The Balckwell Manifesto

April 3, 2021

I have achieved my American Dream. I am at the top of a ladder that I built myself. This ladder has three rungs. The ladder has three rungs because I only ever wanted to be at ground level. I built the ladder in a basement.

Let me clarify. My ladder was built with a short-term purpose. The purpose of my ladder was to allow me to climb from a life of wishing for death to a life of liking to be alive. I built this ladder slowly and methodically. I did not begin work on the second rung until I had meticulously tested the first. I leaned my weight on it every day for years to test that it would not break. After I was beyond certain of the stability of the first rung, I began on the second, and repeated the process.

A few months ago, I set the ladder up against the wall, stepped up, and climbed it confidently to the ledge that sat about two feet up along the wall of my basement. I could have climbed this height without a ladder, sure, but it would have been slightly uncomfortable. The ladder made it easy. Many people would have simply stepped up, and been on their merry way. I decided to build a ladder.

Now, I am at the top of my ladder, and it is much brighter. My basement had no windows, you see. My basement was a sad and lonely place. Through the hole in my wall, I could see light poking through in the room above. If I climbed the first rung and stood there, I could almost feel the sun on my face. On the second rung, I could have sworn I was practically outside. Where I am at this point, I’m sunbathing on a Californian beach. And that’s barely even a metaphor.

PART ONE: SERF WAX AMERICA

Look, there are many people out there online who claim to be writers, and even go as far as to describe a 500-word article about a man who found the highest possible jump in Super Mario 64 as an “opinion piece”, but I bet that none of them are currently listening to the drowned-out tones of a freshly-clean imp attempting to perform all the various harmonies of “Awimbaway (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)” solo. By which I mean, they’re lacking a certain element of life that some might describe as “character.”

Some people decry it as a sadness that we are reaching a point where an AI can write a user manual, or even a semi-legible article about a current news event. They might say that it is the death of writing as a profession. The greatest sadness, of course, is the fact that anyone was ever paid to write such swoddle in the first place. In fact, the greatest sadness of all is the fact that anyone is ever paid to do anything, because most of our jobs are worthless, and we are all terrible at doing them.

I stepped out of my house on Thursday, and ended up at a Chinese produce store working as a cashier for the next eight hours. I seem to have a knack for these types of situations. But I would not consider facilitating vegetable-based transactions to be my profession; if anyone were to ask me my profession, I might instead say, “Scholar.” That might seem like a cop-out. I mean, nobody pays me to be a scholar. But let’s just say that being a scholar pays, if you know what I mean.

As I stare out the window of my study onto the empty parking lot outside, and notice the torn-apart bags of garbage that permanently occupy Lot #10, I am reminded of a conversation I shared with a semi-fashionable imp during the first few weeks of our co-habitation. Our original parking lot was #7, although a fellow in the floor above wished to trade with us, because he was sick of those extra six steps it took to reach the back door of the building. The building manager implied that he had been asking about this for years now. Of course, we didn’t see any problem switching from #7 to #9. It was a non-issue for us.

However, as the imp and myself went for a stroll the next day, she expressed discomfort at the idea that our car would be placed directly next to the spot allocated for crow-feed, citing the constant stink. At which point I reminded her that we do not have a car.

You see, there are a lot of problems that you don’t have to deal with when you are self-unemployed. I don’t want a car, to start, but it certainly helps cement my anti-car position when I know that I could not possibly afford to maintain one. Having money just makes you spend money, and spending money always leads to more spending of money. This is where being a scholar “pays”, as I said earlier.

If I had a surfboard, and I placed it in the hallway between my bedroom and my study, I could quite literally “take my board to work,” while you take your car. Some people would argue that my “work” is not really “work”, but I would counter by mentioning that at least 45% of millennials in the United States have a job title containing the words “social media.”

I’m a scholar, and I pay my electricity bill by translating ancient texts, and pay my grocery bill by transcribing the conversations of horrid ghouls, and pay my rent by being the only cashier in the county who begins each transaction with a genuine smile, because that’s how my mama raised me. Of course, this all pales in comparison to my real work, which is a secret to all but those who have ever heard me speak of it.

The work of literature that I am currently taking a break from writing for the sake of providing this website with its inaugural post is not a Great work of literature, but it is a serious attempt at providing the world with a character and series of events that just might make them think about something, even if just for a second. I figure, if I really give it my all, at some point in the next 76 years of my life I might be able to create a novel worth being published serially in “Dishwashers Monthly,” ready to entertain morose college students during the many hours they spend actively not reading Moby Dick, for whatever reason.

