after the fall, after the break down, after the deconstruction, after we go about the business of taking everything apart that’s been handed down to us and found offensive, which is everything, what do we do? what is there left?
we cannot, after all, live only in rubble. we would be covered in soot. we wouldn’t be able to breathe because of all the dust. we would cut our feet. our palms would bleed. our children would starve. our old would be forgotten, history lost. we eventually would need to build. and in building anything, some fundamental principles would need to be applied or no structure will hold, nothing will withstand our weight. there will be no comfort or shelter.
in other words, in order to be safe, we would have to come up with some sort of code to live by. the question then becomes, how much of it will be borrowed from the generations before? how much of it will be driven by biology? how much of it will be made straight out of thin air?
then, of course, we return to the beginning, after all that, after all this, how do we withhold what we’ve made, how do we maintain in the world we sought to destroy and make anew? how do we avoid all the traps and idiot nonsense that comprises both the margin and the center? how do we go about living as our own and only?

this after thinking about LaChappelle’s Rize, the reality show about tattoo artists in “L.A. Ink”, and my ambivalence to my own culture