When in the course of human events, it is necessary to notes one's particular life situation. I must say that I am happy to be in a faraway land, away from home. Yet I consider it surprising that I am the only one that thinks of the place I inhabit as the least bit exotic. "We are in a place where grass does not grow on the ground! Where human life is barely sustainable without the assistance of semi-tractor trailers, pipes that transport mass quantities of water, and demosticated animals can't survive." My pleadings go unanswered. It's "normal" here.

I am still planning on retiring from life, in favor of living in the ideal world, untouched by the vulgar influence of what-have-you. This is Tolstoy's dream, and I share it. One should live in the mountains, and write, and concern oneself with important things: literature, philosophy, painting. Anything but the ebb and flow of dolorous commentators on the cable stations.

But I envision other intersting life possibilities: the labor movement needs a new Cesar Chavez (it is Labor Day), and I would make a good steelworker. I've done as much physical labor in southwest Iowa's hog facilities to romanticize the movement of the day, the colloquial speech, and the giving of one's time and leaving things at that.

I am understanding why it is that so many people avoid leaving home. There really are no flashing lights "out there." Fame is a letdown (maybe I should ask someone who actually knows), and no matter where I go, be it New York City, Paris, London, Florence or Hamburg, it is business as usual for everyone. I hereby pronounce my solidarity with those whose war is against things as they are. Yes, to the mountains, to write.

Another of my ultra-pretentious, effete remarks: to me, the greatest insult is what I believe to be the human animals prostration. We cannot control our situation. I want to write about those that fight for the impossible: to bring justice to the limits of human existence, those whose only goal is the extraordinary feat, whose daily horror is so great that no language can describe it.

Maybe I should have been a soldier, I sometimes think. We know that we will all die. I imagine that I would be most happiest dead. Perhaps killed by an evil miscreant, in just as ridiculous a position of powerlessness as me. The story of my violation and the perpetual evil of an unnamed enemy would help to keep my imagined spirit unblemished forever. I should only be so lucky to die young, whereby I could no longer make a mistake, and surely never disappoint myself. Soldiers go to war for reasons other than this, to be sure, but this is why I would go, if I could. To be alive outside of myself, to be the perfect simacrulum, to be able to love one's self objectively--this is the essence of art. To live as art is to project oneself faraway like a star, untouched, forever in the ether. It's where some of us belong.

I love the narratives of justice, vengeance and courage. To let things be done and be gone. Maybe that is why I am happy here, away from where I am from. I have become a projection to so many, yet not to myself. I love spiritualization, to put it into a word. And I love you, Nietzsche, for your incisive irony that showed that things can be better, that a human idea is meant to be projected, far away, into the ether.

What if I played division one football? A life without aimless striving is no life at all.