of the word, I might also be losing it.

Now that I’m gone here is where I am

I am typing this slowly. Perhaps that says most of what needs to be said. I am ok. My right hand is working but just takes a little more attention. A little more time. My head is clear and hesitant.

This week I suffered my second cerebral aneurysm. It happened while I was sleeping (I think) just like the first time. The main symptoms include a very weak right hand with a significant loss in motor function and a slurring of speech. Both are hard to live with but the terror is surprisingly under control. The first time was horror. The idea of a loss of everything I am, of the ways I am in the world, was too much to bear.

But if I have learned anything in this life it is that I will bear.

Anvil + foot == Ouch!

I haven’t updated in a while as I’ve been busy being unmotivated… and getting out the first issue of The Anvil! This link get’s you a free (but for the postage) copy of the paper. This link is to the editorial of the first issue. Here is a quote from the editorial that I’d like to expand on.

In our unreal world, it is hard not to be overwhelmed by the invisible things that are easily confused with reality: fake controversies, confused priorities, hyperbolic rhetoric about inconsequential things. We become disengaged with the torrents that pass us by. Paper slows us down enough to engage in the ideas that we are talking about.

Many readers are likely to know that as much as I valorize print, in my daily life I also spend 12+ hours a day in front of a screen. My criticisms of the Internet generation are criticisms that I know all too well. They are criticisms of me and the person that I have become since I started spending all of my time in front of a screen. I spend my waking hours switching from fake controversy to stupid priorities pausing long enough to dissect something useful, if possible, out of the rhetoric on the screen.

I don’t sit in the sun for hours. I rarely spend more than 15 minutes a day reading a book that I can touch with my hands. I recently bought a kindle and am rereading old, readily available SF on it. I am a brain in a bottle, stacked in a row. Can you tell I’ve been working in the cubicle farm for too long?

Outside of the torrent of screen life is the pace of publishing. I love it. We tend to line our titles up for a once a year (hopefully twice next year) launch around the San Francisco Anarchist Book Fair in March. This means that we are discussing manuscripts with authors now to finish in the next two months, to finalize in December, layout in January, and print in February to have on hand in March. Compared to blog-o-reality where the couple dozen people who check this regularly get a chunk of my thoughts a couple of hours after I start to have this this cycle is excruciatingly slow. Many of the people in my daily data flow sincerely believe that this aspect of life (print) is worthless. They extract no value out of the slow moving, muddy stream. They live in the rush (and the push and the land that we stand on is ours), the data rush, the drama rush, and the rush of the gaze.

I’ll wrap up my thinking about The Anvil other than to ask interested writers of review essays to get in touch with us. We would like to publish you. Interested readers we would like you to consider subscribing to the paper. If you do you will be helping support the project and make it easier to go to print more often.

I have been experimenting a bit with barefoot walking (with minimalist shoes). While I can’t imagine walking around the city in them, when I am at home, or hiking I am entirely in love with them. I think that the arguments about shoes being casts for our feet and weakening/atrophying our foot and lower leg muscles is entirely on point.

I started dialing into this because I tore some ligament in my knee (probably the ACL) a couple of years ago and haven’t been able to run with traditional running shoes ever since. I can still do cardio in the gym (which is basically an exercise cast for your whole body), I can still do everyday activities (including walking) but as soon as I add the extra motion of running in a couple blocks I am done.

Running as been the one kind of exercising that I have ever loved and I mean love L-U-V. As a teenager I was part of the cross country team and got into the whole package. Long runs, country runs, the competition, the solitude, endorphins, the whole package appealed to me. That was 25 years ago. Now I sit in front of a screen, motionless but for my fingers. I debate whether to watch one more hour of a program rather than be in my body. I need to run.

For a couple weeks I tried to run barefoot. It was fucking fantastic. For a couple of the runs I was reminded of the endorphin rush I used to get back in the day. I was reminded that I actually have more going on that just being a brain-in-a-bottle… so of course I injured myself. It has been two weeks since then waiting for my foot to heal (no break, just something that feels like a bruise). I realize that my hope to jump up to 10 miles a week isn’t going to happen quickly. I am fragile and fat. This thing that I know is going to nourish me in exactly the way that I want to be nourished right now is just out of reach.

Couple that with the misery of a routine I am tired of and I am not in a great place right now. I am just watching the days go by… waiting.

