Okay, so no need to state the obvious… but here goes anyway: PYRAMIDROME HAS WITHERED UP LIKE SUMMER’S BASIL PLANT LEFT OUT IN THE FROST! But it’s okay. Let’s talk about it.

When I started this blog, it was more or less to convince myself that despite my severe feelings of personal worthlessness, I was still more or less capable of having ideas and gettin’ shit done. It kind of did the trick, as I was able to write about some stuff I found interesting, and have some other people read it and write stuff back. It was really cool how it worked out. I miss it, and I would like to propose a reinvigoration of this blog: FOR THE SAKE OF US ALL.

But yeah, gettin’ on with the deets. Since the last time I wrote, I’ve been swept up by a tornado of changes. I ate Chinese food on some Wednesday back in July. At the end of the meal, my fortune cookie had some good news for me, reading, “Expect a change in job or status for the future.” With a jaded smile, I tucked the small slip of paper into my pocket and wished like hell the cookie would for once get it right.

The very next day, I received a somewhat confusing e-mail. It was from a man at an Internet startup seeking interns on Craigslist, and he was replying to an application I had sent off only the day before. This baffled me, as I had begun to assume that the constant stream of e-mails I sent out every day were getting lost in translation, or at least sucked up by aliens and spewed out over another far-off corner of outer space. In hearing back from someone, my balloon strings were tugged back down to earth, and a heavy sense of gratitude overwhelmed me. PEOPLE ARE OUT THERE, I thought to myself. ALL IS NOT DEAD! I could have cried for the joy I felt in my heart, like at the end of Stephen King’s “The Langoliers,” when the final survivors escape the black hole/lapse in time and get happily dashed back into the hustle and bustle of functioning society.

Weirdly, the e-mail from the man at the Internet start-up suggested that I give him a call rather than meet him at some far off and horribly inconvenient location. So, I did, and after a questionably short conversation, it was decided that I would come into their office the following Friday to START WORKING. On top of all this, he said they would PAY ME for WORKING THERE. Upon hanging up the phone, I felt as though I had just stepped off the edge of a diving board, and was caught in that instant before gravity takes a hold—merely hovering in air, incomprehensiblly still, my brain floating easily between each wall of my lumpy skull like jelly in a donut. Had my reason for complaining and over-analyzing and pyramidroming my days away suddenly been lifted over my head like so much cold spaghetti? Only time would tell.

Over the next few hours the calm began to wear off. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I had a job! Glee set in and I finally made the plunge downward, free from my tethered state of pyramidroming-into-the-sun (as Icarus surely did, let it be known). That Friday I started working for M——-(let’s keep it nameless to prevent the Google spiders from crawling this and letting all my secrets pour wildly into my business life), where I’ve gradually become more and more at home with the idea of WORKING and MAKING MONEY and DOING BIZARRELY WEIRD TASKS THAT MAKE NO SENSE TO ME AT ALL (because, let’s be honest… this is what it means to do work for somebody else).

Now, I don’t want to go running a mock all over the weirdness of having a job, because let’s remember that horrible span from June to July when I woke up every morning at 11am to the sound of my own brain thumping itself into a coma. I am GRATEFUL to be able to get up in the morning, put on something that isn’t pajamas, slather some PB&J on toast and head out into the morning air. It really feels good to walk down the street, in the same direction as the morning before, heading off to a place where I am expected to be and expected to perform. Momma didn’t raise no slacker, which is why I made this blog back in the day of boredom, solitude and stir-craziness.

