Red Bull and the Adrenaline of Desperation

I'm hopped up on red bull and the desperation adrenaline that only comes from procrastination. It's a sweet rush. That's how I get high. Screw drugs. I procrastinate. There's nothing like it. Yeah there's guilt sometimes but if you're pro enough you can ignore that; shunt it to the side and just enjoy the moment. Leaving things to the last minute is not wise or advisable or desirable but it's also very, very easy to do. Why am I even writing this? I have 1500 words to write on American slavery.

1500 hundred words is chump change. Maybe that was a big number in high school, once a upon a time, but in second year the prof says 1500 word essay and it's automatically on lowest priority. Double spaced and formatted that works out to what, three, four pages? The only problem you run into with these essays is having too much to say. That's not usually my problem though. I don't bullshit. It's not in me to do it. It doesn't matter what I write, it always feels bare bones, like I squeeze the very essence of what I'm trying to say into as few words as possible. It's actually frustrating. I know concise is good. That's what they say always say. Say what you mean in as few words as possible. I just feel like I take that to the extreme. It's one reason why writing a novel seems so daunting. 100,000 words? Where would I ever find them all? I don't think my mind has enough dark recesses to mine in order to pull that out.

No, I'm being pessimistic. I have a book in me somewhere. When the time is right. It will be a svelte book no doubt. Short and to the point, whatever the point is. Knowing me there won't be a point. No answers, just more and more questions. I don't have answers is another problem I have. How can you write if you don't have something you are trying to say? What's the point? I think whatever I do write will be purposefully pointless, vague and ambiguous. No answers. Just questions.

Questions. How can America be the country that fought hardest for liberty and freedom and apple pie, yet also be the country that exploited slavery to its fullest potential? What's the deal here? This guy Morgan thinks he has the answer. The US didn't start off hoarding blacks. At first it was an uneasy mix of poor English immigrants working as indentured servants and a scattering of blacks. The English servants gained their freedom eventually after working enough years but they didn't have much to do after that because all the prime land had already been taken so many of them turned to vagrancy and there was a growing discontent among the lower class. The planter elites, traditionally distrustful of landless labourers already, grew even more wary of them. By this time though, and happy coincidence it was, the mortality rate of slaves in the colonies had dropped and African investments had never looked better. Suddenly everybody was buying slaves coupled with further western expansion meant the idle labourers turned themselves into small yeoman farmers, and productive members of society. Thanks to cheap black slaves, there were no longer appreciable numbers of poor whites, and large and small planters alike could unite to spread the ideas of freedom and liberty for all. For all those with land at least.

That's the argument. I don't know when this turned into a history lesson. Is it right? Is it wrong? I think it's a decent argument. It does seem designed to absolve Americans of any major intentional complicity in slavery by dressing the move to black slaves as pure economics, a decision motivated by dollar signs and not prejudice towards people of different skin colour. He has a point though. Prior to say, 1650, transporting slaves to the 13 colonies was financially unfeasible. Most would die before they ever made it that far, and the Caribbean with its brutal sugar cane harvest and massive turn over was much closer, and therefore much more profitable for early slave traders. Once life expectancy of slaves rose, it became tenable to transport more and more blacks north, and the demand only kept increasing. It's around 1660 that you start to see laws passed with the express intention of placing a dividing line between blacks and whites.
I should take this and turn it into an essay now. You've been helpful as a sounding board though. I'm not sure where I'm going with this but it is now past midnight and I wouldn't mind catching a couple hours of sleep tonight. I know, I know, I'm spoiled.

H.H

A Note On the URL

I was going to set the URL to homelessthoughts.blogspot.com but that was taken, by a homeless woman no less and it made me realise that yeah she probably needs it more than I do, even if she hasn't updated in two years, whatever. Thanks homeless lady for saving me from a tactless title.

You Are On the Forefront of the Revoltution

I have this other blog somewhere out there on the Internet and it was to be my refuge of anonymity where I could write whatever and not worry about who was reading what. I don't like to open up. I don't know why. Exposing myself to people I know seems dangerous. What would people think if they saw into me? Let's not go there please. That's why what I write always feels restrained. I can't write that. What would my friends think? I couldn't dare to let the people around me to actually see inside me.

I don't care what strangers think. That's why I started on blogger. I can open up to people I don't know, as long as that's what they are, and that's what they stay. When they transcend that, become, and I never really even thought this was a possibility, become regular readers, with back and forth between us and then it just becomes another role I have to conform to. Can't whine too much, can't change their opinion of me.

The problem with that first blog, now on hiatus, was that while it was to be private internet retreat, it was also plastered with my name. Hidden in plain sight. If you google my name, my real name (Horatio Halpern turns up nothing, yet) that blog turns up tops. It screams to be found and I was in denial about that for a while until Sitemeter returned chilling news. My blog was getting regular hits from my mom's office.

I had been discovered by the last person I would ever want reading my blog. I try to maintain a casual aloofness around her, you know? No more information than is ever necessary, and that system worked, I think. But now she has picked up my virtual diary and is rifling through it. There is nothing truly incriminating on there - my brutal self-censor took control months ago, but the truth is she has access to information I would not have willfully handed over to her.

Yes, a chilling lesson on the perils of privacy on the internet. This blog is how I correct that.

The first blog was too closely tied to me, and it hindered my ability to free my mind of its clutter. I'm liking this happy refuge already. These are things that would never have shown up on blog #1. I can't show weakness, can't acknowledge to the people I know that I have problems, that sometimes I need help. That's why I'm here.

I don't know why you are here. I'm not even sure you are here. I would almost (almost) prefer that you weren't. But this is the Internet! So what can I do. Read on dear reader, my deer eater, see what drives Horatio Halpern, what scares him, what makes him laugh and what makes him angry.

We're off to a good start, I think.

Horatio