During my commutes in San Francisco, I
began to order the world around me. More aptly, I began to order
myself within the world around me. I also started to think about my
family, those who are gone, and the ones that remain. I started to
think about old friends, again those who are gone and those who
remain. I started to think about all the jobs I’ve had over the
years: picture framer, screen printer, lumper, lightbulb changer,
clerk, Boy Scout, soldier, waiter. I spent twenty years either
waiting tables or tending bar, a job I liked ten percent of the time.
It’s also where I was the most exposed to people and for better or
worse, how I formed my opinions on the nature of people.
In 2019, I spent the year thinking
about higher laws, things that were the answers and discoveries to my
questions. I spent the year with smaller distilled topics, things
that where inspired by the things I read (Emerson and Thoreau), my
life with the Boy Scouts, or general anecdotal observations that
warranted research. I did not think about people, not really.
In San Francisco, I was surround by
creative people. Book binders in my situation. But I was also with my
cousin, who incidentally went through the same book binding core
program, is an established and celebrated photographer. I have done
my best to be around creative people my whole life. And as long as
we’re on the subject, I take the Albert Camus approach to creativity.
True freedom of creation only happens after losing ambition. As
counter-intuitive as that sounds, I really do sit atop a mountain of
writing and art and I have never suffered from ambition.
My favorite kind of person is the
creator.
As I thought more about it, I thought
about the destroyer, my least favorite kind of person. No one really
wants to be a destroyer, at least I hope no one does. But the
destroyer is out there. I place all censors, book banners in this
camp. Censors and book banners are Nazis in my estimation, and I
can’t even begin to express how I feel about that. I often feel
destroyers are moved because of a certain ideology or theology to
become what they are, again, destroyers, yes, but not in the same
sort of rape of Rome sort of way. Although the destroyer seems bad,
they are not generally my least favorite people, but I do try to
avoid them.
Then there is the consumer. This was
the sort of person I most often encountered in my restaurant days. We
are all consumers on some level or other, I know this. The consumer I
loath, is the profligate consumer. The person who takes one bite of a
steak and sends it back. Yes, on one hand, I get it, they’re spending
money on it, and it needs to be right. On the other hand, the
profligate consumer does not stop to consider the fact that that
steak represents a life. It was once a heartbeat. It was an animal
that did not have a particularly pleasant life just to end up being
wasted on a table. I feel like the darkest of consumers are those who
take more than their share, this is anything from constant upgrades
on electronics, to single use cups and bottles, to large gas loving
automobiles. Again, I know where are all consumers to some degree or
other.
The last person is the numbed. Enough
said about that. There are all sorts of ways to be numbed: work,
food, drugs, booze, entertainment.
Truthfully, I have been, like all of
us, pieces and parts of all of these people. Well, I’ve never been a
book banner, even the books I have low opinions of, but I have had
times of destruction. We all have. The question is, when it comes
down to where you’re going to sit on the train, which section is for
you?