Since July, stuff has started happening. Somehow, I have managed to become engrossed in NOT ONE, but FOUR JOBS, all of which are INCREDIBLY WEIRD and kind of AWESOME. I have often thought of myself as somebody who’s most happy when living life off the beaten trail, which is why I’ve ended up with the resume I have, and which is most likely why this odd set of people have opted to take me on, each in their own way. I continue to be baffled and impressed with the simple fact that the places I currently work for are able to exist in this day and age. A successful Internet startup seeking to help independent designers and bands team up to sell handmade merchandise to niche markets? Improbable. A group of witty, humorous and talented artists coming together to confront the notion of reality, time and space through an alternative reality game based in the heart of San Francisco? Get real. An online store &blog selling prints made by awesome up-and-coming artists? Sounds great, but show me the beans. And finally, a project run by a bunch of lawyers to help underprivileged high school students work with local artists and not-for-profits while applying for college? GET OUTTA HERE. Somehow, I have become involved in a group of projects that each seem somehow too good to be true, which must in some way reflect my distrust for America’s economy and the improbability of something really cool being able to “make it.” However, it is somehow working out, and I am too fearful to sit for more than a second and think about all the stuff that could quite easily fail and send any one of these four projects crashing down into a pile of wishful thinking and good intentions.

Now that I have all this stuff going on, thinking about life via this blog has become something that barely ever crosses my mind… except when people ask me, ‘Hey, whatever happened to that Pyramidrome thing you kept e-mailing me about?’ At the thought of this I sigh, and think about how there are really just not enough hours in the day at all, and I work on weekends now, and I am just more or less out of control in all sense of the saying. It is so, so exciting to be a part of something that I believe in, and even though I sometimes feel like my time would be better spent digging a hole to China, I am grateful for each and every hour I’ve been able to spend at each of my jobs. I hate being this busy, but I am so much happier to be busy than idle. I think it is amazing that there are people in this world who are able and eager to start their own projects, to make money off of these projects, and to grow something imagined into something real. This is what I have always loved about art: the ability to imagine something, and then bring that thing into existence. I have respect for each of my jobs because at the core of each place is that golden nugget: the spirit of somebody who believed it might someday work out, and that their idea might someday employ some random girl from Vermont and give her something to toil away her days to.

So, in the spirit of this blog, I’d like to take back a statement I made back in “the day” (“the day” of course being those few months ago when I was jobless). When I started this blog, I thought that the word “pyramidrome” could come to embody the anger and hostility I felt towards the job market as born by capitalism, as well as my own state of mind when dealing with these sentiments in my everyday life. However, now that I’ve seen the light on the other side of the door, I must admit that the word must come to embody a new meaning. Specifically, I think that to “pyramidrome” must mean to FIND ONE’S PLACE IN CAPITALISM, while living a life that is at least somewhat meaningful, fun and productive. We shall all strive for the good life, and along the way, we will pyramidrome our days away in all sorts of weird places doing all sorts of ridiculous tasks, but we must remember: to do is to be, and to be is to be able to do. Whatever the hell that means, it’s better than bumming around, and that’s all there is to know.

LONG LIVE THE PYRAMID: LONG LIVE SOCIETY: LIVE LONG AND PROSPER.

Hope all’s well with the few readers that may remain, and please, SEND ME SOMETHIN’ GOOD! Just because you got a job doesn’t mean you’re done here, goddamn it.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that middle school is the last time I can remember being allowed to focus on a number of different possibilities for myself as a person. Back then, we were still young enough to develop a bizarre interest in some weird science project, or to suddenly bust out at a spelling contest with some amazing display of alphabetical talent. We were all undiscovered, waiting for the system to start us along with the filing process, shooing us in directions gently and with all the non-precision of bowling alley bumpers.

When I was in middle school, I always liked art best, but I was also good at math and spelling. For some reason, this disturbed my teachers. It was as though they could foresee my future, and realized how much of a struggle it would become for me to pick between everything I liked. When I got to high school, I was dramatically forced to choose between sports and band. Gosh, what a choice! I remember beleaguering the decision until I decided to secretly do both by lying, cheating and stealing (I was an aggressive high school student). That was my first taste of the system of specialization, where we are eventually forced to funnel ourselves into one specific activity. Voila: our supposed occupation!