My project is a lonely and easy one. I am inspired by such thoroughly dead fellows as Herman Melville, Franz Kafka, and John Keats. What do they all have in common? They all died before anyone realized that they were doing something cool. Everyone thought they were trash, and maybe they were, but then they were dead, and it didn’t matter too much. Later on, somehow or another, their works were excavated from their tombs, and their legend continued on.

I wish for no riches in this world or any other. As long as the dark eyed juncos continue to hop along my balcony, I swim through life like a fish. I fly through life like a bird!

What good is success, when someone else tells you what it is, and how to achieve it? I have been cursed from a young age to refuse anyone who tries to tell me where to be, or what to do. I can’t work as a banker, a janitor, or a salesperson, as much as I recognize the value of at least one of those three professions. I was born to deny such titles, and instead seek my own cave – my own deep, dark cave in which to develop my Works.

I tried! I went to college, and I went to school. I met the people who you’ve read about in books. I worked a full-time job for about four months during the winter of my discontent. And all this combined was almost the end of dear old me. I’m not proud! For years, I thought I was but a leech sucking at the blood of society, ready to be cast off as soon as someone noticed I was there. I thought that God had placed me on this earth to show me a lesson.

But I defy God! I can be happy here! I can’t purchase happiness in the same way as anyone else. I can’t work to buy to live. I can only breathe and die. I can only sweat out of one armpit while I sit in my remarkably warm study, furiously clacking away on a dusty, follicle-filled keyboard missing the left Ctrl key. Well, what good is the left Ctrl key anyway!? I know a grander scholar than I who lived years without a “g” key. He kept a notepad document open at all times with a lowercase g, and a capital G, copy-and-pasting whenever he needed to continue his dissertation on the genuine gaiety of Gambian gorillas.

I spit at you, God! I spit at you and all your little angels! I spit at you and your myriad devils! I will be no squalid serf; I will be no corrupt cartographer; I will be no opulent oligarch! When I take to sea, it will be on a boat I built with my hands, not my feet! When I land on Jupiter, it will be as a computer ghost! When I die, it will be from the force of a cannonball, fired across the way from a house owned by my esteemed colleague, Matthew of Blallee! And the shock of the cannon will knock a giant domino off his roof, landing on his head, and he too shall die!

Pah!

PART TWO: SHENGREN BREAKTHROUGH

I look around at the citizens of the world and I don’t understand what they are doing. I don’t understand their motivations. This makes me think that, perhaps, the citizens of the world do not understand what I am doing, and don’t understand my motivations.

“The medium is the message,” “form is content,” etc, etc. These principles apply here, too. This manifesto’s lack of coherent structure is essential to your understanding it. I don’t even remember what I wrote in Part One. That is also important. My mind is revolving, and revolting. My mind is under the sun, and above the Earth; thus, it looks different depending on the hour, month, or year. I was born light years away from where our planet currently resides. So were you.

Six years ago, I was dead. Five years ago, I was undead. Now, I’m just alive. It’s that simple. Let’s start from the beginning.

I have an inherent desire to separate myself from any position I consider to be held by the majority. You might call this contrarian. If all people choose to do a certain thing, I will likely do the opposite. This impulse makes me an idiot. This impulse is my greatest weakness, and my greatest strength. All weaknesses are strengths, and all strengths weaknesses, but you already know that.

I like to explore ways of thinking and being that are generally not considered. I don’t gravitate towards ways of thinking and being that are hated; that would simply be masochistic. Instead, I prefer to reside in areas that are simply ignored. If no one has thought to do something, I want to know why. I never heard anyone ask about a rectangle whose length and width have a negative value, so I did. Maybe it’s a stupid question. However, maybe it is the key to the next mathematical breakthrough. (My current hypothesis involves anti-matter.) That’s just a small example. A minuscule example. In fact, I only mention this order to irritate a specific person.

In high school, I stumbled. I could not find a way to commit my life. I knew that school was stupid; everyone knew that. However, they went through with school because they wanted a good job. I thought I could get a cool job without doing well in high school, or going to college. I didn’t realize that I would have to create that job myself. I didn’t realize that I would have to bend the very idea of the word “job” in order to make this happen. So, I faltered.

I worked in a drug store that damn near killed me. I tried to write fictions. My fictions were stupid. All I could write about was how much I hated myself. All I wanted was to escape. I had no imagination – that was my problem. I was so stuck in the world that, while I rejected everything that everyone stood for, I could not develop a mode of thinking outside of their paradigm. When you are stuck in a paradigm, acting counter to the paradigm becomes itself part of the paradigm. It is very difficult to break free. I don’t know how I broke free. I tried a few things, and they failed terribly.

As a joke, I decided that I would live until I was one hundred years old. This joke became the core of my philosophy. First, let me explain what this does not mean:

1) This does not mean that I am obsessed with my physical health.
2) This does not mean that I cling desperately to life.
3) This does not mean that I even consider living a long life to be valuable in any sense.