Another Surgery For a Battered Soul

Just about exactly 20 years after a “Skinhead brawl” put my roommate into a grave and me into “stable condition with stab wounds on his left side” I might be seeing the end of the second chapter of the complications the incident on my life. While on the one hand it is easy, and true, to blame the aleopathic approach of treating symptoms in my situation for it coming back to haunt me 20 years later I am also feeling pretty thankful for planning ahead on this situation.

I have always been committed to not living “life as usual” from fighting Nazis as a young man, to rejecting the nuclear family (and relationship), and the life of criminal boredom (read: career) I’ve made choices that made some sense to me even though there have been consequences. The primary consequence, one I usually share with 40 million other residents of this country, is a habitual lack of health insurance. I survived the initial stabbing because of a California program around “victims of violent crime” but as my old wound began to herniate I wouldn’t have such honor. I’d either have to suck up tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills (probably six figures due to the complications) or get a job with seriously good health insurance. This I did and continue to be trapped in until I am fully recovered from this second chapter.

As you can read in my old blog (which I am going to migrate to here one of these days) the first part of this chapter didn’t go so well. Perhaps I’ll do an equivalent of Bad Medicine in a pamphlet form with some of this material. BTW if you haven’t read the Spring 2010 The Match there is a fantastic (quality) and terrifying (in content) article on hernia surgery that coupled with my story should put the Fear into all men.

But I believe that this time the surgery went well. The massive distention I’ve had in my belly the past 6 months is gone. I can imagine a non-mutant future for myself. I think I will heal. Last time I wasn’t so sure.

That said today was the first time I really examined myself without bandages and materiel. I am going to be a very different creature emerging from this whole situation. My belly, still stapled, shaved, and pasty from my hospital visit also has a kind of un-living characteristic that I am really disturbed by. It is flatter but I can feel the sides of the surgical material under my skin still not integrated into my body. I will survive but I will be beyond scarred. I will be transformed. The new me will be physically weaker (no more Muay Thai for me!). I will have to slowly strengthen my core to achieve baseline. I am, on some level, middle aged before my time. I am not ready.

I am about to hit 40. I am going to have a funny birthday party where people I have made fun of get to respond in kind. I am ready for the next stage of life but not quite for the implications of being not just not-young but actually old. I figured I would be able to fake it, on some level, for another 5-10 years. It just isn’t true. I have some thinking to do about how few peers I have, about how that isn’t going to change anytime soon, and how about my body isn’t going to win me any medals at any future derby. I will have to make do with the steel trap inside my head. Obviously I am going to be just fine but the illusion, the imagination, is gone. Regards.

I am just whittling away

Taking on an enormous pile of long range projects has really helped me, psychologically, become a better person. I am happy to make excuses for the person I was before all of these things took over my life, but they would be excuses. Sitting here furiously working on projects of no great import outside my imagination has left me no time for distraction. No time for wandering eyes or hobbies beyond the greatest hobby of them all. Changing the world.

These little things: learning how to set up monitoring so that I can have a longer conversation with a person about their project that I am going to help them make real. Moving resources around so that I am constantly optimizing my mix of spend vs usable resources. Figuring out how to organize things so that I can allow people to grow into resources that they aren’t really helping upkeep. Infinite support. Planning for the future. Spending everything on the greatest project I’ve ever had, and taking myself out to dinner as often as I’d like.

I’ll make an announcement next week getting all of you up to date on what I have been doing the past six months. I have accomplished at least 2/3 of what I had planned on. This is pretty fucking incredible all things considered and would never have been possible without the incredible work of people-who-cannot-be-mentioned and a childhood of abuse and torment that has inspired me to be greater than where I come from.

For now I am finishing up a website. Going to write a couple things in the next 24 hours that should have some impact. Write a couple press releases. Learn about litescribe and root on the events of the next week. I doubt California will be turned to ash but the hopelessness of our time may become a beacon that changes more lives than just mine.

Suprisingly tolerant

I am starting to get a reputation (if only in my head) for being surprisingly tolerant. I have become aware of this at work because I have worked closely with two of the most difficult people to work with at the company. Being a person who can deal with these people comes from my many years of dealing with very difficult to work with people in anarchist circles, in my social life, and perhaps, because of dealing with me.