The problem I have with the idea of the “occupation” is that it implies being involved in a specific activity all of the time. This feels inherently wrong to me. I used to cherish the feeling of getting released from school, hearing the bell ringing so that I could fling shut my locker and dash outside, immediately forgetting everything I had previously been thinking about. I like to think of those days as my old form of healthy ADHD, where I paid attention during specifically delegated chunks of time, and then allowed for my brain to become interested in whatever else it felt piqued by. Being a grown up means losing that sense of mental experimentation, honing down and thinking about one thing almost all of the time, having one specific skill and getting paid to do it over and over. I guess this is what we get for developing as a species and coming up with occupational specialization, possibly the best and worst thing to happen to humans. I just hate the way that computers (e-mail in particular) have caused work and play to merge into this clumpy goo of everything-at-once. I work on a computer, I play on a computer, I pyramidrome on a computer. This brings up the problem I attempted to solve during my thesis studies at Vassar: the disparity between digital media and meaningful experience. Can you do both at the same time? I’d like to think yes, but it’s turning out to seem more and more impossible.

When I started PYRAMIDROME, I thought it was going to be a venue for facilitating discussion between the frustrated 20-somethings as we search for employment and sense of worth. As I have suddenly found myself with a stressful job and a lot to think about, it has become much more a point of meditation for me. “What would my inner pyramidroming self think of me now?” I go to work and stare at my computer for 8 hours, then come home and go on my computer more, and suddenly it’s late at night and I feel like I haven’t DONE anything all day. I can never figure out what it means to “DO” something, but what I’ve come to think is that it basically just means doing anything that is unrelated to computers. Suddenly my middle school self has stopped participating in math, science, reading, art and gym class. All I do is sit in computer class, pecking away at a keyboard all day. By middle school standards, I would be a freak! I went to liberal arts college to get a balanced education, which I feel strongly was important to my development as a well-rounded, informed and analytical person. Now I wonder how to keep fulfilling this sense of “roundness” with a job, when I get home with only an hour left of daylight, barely any time at all left for hugging trees, becoming a ballerina and changing the world. Oh, my middle school self had so much prospect!

Basically I want to finish this post off with a shout out to my fellow p-dromers. I feel sort of like I betrayed my flock by finding a job, but I want to verbalize my opinions on the matter: ALL IS NOT SOLVED BY EMPLOYMENT! Before I had a job, I felt aimless and anxious. Now that I have a job, I feel exhausted and anxious. I remember fondly the times I spent pondering on the meaning of life, taking walks to pass the days by, talking on the phone commiserating with friends and writing in my sketchbook. I haven’t done any of those things in the past couple of weeks since I’ve been working, and I worry that once I am actually employed I won’t even remember that I used to like doing those things. It scares me that the prospect of a mid-life crisis feels probable, after contributing to the American workforce for less than a month. I don’t understand how most people are capable of getting up at 7am, working all day, coming home at 6pm and then feeling like they have any energy left for “hobby time!” (not that anybody calls it hobby time self-admittedly). In college, I was lucky if I spent a good 4 hours doing anything productive in one day–now all of a sudden I’m expected to be up and at ‘em all day! What the hell! Chu crazy.
I apologize for this rambling post, and I especially apologize for bringing up middle school (who do I think I am?). I want to finish this piece of shit by declaring war on the American system! I don’t believe in the idea of occupation. Employment is a fake word. Like I said earlier, we get two things from the American capitalistic system: a way to toil most of our lives away, and a way to get money to enhance the remaining portio (the part of our lives that isn’t spent toiling). Neither of these benefits excite me very much, so I’m left wondering: how can I navigate the system in a way that is fulfilling? I like what Liz’s dad said: “Don’t get depressed!” It reminds me a lot about what my dad said, and what my mom says, and what everyone is always saying. “Yeah, it sucks, but don’t let it get to ya’!” Okay, okay, I’m really trying to not let it get to me, but it’s tough! I feel like I want to gather all of my friends in a big group hug and tell everyone personally how I think they’re great, and that they shouldn’t get demoralized, and that we should all be happy just to wake up every morning and smell the roses and eat cereal and take the long way home! But c’mon now, we did that shit in middle school (ahem), and now we must prioritize. If I only get an hour to myself a day, how am I going to spend it? I don’t know, but I’m guessing it has something to do with liquor.

