IPOD
RADIO
I've not had access to the internet since before the election, so I'll likely be the very last to jump on this bandwagon: but, still, I've never been so proud of, nor felt so at home in my own country as I have since 11:00 Tuesday night.
In news of considerably less importance, I started my job on Monday, so I'm coming to the close of the first week. The training process is extensive. I won't even start transitioning into my actual responsibilities until the Monday after Christmas. It's all classroom and supervised practice sessions till then. Still, the people are great, and the work (such as it is) is hardly burdensome. Also, in late December, when I really start, I get a 10% pay bump and another 10% for working the night shift. I'm guardedly optimistic about the whole undertaking.
That's it really. All I do now is go to work, feed the cat, and sleep.
In news of considerably less importance, I started my job on Monday, so I'm coming to the close of the first week. The training process is extensive. I won't even start transitioning into my actual responsibilities until the Monday after Christmas. It's all classroom and supervised practice sessions till then. Still, the people are great, and the work (such as it is) is hardly burdensome. Also, in late December, when I really start, I get a 10% pay bump and another 10% for working the night shift. I'm guardedly optimistic about the whole undertaking.
That's it really. All I do now is go to work, feed the cat, and sleep.
Wow, it's been a bit. My access to the Internet isn't what it used to be.
Brief synopsis:
I made the big move out of Athens and was left in penury by the expense of the truck and the gasoline. I'm back in Macon, with family for the time being (as mandated by the aforementioned penury). I got myself a job, which I start Monday. It's GEICO this time. So, my grand experiment in attempting a return to school has officially gone full circle in failure. I'm at another insurance company, only now I'll work claims instead of underwriting and make a bit less until I'm out of new-hire probation. Awesome.
I'm actually a shade more sanguine than all of this makes me sound. After the first post-move week of pure desolation, something shifted in my head, and I can read again now. I've gone through a bunch of 20th-century/contemporary American novels: Roth, Vonnegut, Bellow, Barth, Powers, etc. It feels good, and that helps. Also, I've already cast my early vote for Obama. That felt great. I don't think Georgia's in the cards for him; but it's been declared a tossup, so I can hope.
That's all there really is to say for now. I'll hoard my first two months' paychecks toward the purchase of a car and the payment of a deposit on the most reasonable apartment I can find. Till then, I'm in a holding pattern. Here's to better luck next year.
My best to all those in dire straits and desperation. The rest of you should be fine on your own.
Brief synopsis:
I made the big move out of Athens and was left in penury by the expense of the truck and the gasoline. I'm back in Macon, with family for the time being (as mandated by the aforementioned penury). I got myself a job, which I start Monday. It's GEICO this time. So, my grand experiment in attempting a return to school has officially gone full circle in failure. I'm at another insurance company, only now I'll work claims instead of underwriting and make a bit less until I'm out of new-hire probation. Awesome.
I'm actually a shade more sanguine than all of this makes me sound. After the first post-move week of pure desolation, something shifted in my head, and I can read again now. I've gone through a bunch of 20th-century/contemporary American novels: Roth, Vonnegut, Bellow, Barth, Powers, etc. It feels good, and that helps. Also, I've already cast my early vote for Obama. That felt great. I don't think Georgia's in the cards for him; but it's been declared a tossup, so I can hope.
That's all there really is to say for now. I'll hoard my first two months' paychecks toward the purchase of a car and the payment of a deposit on the most reasonable apartment I can find. Till then, I'm in a holding pattern. Here's to better luck next year.
My best to all those in dire straits and desperation. The rest of you should be fine on your own.
The tears came back today, for the first time in a long time. I think the last dam broke; there's some reassurance in that. God help us all here below.
Moving on: the big news is that I'm moving out. The depletion of even my most basic resources has pushed me to full tail-between-legs retreat. It's time to go home, shake my life back together, and start moving forward.
