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of consciousness, deep in the preand unconscious folds of our experience (which, in its
totality, is also larger than the head—or conscious mind). Every time we begin writing, the door to this deep well of feeling and knowledge opens a crack. We peer through this tiny aperture and get down some words. For the rest of the day we might be completely oblivious to what we wrote that morning but the ideas are still there. Like invisible hummingbirds in a cave, the thoughts broached in that morning session send out subliminal vibrations that travel in the darkness hitting upon hitherto unguessed at notions and ideas that, in turn, shudder in sympathy....
    Now we are at a crossroads. When we wake up the next morning that door of perception is still ajar, the hummingbirds are still aloft, and the ideas, once in darkness, are now faintly illuminated by what has gone on the day before. If we sit down at our desk and start writing again, these new ideas, one way or another, will work their way into the writing. But if we don’t sit down and take advantage of what we discovered—seemingly by chance—the door will close and we will be, once again, locked out of our own ideas.
    The best way, sometimes the only way, to succeed at writing a novel (or essay) is to write every day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year. You don’t have to write for a long time, just long enough
to peek into the darkness and listen for that sympathetic humming just beyond the range of what you can see and know for certain.
    This exercise is not only of value to the artist. Returning every day to the subject of your life is the most important implement in the toolbox of the worker who wants to short-circuit the oppressive nature of the modern world. The economic, political, and governmental systems of the world work every hour of every day. These systems strive to maintain the definition and the direction of your world. They define the value of your labor and the quality of your education, the candidates for your votes and the timetable by which your streets are fixed. The powers that be are working all the time to organize your labor against your goals. And if you don’t spend at least a couple of hours every day working to articulate and effect your desires, you will be defeated by the system’s daily counter-attempt to destroy your individuality.
    I don’t want to sound paranoid in saying that it is the intent of the structures of the modern world to quash our distinctiveness, but I believe that this is an obvious fact. We are taught to fit in from the earliest stages in our schools, churches, workplaces, and just walking down the street. Our questions, our instincts,
our desires to live lives that are not defined by these institutions are pushed down and ultimately disabled.
    It is the corporation’s job to make the greatest profit off of your labor, not to make sure you have medical care, adequate retirement, or deep joy and satisfaction in your everyday experience of life. Sometimes a corporation might do something positive for you, but this is because of a conflict with a separate institution like a union or the federal government. Some more enlightened conglomerates realize that a happy worker might, for a time, produce more profit if given a chance at happiness. But even this chance will be taken away if it subsequently loses its profitability.
    I’m not talking about good and evil here. I’m mapping out systems and the ways in which those systems work against the Free Will of their students and employees, soldiers and citizens (denizens). A CEO—Joe #25,362—might decide that he loves his workers and wants to make sure that they all get childcare. But that extra twenty-five hundred dollars per worker per year will show up on the corporate bottom line and the business will falter in its competition with similar firms; the CEO will be replaced by Joe #25,363 or the company will go out