Ah, things were simpler in the ancient times. For instance, men were able to study in mathematics, science, music and GOD, all at the same time. Philosophers gained notoriety by being well-learned in many subjects. It was thought that knowing a lot about a lot of things would generally increase your knowledge exponentially, as each area of study was thought to inherently bleed over into the next.

NEVERMORE!!!

Telling somebody that I have a “Bachelor of Arts” from a “Liberal Arts College” is silly. “You got what, now?” they say. It’s true, I went to college to learn a whole lot about a whole bunch of different stuff. Most of what I learned I can’t remember specifically. Rather, I learned to think and act a certain way; to be analytical and informed and interested. In these modern times, my liberal arts degree is both completely relevant and completely unhelpful. I have this unsavory taste in my mouth that I get from feeling like I don’t know how to do everything… like acid-reflux from an unsatisfying meal. It’s weird though, because I know how to do TONS OF FUCKIN’ SHIT! When I sit down to think about it, my skill set is really terrific. Not to toot my own horn (toot toot!), but seriously. I feel competent. At computers.

UNFORTUNATELY, THAT’S NOT WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS RIGHT NOW!!!

I just watched a very intense documentary about this plane filled with Uruguayans on their way to a rugby match in Chile. When their plane crashed in the Andes, they ended up being stranded for more than two months with no food aside from the bodies of those who died in the crash. Now, imagine that: needing to eat your frozen dead friend in order to live. NOW THAT’S A SKILL!!!

The Internet has allowed our culture to progress/digress into a very weird place. Telecommuting and the ability for people to work remotely via Gchat (rather than in an office space) has made the world feel very small and very large at the same time. People can now go anywhere virtually, but they don’t need to go anywhere physically. I seriously spent about 30 minutes the other day just looking at Google Maps street view of weird mid-Western states I’ve never been to. Why? Because I have no reason to go there if I can see how fucking terrible it is, right from the comfort of San Francisco!

I started this post because I wanted to write about polymaths. Here’s a good quote from Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

I totally stole that quote from Wikipedia’s amazing entry on “Competent Man.” I like the final line, because specialization IS for insects, and that’s why I kill those bastards with 409 every day! Oh my God, the “competent man” post is just such a good read! It also brings up the good point about age in the equation of the polymath:

The competent man, more often than not, is written without explaining how he achieved his wide range of skills and abilities, especially as true expertise typically suggests practical experience instead of learning through books or formalized education alone. While not implausible with older or unusually long lived characters, when such characters are young it is often not adequately explained as to how they acquired so many skills at an early age.

Yes! Yes! This is exactly it. Being young and being an übermensch at the same time is nearly impossible, except of course in cartoons or in this current economy. Nietzsche believed that one day an “OVERMAN” would come and evolve over man, take man’s stuff and constantly beat him up. Um, white collar/blue collar much? I don’t even want to get into that right now, ‘cuz the gist of it all would blow this blog out of the PYRAMIDROMING realm and far, far away into another whole time and dimension. Basically I’m trying to say that my fine-art education and degree in “thinking about stuff” have caused me to evolve into a very strange non-humanoid. I have machine skills, but my survival skills are wobbly like a baby deer’s knobby legs.

As our culture pushes its educated elite further and further from the animal physicality of the real humanoids, emotions and food and pooping become taboo. Is this really a world we want to live in? I say NO! But then again, here I sit blogging the night away. Oh pyramidrome, you nasty beast you!

It occurred to me that this was the perfect opportunity to do some mass killing. The ants were baited and assembled– now all I had to do was pull the trigger. And by trigger, I mean blow their bodies apart by spraying them with heavy-duty 409 kitchen cleaner. I learned this trick from my mom, who by the way thinks I’m really cool (did you see the comment she posted on my first PYRAMIDROME entry? She totally dug it). 409 is like this phenomenal insect annihilator– its human-scale equivalent would be to spray ascorbic acid directly into a huge crowd with a fire hose. Anyway, the point is basically that I made the mistake of leaving out some tasty garbage, which allowed a large quantity of ants to have a big party. But then, in the end, they all had their limbs ripped off and then were tragically drowned in a sea of poison. I’ll bet they didn’t even see it coming, and as they were chemically turned to dust in front of my very eyes, I reached for an extra-absorbent paper towel. I felt really bad for a second, but then I didn’t care anymore. I mean, they’re ants… right?! Oh, what a moment of sheer PYRAMIDROMIC elucidation.