Also, I really need to re-teach myself how to read. I've yet to push through an entire book since March. It's ironic, since my penchant for constant reading almost certainly came from my desire to escape the more unpleasant parts of my childhood. Now, when I really need a distraction from the misery, the old magic just won't spark. I'm going back to Proust as a last hope. If I can't connect with and be absorbed in that story, I might as well sell my books for beer money.
As the old anchoress said, "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."
Moving on: the big news is that I'm moving out. The depletion of even my most basic resources has pushed me to full tail-between-legs retreat. It's time to go home, shake my life back together, and start moving forward.
Also, I really need to re-teach myself how to read. I've yet to push through an entire book since March. It's ironic, since my penchant for constant reading almost certainly came from my desire to escape the more unpleasant parts of my childhood. Now, when I really need a distraction from the misery, the old magic just won't spark. I'm going back to Proust as a last hope. If I can't connect with and be absorbed in that story, I might as well sell my books for beer money.
As the old anchoress said, "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."
I suppose the most painful part of a very long relationship's end (and, really, there are a thousand most painful parts, shifting by the hour) is the isolation. When something, anything, rips a hole in your life that a truck could drive through, the tendency to logorrhea is almost irresistible.
One needs someone who will sit there (either in person or over the telephone line) and allow one to meander through the maze of unresolved thoughts and feelings. Some responsiveness is valuable, but there's no real right thing to say to these ramblings, so saintlike patience is the most important attribute.
It's a horrible thing to discover that no such person exists, to realize that, across space and time, one has reduced the number of people willing to bear that burden to one. And that one has gone away.
Friends and family take one's calls, listen politely for a while, but one can hear the gentle tug in their voice. After five minutes or ten, they politely excuse themselves, being sure to say that one should call again anytime.
One begins to call only in the most desperate hours. This makes it worse. Eventually, one learns not to call at all.
One needs someone who will sit there (either in person or over the telephone line) and allow one to meander through the maze of unresolved thoughts and feelings. Some responsiveness is valuable, but there's no real right thing to say to these ramblings, so saintlike patience is the most important attribute.
It's a horrible thing to discover that no such person exists, to realize that, across space and time, one has reduced the number of people willing to bear that burden to one. And that one has gone away.
Friends and family take one's calls, listen politely for a while, but one can hear the gentle tug in their voice. After five minutes or ten, they politely excuse themselves, being sure to say that one should call again anytime.
One begins to call only in the most desperate hours. This makes it worse. Eventually, one learns not to call at all.
Without going into great detail, I suppose I could say that my life, such as it was, ended almost four months ago. A simple sequence of events (the recitation of certain carefully chosen words, the closing of a door, and a long car trip) effectively liquidated the purpose behind all my actions for the last four years.
It's a very strange effect. The past, though vividly and painfully brought to mind, has its significance washed out. Viewed retrospectively, it appears as a series of desperate struggles to accomplish the impossible. Looking back feels like watching a man try to hold off the onrushing tide with his hands, the poor fellow believing all the while that one more push will accomplish all.
The future is blank, more so than it ever has been before. Every time long-held, fervent hopes are vanquished it becomes more impossible to orient oneself forward with any confidence. Life contracts to that which I suppose it always really is: the succession of present moments.
Some find this regression to the undeniable now to be clarifying, even reassuring. There are philosophies and religions that find their genesis in just such a revelation. It does nothing for me. I am no good existentialist courageously enduring the hermetically sealed envelope of my own Being. I am no Stoic, no world-rejecting hermit comforted by the obvious emptiness of the pursuits of flesh and fame.
Increasingly, excruciatingly I press against the ceiling of my own abilities, my own temperament. I must be happy with a second-rate mind. It consumes voraciously, but its retention is mediocre at best. Its powers of synthesis prove exceedingly wanting. I have very consciously sought wisdom -- not knowledge, not education, not culture, but wisdom -- for almost fifteen years. It is not to be found, not by me. I have searched at the intersection of literature, philosophy, history and a half-dozen minor social sciences; for it is at these intersections, the hinges, as it were, of human understanding, that the prize must lie. Connections are what must be understood, hooks and eyes, synthesis. The tools I need are the tools I lack.
