Kirillov, from Demons:

There are seconds, they come only five or six at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, fully achieved. It is nothing earthly; not that it's heavenly, but man cannot endure it in his earthly state. One must change physically or die. The feeling is clear and indisputable. As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes, this is true. God, when he was creating the world, said at the end of each day of creation: 'Yes, this is true, this is good.' This . . . this is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy. You don't forgive anything, because there's no longer anything to forgive. You don't really love--oh, what is here is higher than love! What's most frightening is that it's so terribly clear, and there's such joy. If it were longer than five seconds--the soul couldn't endure it and would vanish. In those five seconds I live my life through, and for them I would give my whole life, because it's worth it. To endure ten seconds one would have to change physically.

From the ice age to the dole age, there is but one concern. I have just discovered: I have to remove the tinting from my car windows before I can get it registered. Damn.

Flagg is kvetching like he was born to whine. He goes from pressing his nose against the glass door and staring as if God Himself were descending from heaven into my back yard, to looking back at me imploringly with all the passion of a mother pleading for the life of her child, to calling out with a voice like that of a man who is dying of thirst, to rushing over to my chair and jumping on the back and pawing at my face and pointing at the door and saying, "let me out, let me out, let me out. Bee-yitch." He kvetches like he got a doctorate in the subject. Little user. Why couldn't he be more like his brother Mulder, Best Cat in World?

I'm almost certainly asking the wrong people, but has anyone who reads this seen the show Six Feet Under? And if so, do you happen to agree that it's an excellent drama, but that dramas make for bad television? By the way, if you read this, please comment "yes" or "no", just so I can tell for sure. It's important, goddamit.

For anyone who cares, the All Music Guide review of Bright Eyes' two 2005 albums is the first honest assesment of his carreer that I've seen. He's been getting a free ride so far: immediately placed on NPR's "All Songs Considered" list of best songs of 2005, glorified by critics both indie and mainstream, and eaten up by unthinking indie rock fans (Febbie Steve, Josh Kazmin, that chick Elise from Barnes and Noble who Scott met). And he isn't even . . . talented. It's a long review, and I give you permission to scan it or, hell, not read it; but one that made me feel deeply pleased at finally seeing an independent and intelligent reviewer say that it's reasonable to disdain the dude. Ah, nothing like a good hatchet job of someone I sense I don't like.

Rather than simply say he's no Dylan or Springsteen, the review says why: ". . . Oberst is as precious as Paul Simon, but without any sense of rhyme or meter or gift for imagery, puking out lines filled with cheap metaphors and clumsy words that don't scan." Ah, yes, lyrical vomit. In this instance, I think, it was the right choice to go with the puking image rather than fall back on the tired diarrhea metaphor. My favorite line, for its disdainful implication and astute cultural criticism: "He's leapfrogged over Chris Carrabba in Dashboard Confessional to be the figurehead for how certain strands of modern rock is judged solely on whether it's a personal emotional expression or not, never taking into account such niceties as craft, in either music or lyrics, or in the sheer impact of the music." Truth! Just look at all that truth. Craft is exactly what Bright Eyes lacks, and it would be ok if he were at least intelligent, but he isn't. The two star ratings might be excessively low, but then again, they might not. Would anyone be hearing these albums if Oberst weren't a master of marketing?

Last year I received an email from Paypal informing me that a class action lawsuit against Paypal had resulted in a damages payment and that I was eligible for a small portion of it by virtue of the fact that I had signed up for Paypal before the class action lawsuit was initiated. I have no idea what the case was about--I have a vague recollection that it had something to do with improper withholding of information from certain Paypal members, although I didn't understand it at the time, either--but I downloaded an affadavit that I had become a Paypal member before some date in 2003, sent it to the address they had given me, and forgot about it.

About a month ago, I got another email from Paypal telling me that the money had been distributed, and that my Paypal account now had an $8 positive balance. It had been in my account since then, essentially the only non-family money I'd gotten since the library job ended.