You see, basically, we’re all just like these teeny tiny ants (my dad once told me that ants were smarter than humans, and that they may one day rule the earth). Last night I walked up Bernal Hill and watched the sun set over Downtown San Francisco. Just as the streetlights were turning on and rush hour traffic was beginning to die down, the sky turned into a terrific RGB radiation of color. I looked out over the city while people all over were coming home, entering their tiny houses, heating up canned soup with even teeny tinier pots and pans. Little eensie weenie Chihuahua dogs were barking and babies were drinking their itty bitty baby bottles of nighttime milk, and hobos were jingling their even smaller coin stashes in their little pathetic Styrofoam cups. Everything was going on at a normal speed of the earth’s rotation, cars were moving up and down the streets, stopping at red lights and beaming their headlights across tree tops like little meaningless Broadway moments. It occurred to me that once I went back down there, into my own little tiny basement, the ants would still be there, teeny as ever. It was like, OK, so I’m just an ant down there, killing even littler ants. But up here, I’m big, and I can have it all! I guess this observation is one of those cliché “I lived through the 60s, man” type of sayings… you know, “we’re all just pawns in the cog” or whatever. But it’s true! Size is so relative. At the top of the world, nothing can take you down. The scale of the earth is infinite, and though the possibilities are not endless (don’t ever trust anyone who tells you this), they are certainly there.

GET AT ME!

twitter: @willak

It is Sunday night, the great period of time during which life comes to a cadence, as candles burn to the ends of their wicks and the witches of the weekend go back into their weekday hideaways. Tonight is the first Sunday in a while where I’ve had that little voice in the back of my head that says, “Hey! YOU have to get up EARLY tomorrow!” Yes, it’s true. No more sleeping ’till lunch, because Willa got a job!

I’m not sure how it happened. Mostly, the sun and the stars aligned with my lucky number (236) to create a powerful swell of good luck. I don’t know if you believe in magic, or if I believe in magic for that matter. BUT, all matters aside, my grandmother’s opal ring cracked and fell apart last week, and since then it’s been real smooth sailing around these parts.

(FOOTNOTE: Opals, birthstone of Libras, are known to bring horrible luck to those non-Libras who sport them glamorously upon their finger limbs)

Suddenly, a vague list of “things I need to do” has evolved into a more detailed schedule of “places I need to be to accomplish various tasks and receive monetary compensation.” GASP! I am on my way towards true participatory citizenship in this gr8 capitalist nation.

If everything happens for a reason, I’ll definitely update as soon as I know the reason why I suddenly got a job, just after starting a blog about not having one. But, let it be known: this is not a blog about being unemployed or poor or lazy. No, no, no. Alternatively, it is about the job of living a purposely aimless life, where all sensationalism aside there is really no other goal besides feeling good. And God, sometimes that’s the hardest job of all.

PYRAMIDROMING INTO REALITY: THE GREAT LIFE-QUESTS OF THE 20-SOMETHINGS

Here in America in 2009, college-educated youth represent a unique group of people. Our hopes are high, as we have been taught since the beginning of our existences in the importance of the “American Dream”. We are (for the most part) hard workers, knowledgeable in the arts and sciences, interested in politics and the weather. Some of us like to cook, and are even good at it, while some of us are talented at microwaving and shoveling plain noodles through ketchup. Regardless, the 20-somethings of the early 21^st century are an astounding bunch. Computers have connected us in ways that allow most of us to presume we have about 300 or so friends… maybe more. Anything we want to learn about we can find instantaneously on the Internet, and we’re used to fast pay-offs. This is our culture, this is our breed: we are successful before we have accomplished anything, and we know more than we could ever hope to figure out. Many of us are depressed or depressing; many of us search the stars on clear nights to feel smaller than our egos, to get perspective, to feel better. We all want something; we want to find what we want. In my words, we are PYRAMIDROMING– we are slowly and accidentally forging our vaguely structured lives into something like adulthood.

