It was peak flu season but I couldn’t tell if I had the flu or not.
I didn’t have a headache or a runny nose. But I had a light cough, and I was constantly coughing up an inconsistent amount of mucus.
After being cooped up in the room for about 2 days I decided to go on a drive, anything to get some air and clear my mind.
The Christmas air was refreshingly crisp.
About 10 minutes in, I felt something in the back of my throat, so I did what I’ve trained my throat to do, muscle memory at this point.
Breathe in, engage the core, contract my throat muscle, and I squeezed the slippery chungus up my throat. Usually I would charge up a second loud hawking to get the loogie up my pipe but this one came up pretty smoothly like an aggressive slime. My hydrationmaxxing was goated.
Now I gotta dispose it (the texture was more viscous than I expected), except I’m fucking driving there’s fucking nowhere to fucking spit. I usually carry a roll of paper in the center console but I used it up last week. I didn’t know what to do so I just ignored it and kept it in the confinement of my mouth.
I had no idea where I was going, just letting my instincts take the wheel and making turns towards the unknown.
I recalled Marshall McLuhan saying something like we shape the tools to help us do shit and in turn the tools we use shape us. It got me thinking. Rocks. Knives. Axes. We had to cut things open to eat. The agricultural revolution. Sickles. Hammers. Chisels. More specialized tools. People became craftsmen. Form identities. Society began to be categorized. What tools you master will help you make a living. Trade stuff. Trade services. Food on the table, family is happy, life is good. Work makes life meaningful.
Then the industrial revolution drove humanity towards productivity. Electricity. Engines. Assembly lines. Machines replaced human hands for repetitive tasks. Companies organized people into jobs and time based shifts but people were able to buy more things. Hand tools got pushed towards precision, finishing, and craftsmanship. It’s stupid to buy a chair from a carpenter when the one from IKEA is way cheaper, but a handcrafted chair is worth a lot more because it carries artistry. Imperfect cut angles and uneven surfaces convey authenticity and skill if it’s done with intention. People go to work for money, then they use the money to do something they like. Work is now a means to survive, and how you utilize your free time makes life meaningful instead.
Stronger. Faster. More productive. The telegraph. First man in space. A sub 4 minute mile.
The information revolution puts the trend on the speed of light. More organized data translates into even more efficiency, and more efficiency means more processes will be replaced. But what looks different this time is that the computer is both a tool for work and for life at the same time. Suddenly everyone is using a computer. Any obstacle in life becomes a negative feeling. Your girlfriend is on the other side of the world? And any negative feeling becomes a solvable problem. Boom, a FaceTime call. And any problem solved means happiness. She cheated on you with an Italian model.
There’s not really any personal problem that the internet cannot solve right there and then, it makes sense why people are seeking to spend effort again. Skating becoming mainstream, guitars are gateways to slow things down, video games are opportunities to achieve something, and traveling 26 miles on foot is an attempt at reclaiming personal values. Knitting, reading, gardening, hiking, cooking, planking DJing yoyoing sewing basketball looking up at the stars smelling your partner’s arm pit falling down the stairs injecting methamphetamine giving money to the man on the corner hating your job yelling into the pillow. When photography replaced the commercial painting, painting was freed to return to something that you do just because. Paint brush on canvas. One stroke at a time. One color at a time. One step at a time. One day at a time.
I had quite a full mouth of saliva-mucus-mix dark matter building up. I didn’t know what to do, but eventually I decided that I had to get rid of it in that instant. I rolled down my window, and with a deep seated hatred for racism I launched that shit out with my entire face. In my side mirror I saw my thick glob went backwards and landed on a homeless man’s hair. I took a deep breath in, foot on the gas, sped past a yellow and drove into the sunset.
