I just got an email from Polewach in which he told me that he "think(s) everyone who likes learning and needs money should go to grad school and be a t.a. and study, as long as they're prepared for what it's going to be like and can combat the dangers of the system without getting kicked out of it." That's John, all right.

If I were Franz Kafka, it's true that I would hate myself, would not know Anne, would be consumptive, would fear that I was inadequte in my mid-level government position, would have awful creaking headaches all the time, and would never be able to sleep when I wanted to. But damn, would I be able to write! One short paragraph of his writing has the ability to control my mood for hours.

Then again, if I were Franz Kafka, I couldn't be Tim Kile.

I am about to check job listings in New York City. I can say this already: the NY posts on Craig's list are a hell of a lot more interesting than those for Baltimore.

Lately my night walks have been punctuated by people calling out to me from passing cars. They always do this psychically, I suppose, as I myself idly wonder where pedestrians are going and what they are like. These calls are rather different, though, more akin to Jess's surreal "nice book, bitch." I just came back from one of the circular walks, hugging the increasingly limited forest that surrounds a new community in the area, and a passenger in a speeding car called out, "slut!" Last week, it was "hey, faggot!" I wonder what I would think if I were, in fact, a slutty faggot. I guess I'd have to conclude that these were some very perceptive and chatty people driving by me, who perhaps felt obligated to label the things they saw, much like Adam in the first days of Eden.

Along Main Street in Ellicott City, the trend is for drivers to throw trash at me. I haven't gotten anything of value yet, just some soda bottles and a bannana peel, but I still have hope. I may not get an iPod, but maybe someone will hurl, say, a usable air conditioning unit or a crate of avacados.

The dogs are barking and what's done is done.

If Ingmar Bergman were here right now, I would buy him a soda
I'd buy him a soda
I'd buy him a soda and then I'd molest him in the parking lot yep yep yep

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

HA!

Hal-le-lu-jah,
(unh!)
Halle-luuu-jah
(oh, oh, oh)
Hal-le-lujah
(a-hooooooooooooooooo!)
Halle-luuuuuuuuuuuuu-jah

I'm really starting to doubt my analytical abilities. Today I finished Barry Miles's biography of Burroughs, in which he briefly lays out the essentials of narrative being driven by changes in consciousness. I had never quite pieced it together so fully. When the speaker's mood changes, the perspective changes to the extent that, in a more traditional book, it would be considered a different speaker altogether. Dedicated adherence to the narrator's consciousness produces nonlinear narrative; events are interpreted in such a way that there is no explanation of causes, if the narrator is not focused on these causes. This isn't the same as "stream of consciousness", which Burroughs defines as a transcript of subvocalization, the words and images that constantly pass through a person's mind without being spoken.

Burroughs's writing is rather different from earlier experiments in represententing consciousness. In the writing of Joyce, for example, the narrative is driven by the consciousness of a particular character, and is written as if the book is inside the character's head. In Woolf, it is less tied to a character, more of a disembodied third-person consciousness with occasional forays into one character or another. Burroughs is closer to Woolf, although the consciousness in question is more that of the author, and he allows himself considerably more room in the way of uncensored, total access to the mind in its full range of thoughts. He is much more open about sexual fantasies, in particular; in addition, he includes the tendency of the mind to combine reality with subconscious dream imagery. His books often include elements of science fiction and fantasy, more or less formally, and when informal, this is a result of combining his mind with the text to such an extent that it effectively manifests his subconscious.

Now, I could certainly analyze this further now that I have a basic model (already have), but the fact that I didn't already have this level of awareness distresses me somewhat. For a while, I've been idly considering a written project in which the consciousnesses of the characters come to the fore, and yet I was never clear what this would mean. Moreover, even after reading Hegel, Freud, etc., I never had a complete concept of the significance of their projects. Of course, I wouldn't say that I have this complete concept now, either. I can't tell how much of this is a failing on my part, and how much is simply a matter of not yet having taken the time to do much serious analysis.

Then, I had a further realization while reading Miles's bio of Kerouac: one could consider Kerouac's books to be early postmodern fiction, given that they make use of fiction, memoir, the occasional section of meaningless sounds, real conversations, etc. It is, of course, a hallmark of postmodern art to combine, and sometimes deconstruct, genres and mediums. The other half of postmodern art usually involves being aware of these actions, and allowing this awareness to influence the work. In this respect, Kerouac is completely removed from the postmoderns, as he's so caught up in himself and, ultimately, so adolescent that this doesn't seem to occur to him in the least. Nevertheless, even if I didn't think Kerouac's books had any other literary merit (and I think they do), they would be significant for this alone. They are one of the earliest examples of these important postmodern tendencies.

Yet, partially as a result of a biased introduction to Kerouac in my late teens, and partially because I never did much serious thinking about it, I had no awareness of this aspect of his work until seeing it suggested in Miles's bio. His book was the first serious analysis of Kerouac's work that I've read, the first that actually criticizes and analyzes. It's given me a rather intriguing avenue of inquiry, as well as a decent framework to use.