Begging on the subway.

Earth First!
_{(We can strip mine the rest later.)}

Ah, it's been so long since I've heard those buzzwords. Those were the days ...

I love the train commute. It seems like a huge waste of time but in my experience it's not; it creates this space instead where you have nothing that you're supposed to be doing (except get from here to there, which is already happening with no effort on your part) so you can do anything you want -- well, anything that can be done on a train -- read, write rambling diaries, plot the revolution ...

Use your train time to whip that notebook into submission. What are your stories about? You don't have to answer that, but here's my unsolicited arrogant fiction advice: stories should be About something (that is, not just a bunch of things that happen to people who don't really exist) but should not necessarily have a Message; that's where passion sans preachiness comes from.

--
"If a tree is impetuous in the woods, does it make a sound?" -- aethucyn

Doesn't mean that no one can't devise a better way of living than capitalism just so far nothing has come up as far as I'm aware...

Are you voluntarily topping up your tax payments to that of a PAYE contributor, or paying yourself £5000 a year with some hefty dividends?

I imagine someone, somewhere has done a study on how these social memes are transmitted in such transient groups, but I can't be arsed to find it. Of course, the other option is just that none of us are that special, and the different generations repeat ourselves spontaneously, but I'm practically positive all of us remember precisely how original we all knew we were at eighteen.

One of my old friends was reminiscing (we are both 46) about his rebellious youth. It struck him that even if he had gone to HMSO and bought the Home Office official guide on how to be a teenage rebel he would not have been able to conform more closely to the cliche of rebellious youth. It had been an ISO 9000 certified teenage rebellion, strictly in conformance with procedure, and had therefore included an unironic belief that his actions were original and spontaneous.

Although this is funny, we were both quite subdued after he shared it. Will I have a similar revelation in twenty years time, and comment that my midlife crisis, that seemed so spontaneous and free at the time, was equally fore-ordained?