102203

 

Arcata, CA

Wednesday October 22, 2003

     8:06am  I just woke up in the barn in a thick mist. People are up and awake already. I'm going to take a head-count.

                   There's approximately twenty people here. I don't know who's left.

     8:35am  I'm walking away from the barn.

                   Shit, I forgot my backpack with my razors. I wanted to shave today. I'm going to go back for them.

     8:55am  I'm almost to The Endeavor now and Moonraven comes up to me and asks me, "Hey Victor, will you do me a favor?" He asked me if I could hold his knife for him. I told him, "Umm, nah, I don't think so, man." He was all, "There's nothing wrong with it. I didn't do anything." I told him sorry.

     9:25am  I just talked to Wingnut Maya. I saw her and told her, "Hey listen. Remember that time we had dirty sex in the barn? I haven't been sick in like four years. No cough, no cold, no nothing. All of sudden I'm sick. Have you been checked recently?" She immediately said, "I'm clean, I'm clean." I said, "Are you sure? When was the last time you got checked?" She said with an attitude, "I don't have a reason to be checked. I'm clean." So, she's all pissed off and crazy and a wingnut. Shit. I'm still worried.

     9:36am  There's still two people ahead of me on Rosendo's list. Ahh, I have enough time to go spange up a donut, take it back to The Endeavor and eat it.

     9:41am  This dude gave me fifty cents. I'm kind of thinking twice about asking people for their names and telling them about my book-of-generosity. Lots of people tell me, "Oh, I'm already in your book," and I feel kind of stupid doing it again. I get a feeling that people aren't going to take me seriously if I ask them twice.

                    Okay, I only needed fifteen more cents to get a donut. I walked up to the sidewalk in front of the plaza and this dude gave me twenty cents. So, I'm going to go get me a donut and go back to The Endeavor. Hopefully they haven't called my name yet.

Page 446

Chapter 20, The Strategy of Social Futurism

                    "Can one live in a society that is out of control? That is the question posed for us by the concept of future shock. For that is the situation we find ourselves in. If it were technology alone that had broken loose, our problems would be serious enough. The deadly fact is, however, that many other social processes have also begun to run free, oscillating wildly, resisting our best efforts to guide them.
                    Urbanization, ethnic conflict, migration, population, crime - a thousand examples spring to mind of fields in which our efforts to shape change seem increasingly inept and futile. Some of these are strongly related to the breakaway of technology; others partially independent of it. The uneven, rocketing rates of change, the shifts and jerks in direction, compel us to ask whether the techno-societies, even comparatively small ones like Sweden and Belgium, have grown too complex, too fast to manage?
                    How can we prevent mass future shock, selectively adjusting the tempos of change, raising or lowering levels of stimulation, when governments - including those with the best intentions - seem unable even to point change in the right direction?
                    Thus a leading American urbanologist writes with unconcealed disgust: "At a cost of more than three billion dollars, the Urban Renewal Agency has succeeded in materially reducing the supply of low cost housing in American cities." Similar debacles could be cited in a dozen fields. Why do welfare programs today often cripple rather than help their clients? Why do college students, supposedly a pampered elite, riot and rebel? Why do expressways add to traffic congestion rather than reduce it? In short, why do so many well-intentioned liberal programs turn rancid so rapidly, producing side effects that cancel out their central effects? No wonder Raymond Fletcher, a frustrated Member of Parliament in Britain, recently complained: "Society's gone random!"
                    If random means a literal absence of pattern, he is, of course, overstating the case. But if random means that the outcomes of social policy have become erratic and hard to predict, he is right on target. Here, then, is the political meaning of future shock. For just as individual future shock results from an inability to keep pace with the rate of change, governments, too, suffer from a kind of collective future shock - a breakdown of their decisional processes.
                    With chilling clarity, Sir Geoffrey Vickers, the eminent British social scientist, has identified the issue: "The rate of change increases at an accelerating speed, without a corresponding acceleration in the rate at which further responses can be made; and this brings us nearer the threshold beyond which control is lost." 

     10:49am  I finally got a hold of Rosendo again. Dude, this place is so unorganized. I went out to smoke a cigarette, because it was taking a long time. Oh yeah, when I first got here I had to go to the bathroom and Rosendo's list wasn't out yet. So I finally took a shit, went back and now I'm number four on the list. Damn. Then, I decided to go smoke a cigarette. While I was smoking I noticed a little shake on this girl's hands. I asked her, "Got any more?" She did and I told her we'd go smoke it by the wall. While I was smoking it, Rosendo had come out to look for me. So, when I got back I just sat down and read my book until they finally came and got me. I went to his office to talk to him. So now, I have to wait for Sandy to get back so she can give me the fourteen dollars. Even then I'm still short five dollars for my bus fare. I'll need to find a way to get that.

                     Ugh, I ran into Sandy and she asked me, "Do you think you can come back in the morning?" I sighed and told her, "If I have to." She said, "Or could you swing by this afternoon in between three and 3:30. I broke a smile and told her yes. Sandy is a sweetheart.

                     Oh yeah, I talked with a couple people from San Antonio when I was on the computer at The Raven House yesterday. On Instant Messenger, screen name: SUCK A DOGS DLCK. It's kind of freaking me out. I'm really kind of ashamed. I feel like such a big failure now. I might have an STD. I'm all worried. I know, I know that worrying is like paying interest on a debt you may never owe and doesn't do any good. But hell, this is life and death shit. If I find out I do have something I'm just going to go all gung-ho on my mission. I still plan to include all this stuff on my webpage. Like I said, nothing but the truth. I mean, I could so easily omit it all, but that wouldn't be right. I made a mistake and I am sorry . . . so sorry. It's going to suck, though. I do feel a little better today. I'm not that sick anymore. I was still coughing this morning.