Tonight, after being alerted by a text message from Anne, I found an entry on Daily Kos reporting that, as a result of the Homeland Security Department, the Red Cross has had no presence in New Orleans. One of the reasons HSD gave for keeping the Red Cross away is that the presence of food, water and medical aid would discourage people from evacuating the city. (Fun game: can you spot the absurdity?)

Among the hundreds of comments to this post, some people questioned the appropriateness of an organization called Liberal Blogs for Hurricane Relief, whose goal is to raise $1,000,000 from the readers of liberal blogs and donate it to the Red Cross. Of course, the Red Cross may not be in New Orleans, but they are nevertheless providing relief to those who have made it out. It's frustrating in the extreme, but there don't seem to be organizations for whom it would be more appropriate to solicit donations than for the Red Cross. I don't think liberal bloggers would feel more comfortable donating to FEMA, for example.

You've probably figured out by now where my Paypal $8 went. I looked at the page I linked to above and saw that they were asking for donations through Paypal. I had wanted to donate to the Red Cross, but since I'm broke, anything I gave would essentially be my parents' money, and they're already planning to make a donation. I had forgotten about the Paypal money until I saw the page.

It's hard for me to express how my donation made me feel. Being broke, miles away from the crisis and unconnected with any people bringing help to the victims, I am limited to the following responses: I can either get as much information as I can about what is going on now and hope that the situation improves, or I can attempt to put my mind on other things. The one other action I was able to take was to give a paltry contribution with the only means at my disposal to an organization whose legitimacy I had just seen questioned.

It was an easy decision to make, but if anything, it reinforces my feelings of powerlessness.

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.

I spent the day sitting in an office in the lobby of a building on Charles St., reading Barthelme and the New York Times and writing prose sketches, catering to the needs of an obsessive, looming property owner. A one-off, extremely temporary job, just a few hours yesterday and 9-5 today, due to the anything-but-absentee property owner's odd-ball policy of ending all of his leases on July 31st. The leering, preening, grasping owner wanted people in the office and in the back watching the doors and preventing damage. As it happened, only two people moved out while I was there, and the most worthwhile thing I did all day (from the perspective of the paranoid, shiftless, nosy owner) was buying the peering, insectile owner a lemonade from a coffee shop a few blocks from the building. At the end of the day, the batty, prickly spook of an owner offered to recommend me to a friend of his, a vice president at Agora publishing, one of the places where I happen to have applied for a job. It's good to have base friends in high places.

And then, there it was. It had been right in front of me this whole time, and I just hadn't seen it. And it was so simple! That's what it meant when I washed my hands for hours on end, that's why I had to tie my shoelaces in a clockwise manner. Of course! I was acting out the suicide of my cat!

Thank you, Freudian analyst!

Here I don't want to move, and there Lance Armstrong goes showing me up yet again.

I have a new haircut, gotten with the intention of looking more professional so that job interviewers think that I am reliable. It will deliver the message that I take life and formal relationships seriously. Its composed follicles and layered structure will make such a strong impression that the most seasoned judger of qualifications will be powerless against it. My hair is my best spokesman. It will remain unflappable and relentlessly promote my cause, even if my face betrays me by grimacing, my hands turn traitor and attempt to strangle the armrests, or my aura chooses to switch from gentle to cagey. My hair will politely communicate to the interviewer and the world that the person it's decided to bedeck is worthy of trust. It will inspire people with confidence in me, will direct them to consider that I clearly have good taste, and also have the necessary agility and consideration to apply mousse and a rigorous combing. It will soothe the soul of everyone I encounter, even as it impresses them with the obvious signs of my excellence. Do not understimate my hair, for it is persuasive and it will overcome. It is both sexy and composed, strong and gentle, confident and inquisitive, bold and nuanced, firm and supple. My hair is better than you, and it knows it, but it isn't patronizing. The legacy of my hair will be as expansive and bright as the night sky. For generations to come, children will be told the story of my hair and its great deeds; historians will debate which of its accomplishments were the greatest; legions of imitators will desperately struggle to capture even a small fragment of my hair's magic; the fashion world will study every tuck and splendorous wave of my glorious locks; poets will sing my hair's beauty and bravery to all corners of the earth.

