Engage

I've written before of Philadelphia torpor. It overpowers my shy creative impulse and too my larger desires. A year ago I felt myself emerge from it, and broke free to find an unfamiliar fire. I'm again eager for something big, but its shrouded shape is what interests me tonight.

Aaron Swartz writes about living under the System, and his point arrives largely intact. When you apply for a job, you strive to fit yourself into someone else's puzzle.

In college, you serve another purpose. Penn will take credit for anything I do later in my life. They depend on some of their students doing something worth taking credit for. A university is a pompous business, nurturing good-intentioned academic elements for growth and profit.

How to get away from all that, from the expectations and motives of others, to live alone for something bigger. MD asks who's behind it all, who arranged to elect the president who appointed the Supreme Court judge who struck down the law. The founders, I suppose. We're still living out their dreams and ideals. It's unfathomable, a few people with a historical footprint so wildly enormous.

Today, we have digg, we have reddit. They remind me of those water pumps disguised as playground roundabouts. They run on latent energy. The people all over the world taking coffee breaks. These web-based systems largely serve themselves, but similar machines might not suffer such limits.

I never dreamed the sea so deep,
The earth so dark; so long my sleep,
I have become another child.
I wake to see the world go wild.

Allen Ginsberg
"An Eastern Ballad"