So what, per se, does it mean to pyramidrome? Well, let us start with the pyramid itself, an ancient motif symbolizing structure, spirituality and accomplishment. Probably most of our minds jump quickly to the ancient pyramids of Egypt, built by millions of slaves over the course of hundreds of years. In essence, the Egyptians were doing (much more slowly and pompously) what each of us must attempt to do in our daily lives: build something of meaning– a symbol, if you will, for our own accomplishments. Our pyramids are what we build during our lives, starting with a flat and unimpressive foundation and ultimately becoming a pinnacle of light, shining majestically from a zenith of achievement.

According to a completely random and unreliable source that I found on the Internet: “When building a pyramid a certain sensible sequence of events must be maintained. The large stones can only be placed at the bottom. The foundation must be built before the top.” Generally, this is the way we are taught to view our lives–one step at a time, one foot in the right direction. We all went to college to build a really thick, massive and bedazzled block to serve as the cornerstone of our pyramid’s foundation. The first layer is more or less built, and we have a little height now from which to gaze about at our surroundings. Looking out, I see a vision that has all the color and all the vagueness of a late impressionistic painting. Ah, it’s beautiful, but what the hell is it?

According to the same unreliable source that I already quoted, one of the main risks while building your “pyramid of development” is what might happen if you take the wrong course of actions in your life, i.e. your pyramid develops a defect. The site (ok, fine, I’ll tell you the URL.) also features a really nice graphic to help explain what might happen if we fuck up and do everything wrong and build terrible, horrible looking pyramids. The graphic is a black and white pen drawing of a half-built pyramid with jagged chunks of rock crumbling solemnly to the ground. Oh, it’s so poignant–really the perfect representation of exactly what we’re all afraid of: TOTALLY FUCKING UP AND FALLING APART!

Okay, so now you get the pyramid part of pyramidrome: it’s all about the basic structure of our lives and the ways in which we work from the ground up to construct something meaningful over time. Yeah yeah yeah, so what about the “drome” part? WELL, I am really just SO glad you asked. As a little but of a self-acclaimed scifi lover, I have to go all out and draw everyone’s attention to the movie Videodrome by David Cronenberg. If you haven’t seen the film, I’ll sum it up in one sentence or less: a sensationalist TV producer figures out how to psychologically fuck people up by getting them addicted to this hypnotically weird, sex-torture show. In essence, the movie leaves you with one of those creepy “what the hell?” feelings where you start to question everything you’ve ever known about media, the government and everything in between. So yes, the “drome” part of pyramidrome is a bit of a reference to Videodrome in the way that we are all controlled by this weird quest for the perfect pyramid, even though we don’t have any idea where it is or what it looks like.

Ultimately, PYRAMIDROME is intended to exist as a blog about existence, most specifically in the sense of building our futures, one day at a time. Many of us are currently in very weird transitional stages, and our pyramids are looking very hazy and haggard. I think we should stop caring about this so much, just a little bit. Every day I am trying to look at the big picture, and allow my pyramid to be built with many small blocks of enjoyment rather than huge, thousand-ton blocks of money, fast cars and rock stardom. I want to collaborate with other people as we work to be happy pyramid builders, sharing good moments and the things we’ve learned through one of our weirdest places of interaction: the Internet. Also, art is central to the general aesthetic of PYRAMIDROME, as I believe making art is really one of the only sure activities that helps our pyramids look good in all types of weather. So yes, here we go, let us PYRAMIDROME ourselves into the FUTURE! We are all doing things, and maybe if we write about it enough, we’ll figure out why what we do matters.

To contribute, please e-mail submissions to willa.koerner@gmail.com.