Carquinez Heights

I didn't really move much on Saturday. My mind felt guilty of assholism and my joints weren't doing anything for me. My mom called every half hour, starting around ten, often with messages, about eating or something tomorrow, and just to check in. Each time she called I let it ring and we both got irascible in our convictions.

But today I went to Vallejo. It's gorgeous during the day now and suddenly I'm burning gasoline like my children aren't going to call me an irresponsible fuck for the self satisfaction I get from doing it. I'm being tailgated by somebody applying makeup to their cadaverously wealthy selves and I don't mind. It's fucking gorgeous.

Poverty is pretty easy to find in America. The edge of a new city is built to be read at 85 miles an hour. A connect four slot filled with brand iconography promise familiar consumption and brand name comfort. From the west at least, Vallejo reads differently. Vallejo is one of those places that used to make shit, build shit. The sleeping dragon that woke up after Pearl Harbor was once again sound asleep on the shores of the San Pablo Bay, a rusty petrification settled over it's once powerful body.



Poverty is only allowed so long as we allow ourselves to fall victim to a historical narrative in which it is justified.

Everything anyone in this country has had they have had because history has given it to them.

Prior exclusion from the pie, from the table, from success, is no justification for future exclusion.



Poverty is sustained by affluence; the rich have defined themselves as entirely antithetical to the poor and require that elevation to themselves maintain power.

It is for the sake of the construction of a narrative in which there is some worth assigned to wealth.

Wealth is granted to you by prenatal historical circumstance. It has no worth.

You're wrong if you think otherwise.

The Japanese are a homogeneous people. At some point 200 years ago, a certain village was shamed because their village burnt down or some shit, and they became an underclass. No genetic distinction exists, it's just history. They consistantly score lower on test scores, and are of a lower standing economically than their Japanese peers.

The rich require the poor because the poor construct the proof for their entire belief system. The rich strive to separate themselves from the poor in every aspect of their lives and in the physical construction of our society and have for generations.

Whole Foods is for motherfuckers.

And your daughters won't put out.




Poverty is easy to find in America because we have it caged. It is as easy as looking to the intersections of major infrastructure: highways, rails, refineries, power stations, airports, docks, factories- anywhere where society is pushing the costs of it's actions into the earth for free, the poor will absorb them because our system requires an underclass.

I drove around Vallejo spewing gas and staring wide eyed at a Sunday morning, and that's as close as I can get to my brothers.

And we're just getting more estranged.

Rich people are crazy and destroying the planet with their secessionist bullshit. Find your brothers and sisters and learn about our family. Grow your own food and learn valuable skills. Most importantly, place yourself in history (not his story) and take that shit to heart.