I continue to find difficult people to be far more interesting than ‘nice’ people. I’ve never found nice to be, on its own, a particularly endearing trait. Frankly, I think it obscures far more than it demonstrates. But that ability to deal with difficult people comes at a price.

My skin is callused and thick.

I still feel it when a controversy blows by me, or there is a repercussion, but its less and less over time. I’d go so far as to say that I wouldn’t recommend learning my lesson as the consequences aren’t really for you.

A letter to close 2009

screamingmugs
Friends,

Big changes in the air, which is a great, as 2009 has been utter shit. A horrible year that I am happy to see behind me. I’ll review.

Work

I am still working full time. The job is increasingly grueling as my tasks become more cyclical (month-to-month) and less problem solving (day-to-day or hour-to-hour). My job has become very social in that I work in a “team” where there is an expectation to socialize. This makes side project or learning new tech exceedingly difficult during the week. Very frustrating with no end in site…

As many of you know I had a wretched year health wise. The worst in my life.

First I went in for a simple laproscopic hernia operation. It seemed to go well but instead almost killed me twice. First time, by freezing my GI system forcing a return visit to the hospital for a couple of days of stomach pumping. That was a blast. The second time with an infection that required pumping out two liters of material, a couple of weeks in the hospital, and surgery after surgery.

After all this was wrapped up (which it still isn’t, of course, since I still have a large wound in my abdomen) I had a brain hemmorage. This necessitated two days of symptoms, three days of hospital stay, and three trips to the MRI terror show. We will see what the results are early next year.

Projects

The projects are going well. The print projects are changing but include a total of four books in the process for publication (at this time). We hope that all of them will be ready by March 2010.

Nihilist Communism
Willful Disobedience: Anthology
Til the Clock Stops: Beginning Texts for the Constitution of A War Machine
Anarchy Works – by Peter Gelderloos

For 2010 we (Ardent) have quite a few books lined up (we hope for four releases in 2010) and are already planning for 2011.

The web projects continue to thrive. The news site is still very active and has been frustrating me less and less as time has gone on. The library site has been amazing and continues to inspire me with the dedication and diligence of the new librarians (and old) who have made the project a pleasure to be a part of.

The big new web project (which is evidenced in this URL) has been slow moving but hopefully will launch in full effect sometime in January or Febuary 2010. The idea is to provide a set of web services and portal like functions to the milieu. We will be providing blogging, email, instant messaging and a series of new sites for interested parties. I can’t wait to launch it and start working with an active technical group on a proactive project they can all be involved in.

Travel

This year I mostly traveled for bookfairs. I made it to San Francisco, New York (twice, once to go to CT), Portland, Santa Cruz, Seattle, and missed my flight to go to Tacoma. Hopefully next year I will slow down that pace and spend a bit more time in some places so I can spend quality time with friends and comrades.

Status update – module 1 is a green light

It is now a couple weeks since my “brain problem” and everything is looking great. Perhaps I need to sleep a little bit more, but that is it. My hand coordination is within a couple percent of normal. My speech is fine. I am OK. Thanks to everyone who expressed concern in this matter. As I am sure you can understand the situation is scary and inspires reflection on pacing, aging, and life.

Enough of that. I think I am going to work on a stream of stories about the day-to-day-life implication of having a critical or anti-ideological perspective (as an anarchist). All too often in the debased NIRL (not in real life aka Internet) discussions I see the tired either-or of action (usually something like organizing, activism, or WWW (world without windows) type actions) contrasted with complaining, criticizing, do-nothingism. Until we break out of this conceptual false binary AND demonstrate more clearly the interplay of how thinking about a problem and then going about solving it (as anarchists) we will continue to have the horrible retention rate beyond age 25 that we have.

Here is an article that feeds my thinking about this today.

This link comes from the world of “technology entrepreneurship” which might seem like a bad place to find useful information for anarchists and perhaps it is. They are empiricists in the laboratory of capitalism not of a world that may be possible. But… these are people who are intent on a type of experimentation between ideas and practice that is rigorous, reality tested, and less hierarchical than one might imagine. The end game for most of these people is not wealth and then retirement to a chalet while the underlings keep the doors open but, by and large, doing “the process” over and over again. The process (of evangelism, entrepreneurship, and building startups) is the goal.

In technology this process can happen very fast and there are fortunes being made and lost so there is plenty for these people to find interesting and exciting. This is part of the appeal and most of the high profile members of this cabal write about it incessantly. Full stop.