It's two years later and I'm finally ready to say it: Elephant is a godawful awesome album. Just a real knockout. At the time, I was terrifically underwhelmed. I basically thought it had no good qualities at all. I thought each song was poorly developed and leaning toward weak, and that the album had bad pacing as a whole. I thought that the copious overdubs killed the feeling that Jack's songs had had up to that point. I thought there were no original ideas, no real expansion as a band.

My God.

Every record critic seems to have a "What the hell was I thinking?" moment. As a critical listener of music, this was mine.

I take it all back. Sorry, Jack White.

A conversation held between two go players after I had left a game I won by over a hundred points (not that I'm boasting):

Nimphy [24k]: sukkel
Wiskid [12k]: heheh
Wiskid [12k]: heeft blijkbaar een ego-boost nodig of ze
Nimphy [24k]: ja lach maar
Wiskid [12k]: *zo
Nimphy [24k]: dag 23k
Wiskid [12k]: die ranking komt echt wel
Nimphy [24k]: denk dat ik maar naar bed ga
Wiskid [12k]: mag ik ff control?

I think this is Dutch. Babel fish doesn't know the word "sukkel", but I can guess. The rest is
Wiskid: "Apparantly he had to have an ego-boost."
Nimphy: "Well of course, ha ha."
Wiskid: "Indeed."
Nimphy: "23k day."
Wiskid: "The ranking really comes, however."
Nimphy: "I think I'm going to bed."
Wiskid: Something like "You think I can control it?"

I am requesting a transcript so that I can apply to work for the federal government. I am not at all sure that this is a good idea, but it causes anxiety, which can not be overstated in terms of awesomeness. If I were a religious man, I'd ask Jesus whether he likes hotdogs.

Time whistles by, its hands in its pockets, as leasurely as could be. We are nominally discussing The Descent of Man, although really we're just trying to make the next hour and twenty five minutes go by. With any luck, we think, the tutor will lose hope as he has many times before and let us leave early. No one was in the room at 10:35. One stutent actually came in a full twelve minutes late, and sat down unapologetically. Mr. Bayer allowed a ten minute discussion of Reality to begin the class, and then diligently asked an opening question. So began the play-acting. The conversation is punctuated by Tim Kile's facetious "seminar" comments, which spur half the class to laughter ("I'd like to bracket that question for a minute." "So what's on the table right now?" "Hmm. Yes. Interesting. Let's unpack that a bit." "Where are you when you ask that question?"). There are four students who are willing to be serious, but only contingently. As soon as there's a joke, they're on it. At one point, Dan Marshall pulls out a camera and snaps a flash picture in the middle of someone's sentence. The conversation doesn't even pause, as the tutor chooses to ignore the evidence. At noon, Tim holds up his hand, smacks his wrist twice, and says, "time." And we walk out into the nauseating sun of brief freedom.

Santa Fe is big, and ugly, and dusty, and smells bad, and, and, and I don't like it. Jess, you're out of your gourd.

It's a tough assignment, explaining the circumstances behind the last post. I know of only two people unconditionally willing to talk with J--blon, one because she is unfailingly polite, the other because he has an obsession with the weird. Neither of them have coherent theories of J--blon's mind. In general, people say he is intelligent in the sense that he could win a chess game or follow a Newton proposition, but not in the sense that he has an understanding of reality or is capable of meaningful interractions with people. His presence makes people uncomfortable, and it's hard to tell just why. He assumes friendship with anyone he speaks to, friendship of a very idiosyncratic nature. He essentially seems to want to play the role of a beloved child of the person he's talking to. He is one half demander, one half critic. Demander in that he just oozes with the desire to be accepted. Critic in that he nevertheless makes fun of people, although in odd and illogical ways. Most people diagnose a strong desire for attention, to be present in people's minds. He is very rarely silent, whether he's in the library, the computer lab, the dining hall, outside, anywhere; and he doesn't seem to care who it is he's talking to. I should mention at this point that he's well into his thirties.