                     Man, I feel like such a failure. I went against a lot of what I preach. About the whole unprotected sex thing. Now, I'm paying for it. It was a test I failed miserably. Oh man, I'm depressed.

                     I was playing with the idea about staying in Humboldt another two weeks. Shit, I might stay in Berkeley another two weeks instead to wait for my results. This sucks.

                     Yeah, as soon as I get my bus fare I'm going to skip this town already. I've pretty much grown tired of it. I'm going to go back to Berkeley where I can stay comfortably for months if I want. There, I can fly my sign and get my bus fare.

Page 448

                     "Why, therefore, despite all these efforts, should the system be spinning out of control? The problem is not simply that we plan too little; we also plan too poorly. Part of the trouble can be traced to the very premises implicit in our planning."

Page 449

                     "One response to the loss of control, for example, is a revulsion against intelligence. Science first gave man a sense of mastery over his environment, and hence over the future. By making the future seem malleable, instead of immutable, it shattered the opiate religions that preached passivity and mysticism. Today, mounting evidence that society is out of control breeds disillusionment with science. In consequence, we witness a garish revival of mysticism. Suddenly astrology is the rage. Zen, yoga, séances, and witchcraft become popular pastimes. Cults form around the search for Dionysian experience, for non-verbal and supposedly non-linear communication. We are told it's more important to "feel" than to "think," as though there was a contradiction between the two. Existentialists oracles join Catholic mystics, Jungian psychoanalysts, and Hindu gurus in exalting the mystical and emotional against the scientific and rational."

     12:15pm  I'm walking to the public library. I'm going to go check my email.

                     Damn, the library opens at one, in forty five minutes.

     12:27pm  Spunflower walked by and invited us all to puff. She's going to smoke us out.

     1:05pm  I just finished smoking out with Sunflower. She was telling me that everybody, that everyone in Humboldt County has Aids. Like, it was known for the high population. She made me already accept the fact that I am HIV positive. It gives me direction. North, to Canada. I'm going to go to Saskatchewan and look for Fawn Journeyhawk. I hear that's where she is now. Maybe I'll go back up through O'Brien and talk to Shadow again. I'm going North soon.

                   I was just thinking that what if I do get healed? Wouldn't that be awesome for the book?

                   Oh well, it's 1:11pm. I might as well go to the public library and check my email.

     3:40pm  I got off the computer at the library and went over to The Endeavor(a little late). Sandy is so cute. When I got there and she heard I was there, she went, "Oh, Victor. Rosendo already told me that you were going to come back tomorrow." I went, "No he didn't!" Sandy said, "I'm just kidding. Hold on, alright?" She went in her office and came back out with three five dollar bills. I smiled and asked her, "Do you need any change?" She shook her head no and told me, "Your glasses look good on you, Victor." Awwww. I like Sandy.

                  Well anyway, I was all down and depressed because I don't know what to do. You see, today I checked my writeprotect@hotmail.com address, which I never check. My mom had written me there all worried about me. See, I called her yesterday from The Raven House and she couldn't talk. I told her that I loved her. She sent me some email saying she worries about me all the time and she's always wondering if I'm sick or not. She wanted me to give her an address so she could send me a care-package. I was touched. It really made me miss my mom. Someone actually cares about me. I'm all broken up right now, crying while I walk down the sidewalk in Arcata.

                  Wups, I saw Jonathan down there and I am too upset to deal with him. So, I'm turning around.

                  I have so many options right now. I don't know whether I should just wait out and get tested here. That's what I'm going to do.

                  This guy just walked by and saw me and said, "Hey, I got your email, guy." I asked him what his address was. He's jkerr@sbcglobal.net.

                  I'm in front of the donut shop now.

                  This guy just gave me some change. Like thirty cents or something.

     4:00pm  Robert is hooking me up with some change for a donut. I appreciate it, bro. That's very generous of you.

     5:13pm  I'm at the school.

     9:25pm  I just finished up at the library. I wrote my mom a long email. I told her everything. I told my story so far since the day I left, as best as I could. Everything, everything, everything. Even the current happenings and my depression.

                   Some guy just gave me thirty cents and the rest of his Brisk Lipton lemon drink. I didn't get his name, but he knows who he is.

     9:51pm  Rhonda just hooked me up with a cigarette. I had been thinking, "Man, some dude just hooked me up with a cold soda. I need a cigarette to go with it." Rhonda's cool.

     10:14pm  Sean just hooked me up with the quarter I needed for my donut.

     10:20pm  Just out of the blue Alex gave me a dollar and a quarter. I had asked him before and he said he didn't have anything. I appreciate it, brother. That's very generous of you.

     10:48pm  I came over here and smoked some weed with Spunflower again . . . and she, of all people told me that I'm weird sometimes. Haha, Sunflower tells me I'm weird sometimes!

     11:07pm  I got lost walking to the barn again. Hehe, I even have my glasses on.

     11:20pm  I got to the barn like maybe three minutes ago . . . at 11:17pm. Everybody's crashed here tonight. It's all wet outside. It must've rained while I was in school.

Next day..