Fight Clubbing at Goose Lake

Reading Palahniuk to the sound of rushing water and the view of a massive lake saddled within Washington's southern border, I can't help but wonder what life would amount to without the scars I've acquired.  My most devastating injury was my one and only broken bone - a shattered jaw that landed me in an emergency surgery, two root canals, four teeth lost, two pulled by the doctor, two spread out over the hospital floor I fell on, a jaw wired, and sharp metal braces stabbing my cold sores for two and a half years.  Oh, and I almost forgot the two implants - a surgical procedure embedding metal sockets in my jaw that fake teeth would later screw into.  The injury was the result of a stupid insecurity - if I'd just laid down when I felt the nausea approaching, I'd still have my same old crooked mouth.  But I didn't, and along with scars on my hands acquired from brutal rowing practice, knees that increasingly remind me of the countless miles I've spent thrashing down mountains or the marathon I ran without training, or the lines coming out of my eyes resulting from entirely too much sun and not enough cream, I've come to see my imperfections as signs of living.  And I hope to be a bungled mess when I'm old.

Palahniuk's Fight Club is about resisting mediocrity or the status quo.  It's about getting bloodied, losing your job, blowing up your Ikea furniture, and setting fire to your Tommy shirts.  It's about reaching enlightenment at the moment of hitting bottom.  Didn't we all write this book when we were younger?  At one time, I only owned what I could fit in my Nissan 200sx.  And right now, under Mt. Adams, I have a car, a tent, some food, and a dog.  I've been on quite a few trips now where I needed nothing more than what I carried on my back.  I didn't listen to the radio, I didn't know what was happening in the world, I wasn't concerned with global warming.  My concerns did not move beyond the mountains ahead, the rivers to my side, and the clouds immediately overhead.  There's some mysterious truth in that kind of living, just as there's truth in Palahniuk's hero as he takes a beating in a basement, lit by just one lamp.

But now I own a table, and it's not light, and I'm strangely proud of it even though I didn't make it, and I have matching chairs, and I plan on wrapping it with blankets when I move to another apartment, and when we arrive at that apartment, I will inspect it for scratches.  Am I Palahniuk's main character, pre Tyler Durden?  Am I becoming him?  Have I always been him?  Why is my backpacking gear so nice and expensive?

Is Fight Club just for young people?  Do you outgrow it?  Is it too extreme?  Similarly, as a professor once said to me, is Nietzsche a young man's philosopher?  Is Zarathustra spouting eternal wisdom, or an age-specific kind of truth?  I feel like I need regular reminders - from Fight Club: "Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you."

I think things change, obviously, when you start a family, when you start thinking collectively, with a partner, or when you have kids, or you plan to have kids.  But while having kids may make a stable life with more possessions desirable, there's still the fact that these possessions don't mean a thing in the long run.  If it means your kids will grow up with a stronger sense of home, and this better helps with their emotional and mental development, great.  But there's still some kind of lie going on when it's thought to be a necessity.  I walked alongside parents pushing a stroller on the Camino de Santiago.  There was certainly some kind of emotional and mental development going on there.  I think I will forever be torn between Tyler Durden and his protegee.  I love my table, but I recognize it's ephemeral nature.  I partake in a materialistic society.  I don't blow it up.  But I do understand it for what it is, and that seems an important part of the wisdom of Fight Club.  I see the humor in it, I suppose.

There is one thing I will never relate to in Fight Club: the mean-spirited anarchy.  I am far too passive and respectful of different people's unique situations to piss in anyone's soup, regardless of how bourgeoisie they are.  This is true even if they piss in mine.  My Fight Club is run by the Buddha.