This may seem incomprehensible. The decision to live until 100 is not in any way related to the decision to TRY to live until age 100. They are entirely different things. If you are trying to live until 100, you will do things like eat well, exercise, avoid dangerous situations, go to the doctor often, etc. When you have decided, like me, that you WILL live until age 100, all those things become irrelevant. As Master Yoda said, “Do or do not. There is no try.”

My decision to live until age 100 is a form of protest. I am protesting against everything in the entire world at the same time, simply by existing.

Deciding to live until age 100 provides several benefits. For one, I am not running out of time. My time is near infinite. I’ve lived such a long time, and yet, I am only a quarter of the way through my lifespan. Considering that I didn’t even start thinking until I was 18, I’m only 7/82s into my thinking life. That’s very slightly more than one twelfth. Heck, even if I stop thinking somewhere around 90, I’m still doing pretty good.

I would expound on a few other benefits, but they all sound pretty stupid. The whole thing is stupid, really. My whole life is built around a semantic conceit that began as a simple joke. It doesn’t mean anything, really. “Living to 100” is not the important part here. What’s the important part here? Let me think.

It used to make me incredibly sad to think about how most people in the world are incredibly sad. It seemed useless to do anything, because it seemed like all paths led, at one point or another, to feelings of futility and inadequacy. This is why I did not want to live anymore. The thing is, I was judging other people’s lives by my own standard, and I was judging my own life by everyone else’s standard.

I looked around and I saw that people hated their jobs, so I thought that every job made people sad. The truth is that most people are simply working the wrong jobs. Also, some people who say they hate their jobs actually just like to complain. In that respect, their jobs are perfect for them. I don’t know what to do about these people, except try not to be within talking distance of them.

My ideal job is not a job. This caused a lot of turmoil in my life. My parents thought I was unhappy because I worked a dumb job and made very little money. They desperately wanted me to be happy. They thought the way for me to be happy was to get a better job and make more money. I pushed back; I stayed at my dumb job. Turns out, we were all wrong.

I did not need to stay at my job, or quit my job. What I needed to do was reclassify my job. That is to say, I needed to stop thinking of my job as “my job.” I had to think of it as a “thing I do.” As soon as my job became a thing I do, its ability to act as a defining aspect of my life disappeared. I do many things. The things that I am most proud of fit into the category of “scholarly activities.” Thus, I describe myself as a scholar, by profession. I already said that earlier. Now, perhaps, you better understand what I meant when I said that earlier.

Do you know what’s funny? I am on the clock right now. This is part of my job. That’s kind of bizarre, isn’t it? My duty in life is to write. I have chosen to believe in the power of literature. The power of literature to do what, exactly? Well, that’s part of the power of literature: that it doesn’t have to do anything. “To be” is the ultimate verb. It’s the only verb you need. “To do” is just semantics.

Go online, and look at the ways people are living. It’s crazy! There are so many different ways to live out there. Some people draw fan art for a living! Some people perform indescribable office jobs. Some people translate tourism-related articles from Japanese into English. Look at my friend Kyle! That guy lives in Japan. What’s he doing over there? How did he get there? Who decided that he should be there? One day, it occurred to him that he could live in Japan, so he did. It’s actually easier than it seems. It’s actually easier even than Kyle made it. Kyle went to Japan in a somewhat logical way; there are always more illogical ways to do something than logical ways.

The possibilities are infinite! Are any of them good? Will any of them make you “happy”? Who knows! But they’re there. The key is to find the lifestyle that fits you. There’s a 99% chance that this will not be the way everyone else lives. In fact, there’s a 97% chance that you will have never met or heard of anyone who lives your ideal life. You’ve got to make it yourself! Try it out! (Guess what? No matter where you are, you’re already partway there.)

I started by trying to live other people’s lives. It went terribly. One problem was that in order to enjoy their lives, I would have had to change my personality to be like theirs. I tried, but boy, that ain’t easy. It’s a lot easier to be yourself.

No one wants you to know this, but we live in a state of near-total anarchy. Of course, this is only true if you do not fear death. In fact, this is only true if you don’t fear anything at all. In fact, this might not even be true, but what’s so good about truth anyway? Belief is more important than truth. No one was ever convinced of anything because it seemed like the truth. No, we are convinced because we find a way to believe.

What about reason? Reason is just a series of steps to take in order to discern what you want to believe. So-called “reasonable people” all believe in wildly different things. It’s arbitrary. Science is dogma. Politics is chariot racing. Mathematics is art. Physics is science fiction. Philosophy is linguistics. Metaphysics is religion. I could go on forever. I’ve already gone on forever. I think you get the idea now. If you don’t, just send me an e-mail.