I began this piece sitting in an automotive dealership's waiting area, a U of chairs arrayed around a television playing daytime tv at full volume. I shared this space with a handful of other inmates, all eying the screen in between looking at a magazine, or a best-seller, or texting on a mobile phone. The space was ersatz. Furniture covered in a veneer of a photographic image of wood grain or in the texture of leather impressed into vinyl under a ceiling of pretend tiles and walls of hollow false solidity. Plastic plants and artificial lighting filling out the totality of the experience. I knew I was going to be in this environment and I left home with my notebook and pen intent on finding a way to deal with its toxicity and find some way to create something anyway. I found I could form thoughts, in a fashion. It pushed me to put them down in a hurry and without concerning myself with transitions or even wording. If they were to survive passage in contact with these forces intact I needed to just write them down. As always, no matter how conducive the circumstances, in transferring these words from paper to screen, I have edited to some extent. But I still carry a fragmented broken view of what this might add up to even now, back in my habitual haunt. It should be no surprise that these conditions led me to examine awareness. Here is what came to mind: We can either abdicate our responsibility for the shape of our awareness or not. The dominant culture – if not any hegemonic culture, maybe all cultures – maintains dominance by taking control of our awareness.