More embarrassingly, I must admit that the increasing self-understanding that comes with increasing age makes me doubt if real wisdom is the sort of thing that would satisfy me. I do not have the stomach for truth. It is why a greater understanding of the present as all-in-all, certainly a significant revelation won through considerable suffering, brings me no happiness. I don't want to understand my own reality; I want to be able to substitute one that I find more palatable. I do not want wisdom quite so much as I want a sort of refined Epicurean existence. Given full sway, I should wish for good food and good wine, true friends and true love, endless conversation filled with wit and polish. I should put high walls around this paradise and let the rest of the world go hang. It is not a pretty thing to say, nor a pretty thing to realize. In some sense, I am glad I do not have the power to effect such a state of affairs.
Here I am now, though, between lives as it were. The old one is gone; the new one stubbornly refuses to materialize. In some ways, I think starting over is just a matter of forgetting. One is doomed to make the same mistaken assumptions, the same ill-considered choices; but it is the only way. The alternative is a level of caution and introversion that might make a better man wise or at least good. I would just be paralyzed. I am not built for wisdom. All my pleasures lie in folly; they are not the greatest pleasures, nor the best, but they are the ones that I can reach.
It's a very strange effect. The past, though vividly and painfully brought to mind, has its significance washed out. Viewed retrospectively, it appears as a series of desperate struggles to accomplish the impossible. Looking back feels like watching a man try to hold off the onrushing tide with his hands, the poor fellow believing all the while that one more push will accomplish all.
The future is blank, more so than it ever has been before. Every time long-held, fervent hopes are vanquished it becomes more impossible to orient oneself forward with any confidence. Life contracts to that which I suppose it always really is: the succession of present moments.
Some find this regression to the undeniable now to be clarifying, even reassuring. There are philosophies and religions that find their genesis in just such a revelation. It does nothing for me. I am no good existentialist courageously enduring the hermetically sealed envelope of my own Being. I am no Stoic, no world-rejecting hermit comforted by the obvious emptiness of the pursuits of flesh and fame.
Increasingly, excruciatingly I press against the ceiling of my own abilities, my own temperament. I must be happy with a second-rate mind. It consumes voraciously, but its retention is mediocre at best. Its powers of synthesis prove exceedingly wanting. I have very consciously sought wisdom -- not knowledge, not education, not culture, but wisdom -- for almost fifteen years. It is not to be found, not by me. I have searched at the intersection of literature, philosophy, history and a half-dozen minor social sciences; for it is at these intersections, the hinges, as it were, of human understanding, that the prize must lie. Connections are what must be understood, hooks and eyes, synthesis. The tools I need are the tools I lack.
More embarrassingly, I must admit that the increasing self-understanding that comes with increasing age makes me doubt if real wisdom is the sort of thing that would satisfy me. I do not have the stomach for truth. It is why a greater understanding of the present as all-in-all, certainly a significant revelation won through considerable suffering, brings me no happiness. I don't want to understand my own reality; I want to be able to substitute one that I find more palatable. I do not want wisdom quite so much as I want a sort of refined Epicurean existence. Given full sway, I should wish for good food and good wine, true friends and true love, endless conversation filled with wit and polish. I should put high walls around this paradise and let the rest of the world go hang. It is not a pretty thing to say, nor a pretty thing to realize. In some sense, I am glad I do not have the power to effect such a state of affairs.
Here I am now, though, between lives as it were. The old one is gone; the new one stubbornly refuses to materialize. In some ways, I think starting over is just a matter of forgetting. One is doomed to make the same mistaken assumptions, the same ill-considered choices; but it is the only way. The alternative is a level of caution and introversion that might make a better man wise or at least good. I would just be paralyzed. I am not built for wisdom. All my pleasures lie in folly; they are not the greatest pleasures, nor the best, but they are the ones that I can reach.
In honor of the holiday, such as it is:
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious.
