Silver Arrow of Brilliant Perfection

Since I became a Marxist a few months ago, and more recently since I officially joined the International Marxist Tendency, my outlook on almost everything has changed. Unfortunately for this blog, I've written virtually nothing since it all began. I've been so preoccupied reading mind-blowing ideas about Mad Real Shit that I've had a humble speechlessness for some time. For my freelance writing gig, I've mainly been artfully re-articulating Trotskyist ideas (even quoting Leon once!) through a pop culture lens, but I wouldn't do that here on PB.

Ironically, my perceived need for communicating with people has almost never been so important, and I feel constantly like I need every scrap of word-smithery available. When I tell people, deadpan, that I am a socialist or a communist, a lot of the time they'll have already given the idea some thought, and will have a piece of criticism all ready for me! A lot of them are the same, and while no one has yet to change my mind, I have also been unable to easily change theirs. I realize now that while the 'weirdness' of my personality has always been a virtue in the right circles, it is doing me a real disservice when it comes to speaking in plain, universally understandable terms.

I want to craft, like a silver arrow, the perfect, singular sentence that will in a stroke turn everyone I meet into a devout socialist. Unfortunately, reading more Lenin isn't helping me 'traverse the abyss of the Other.' People tend to enjoy the juxtaposition of nerdy intellectual Marxist bookworms and the industrial blue-collar workers they ludicrously affiliate themselves with, but even when I speak to other bookworms and intelligent politicos, or just people that I work with and talk to everyday, I find it impossible to understand where the fuck they seem to be coming from. Isn't it bizarre that plunging deeper into dialectical materialism (the Marxist/Hegelian alternative to metaphysics) and classical Marxist literature isn't helping me connect with Torontonians in 2009?! Haha.

Of course, I know that by organizing factories and nationalizing industry, people in Venezuela are DOING socialism without having read Marx or Lenin, and that revolutionary conclusions spring from capitalist oppression, not communists or Chavez. (this is one of my stock 'comebacks' now!!!)

The problem isn't that Marxist ideas are taking me to outer space, it's that I'm from outer space. I've definitely always felt that way- it only took 12 years in the service industry to refine my consciousness in this particular direction, but irregardless I'm no stranger in struggling to connect with my fellow man. It's cool though. I see it as a beautiful, vital, and life-consuming challenge to deepen my political understanding (of analytical tools and the current world situations to apply them to) while I craft that silver arrow of creative, linguistic perfection.