Weekend Open Bar: Hank (David Thoreau) Is Right

I bag on Rendar and Eddie on the regular for being wanky transcendentalists. But the truth of the whole fiasco is that the only reason I became friends with Pluto in the first place is because we were both fans of Walden (okay, and a litany of other nerdier things) in a college class. And so while I think it’s a privileged idea — let’s go and hang out in the woods – Thoreau’s denunciation of the pursuit of materiality is something that’s stuck with me.

It’s this denunciation, and my embracement of it, that makes this week so oxymoronically enjoyable for myself. I’m particularly content because Sam and I have purchased a house. And yet I know deep down inside that this acquisition won’t bring me lasting bliss. But at the same time, to own my own plot of land, to have my own backyard with the birds chirping, it’s undeniably appealing. It’s a materialistic acquisition of a transcendental landscape.

I am, like everyone else, a Man Conflicted. One who recognizes his own flesh-based drives to acquire, but steps against it at every turn. Who is succumbed by it on occasion, and hopes only that the metacognitive writhing against this reality can serve as partial penance for the pursuit if iPhones, and hamburgers, and television screens.

‘Cause that ain’t what brings genuine satisfaction. What does? Spending time with friends. Musing about existence. Laughing. Farting. Sitting around a dinner table. Sharing foibles, follies, failures, and victories. With one another. That’s what I live for, and that’s what this column exists for. The Weekend Open Bar. My attempt at the electronic replication of a living room full of friends. Hopped up on pop, space-grass, adult sodas. And just shooting the positive shit across the couple days that constitute the weekend on this Blue Marble.

Let’s hang out. Together.