For this discussion, from the linked article is (the article uses medical problems as its example)…

Across the entire universe of patients, the single largest indicator of treatment wasn’t symptoms or patient background, it was the background of the doctor.

My summary: When you go to a specialist you should expect specialist answers. Conversely, specialists speak from their own understanding of reality and since it is so well developed and precise it can often be confused for truth by anyone who doesn’t understand the context of the specialist.

When we are talking about the project of another world, how to get there, what it would look like, the specialists of one approach often, but not always, show their bias. Part of our self education has to include a deep understanding of the motivations of our position, and other people who share it, and the positions of others who we are liable to work with. Not just the alleged political motivations of baby tyrants, scofflaws, or slackers but the history and interests of people that would prefer to read books, talk to strangers, break windows, sit in meetings, or drink to excess as their way to live their anarchy.

The greatest concern I have with anarchists (or perhaps people) is not their “wrongness” but their lack of curiosity. Specialism is another way to say I am right and you are wrong.

Entropy

I am not sure how else to put this but that I am falling apart. The center is no longer holding. My will just isn’t enough to prevent simple decay from eating away at me. I guess I am going to have to make choices. Cuts in exactly how much I am trying to do at once.

It is heartbreaking to imagine that just now, when I am at the height of my creative, technical, and organizational power that I am going to have to slow down but the facts are the facts.

Fact 1: What should have been a simple hernia surgery turned into a now 5 month ordeal.

Fact 2: I woke up Wednesday with slightly slurred speech & weakness in my right hand

Fact 3: After a CAT Scan it was determine that I had a small (although WTF is small in this situation) brain hemmorrhage.

Fact 4: 3 days later I am back home. Waiting for several months for an MRI and about to start occupational therapy to, hopefully, get back the function I lost 4 days ago.

All of this is rather dramatic, at least from my point of view, and puts a bit more of the fear into me than I had before but I have to admit that the repercussions have yet to really hit me. Perhaps they never will. I am still typing at least 80% as fast as I was before TDMBB (the day my brain broke), my slur is subtle (strangers would never know), and since I exhibit none (or should we say few) of the lifestyle risks for what just happened to me (as an OG XVX) the cause is most likely genetic. This doesn’t preclude more of this “genetic” problem from rearing its head but hopefully I’ll know what color to paint the BBTL (brain break threat level) chart in the next month or two.

On to more positive things. Here are a few I am looking forward to in the next few months…

NAASN – Less for the conference, which I am sure will be fine, in an East Coast @ kind of way, but more because of some time (and FOOD!!!) in NYC. If they would only move the radness of NYC to the west coast I’d only hop over the Miss. for MI.
Synology DS409 – I am thinking about this less for the 4.5T of space for ~$800 (!!!) but because of the fact that it runs quiet.
The Nook – Yes I am a gadget fiend. Since I am probably going to be taking the motorcycle less (if at all) in the future, the idea of a BART boredom buster (that actually reads PDF’s) is pretty exciting to me.
LA Anarchist Bookfair – Last year LA had its first bookfair and it was excellent. Very affirming to the fatalistic. It was almost good enough to pre-wash the bad taste of the SF bookfair a few months later. Hopefully this year will keep the great energy with a bit more room.

Missed Opportunity

The idea seemed great. Get off work at 4:30, get home and have a quick meal and be on BART by 6 pm for an 8 pm flight. Little did I know that even though BART has raised their rates another 15% they had also decreased their “off hours” train schedule so that by the time I actually arrived at the airport it was 7:50. I missed my flight and due to the pressurized BART trip and my still weakened body missed my chance to make it to the Tacoma Anarchist Bookfair. Fucking fuck!

I am bummed about it. LBC is bummed about it (since this is a time it needs more exposure than it has). Ardent is bummed about it (since we have a new book out this week). It is just a shitty situation that makes me question whether it is possible to do everything at the same time. The only good thing is that it meant that I set some time aside without any of the little pressures and got a couple actual things done. I am looking forward to launching @Planet. I am looking forward to changing my day-to-day situation and clearing my head of all the noise.

Next month brings up another challenge. I’m planning on heading back to the North West for the Seattle bookfair but am not quite sure how to do it. I am thinking that I have to take off a day of work, or two, on either side of the trip. Maybe drive. I’m going to think about it this week.