Movie producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that jetplanes 1400 miles an hour
and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live
in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles
more so they're all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings
they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and
the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about
the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing
the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real
mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers' Ewig-Weibliche made me cry
I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must
have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. Her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black
niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious.
Movie producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that jetplanes 1400 miles an hour
and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live
in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles
more so they're all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings
they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and
the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about
the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing
the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real
mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers' Ewig-Weibliche made me cry
I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must
have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. Her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black
niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
My life is a shambles. Again.
I really thought I'd passed through the last of these things, at least for some time.
Anyway, I haven't really been here for weeks, and I imagine it will be more of the same for the foreseeable future.
I really thought I'd passed through the last of these things, at least for some time.
Anyway, I haven't really been here for weeks, and I imagine it will be more of the same for the foreseeable future.
No post in a week, so I should write something. I'm not really any farther along in my reading that I was at my last post. It's been seven days of sickness (first the girl, then me) and other sorts of suck.
That's pretty much it for the moment. Back to the word mines.
That's pretty much it for the moment. Back to the word mines.
Finished Malory -- finally. Brief thoughts: on the whole (this was my first reading of the work entire), I was exceedingly enamored of the book, which I had not expected. I thought it was mostly about the Sangreal and the war with Mordred (as those are the excerpts everyone is forced to read in sophomore surveys). These incidents always seemed a little dull to me, so I assumed that was the nature of the whole. Really, though, the great mass of the book is given up to Launcelot, Tristram, and Lamorak. I loved the huge section on Tristram in the middle. I also very much enjoyed the self-contained story of Gareth's first adventure as a knight. Also, Sir Dinadan (perhaps best titled the Cautious), had me laughing out loud. For the record though, fuck Galahad and Percivale: what a pair of boring twunts. They can keep their silly Jesus Cup and the painfully dry moralizing that characterized their entire story. Well, that wasn't so brief, but I had to get some of that off my chest.
Also, in breaks between chapters, I got through a reasonable chunk of medieval drama, excerpts from Julian of Norwich (suck) and Margery Kempe (fascinating), and a bunch of filthy, fun Middle English lyrics. At the end, I squeezed in just a taste of the Scottish Chaucerians with a few hundred lines each of Henryson and Dunbar. I'm now officially out of the Middle Ages and into the Sixteenth Century.
Today I read selections from Skelton, Wyatt, and Surrey. The longer-form read for the afternoon was Utopia, which really does get richer every time I take it up again. Also, in the vein of More, I read the excerpt on Shore's wife in his History of King Richard III, which is the definition of multum in parvo in English prose.
Tomorrow I need to get through Ascham (only excerpts: I'm not crazy), Queen Elizabeth, Gascoigne, Whitney, and Ralegh before I sink deep into Spenser, Sidney, and Greville. The last three will eat me for a while; so, if I don't post before I start them, I probably wont get around to it again till after I finish them.
In closing, here's a bit of bawdy Middle English double entendre:
Also, in breaks between chapters, I got through a reasonable chunk of medieval drama, excerpts from Julian of Norwich (suck) and Margery Kempe (fascinating), and a bunch of filthy, fun Middle English lyrics. At the end, I squeezed in just a taste of the Scottish Chaucerians with a few hundred lines each of Henryson and Dunbar. I'm now officially out of the Middle Ages and into the Sixteenth Century.
Today I read selections from Skelton, Wyatt, and Surrey. The longer-form read for the afternoon was Utopia, which really does get richer every time I take it up again. Also, in the vein of More, I read the excerpt on Shore's wife in his History of King Richard III, which is the definition of multum in parvo in English prose.
Tomorrow I need to get through Ascham (only excerpts: I'm not crazy), Queen Elizabeth, Gascoigne, Whitney, and Ralegh before I sink deep into Spenser, Sidney, and Greville. The last three will eat me for a while; so, if I don't post before I start them, I probably wont get around to it again till after I finish them.
In closing, here's a bit of bawdy Middle English double entendre:
* Text courtesy of the Longman Anthology of British Literature
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