J--blon has a different routine with each library worker. With one person, he every day asks for a call number he could easily get on the public computers. With another person, he asks for help with homework. With a third, he incessantly talks to the worker until he has to find something to do. With a fourth, he will stay until past midnight so that the worker has to request that he leave. With a fifth (and this is the origin of the incident), he checks out a senior essay, takes it to the couches, and ten minutes later gets into a discussion and forgets that he has the essay.

This fifth iteration occurs, or I should say used to occur, on Max and Cory's shift. It particularly angered Cory, the supervisor, because J--blon would check out essays the day before the student's oral, keeping others from reading it. On the night in question, Cory said to J--blon that he better actually read the essay, or else he wouldn't give him any more. Ten minutes later, he was sitting with the essay in his lap and talking loudly with whoever was next to him. Someone came to the desk asking for the same essay, and Cory directed him to J--blon. A few minutes later, he then returned and asked for another essay, saying he wasn't sure if he should read it now or in the morning. He was planning his time for the week, it might be better to do homework, etc. Cory said, Steve, what do you mean planning your time? You only read for ten minutes and then you just talk to people.

It was at this point that J--blon went into hysterics, waiting about a minute to fall to the floor. Now, if you consider this an explanation, perhaps you can explain it to me.

Obviously, the joke wasn't that funny. The common theory is that he honestly found it funny at first, for an unknown reason, and decided not to stop because people were looking at him. I did hear him boasting later that he had gotten the whole library laughing, so this makes sense . . . in a way. I mispoke when I said that I found out what caused it, because I could only say that the phenomenon "J--blon" caused it. If my account doesn't make sense, you could blame my writing for failing to coherently explain, or you could blame the J--blon for being irreconcilable with normal reality. You'd be correct either way.

When I finished reading an e-mail last night, I got up to leave the library, turned toward the door, and then stopped, having suddenly become aware that someone was uncontrolledly laughing. Naturally, I turned around to see what was so funny. A junior I know was sitting on a couch by the glass doors, staring in my direction and shaking with laughter. I gradually realized that he was not alone. People on both sides of the reference section were laughing outrageously and shaking their heads, looking in amazement at nothing obvious. Their stares all focused on the floor in front of the circulation desk. A freshman library worker was leaning over the desk and trying to hold back hysterical laughter while his supervisor stood back, his arms crossed, his face contorted and annoyed.

Then I heard, slurping and choking, off-key and grating, a separate laugh, sliding under and over and through and around the laughter that was coming from all other directions. I walked over to peek around the desk, turned at the column, and saw him: one arm pillowed his shaking head, the other pounded the floor in a hilarity so strong it pinched his face, making it even uglier than usual; his legs kicked, and his torso shook convulsively with gasps for air, as though from great sobs of pain. His characteristic ratty, baggy flannel clothing ballooned onto the floor, and his dirty hair writhed across his back like an animal sick unto death. Steve J--blon, whom I've described in a previous blog.

His laugh was like that of a crazy character in a movie who has just stabbed his mother. It destroyed the normal mood like a black helicopter hovering over a graveyard, like a puddle of blood on an office carpet, like a screech in the middle of a calm night, like a broken mirror. It was infectious and insidious. No one could ignore it, though no one particularly wanted to see it. At first it was just a spectacle; as it drew on, it became freaky. Eventually, the inconceivability of his hilarity dawned on everyone present. No way this was natural laughter, even considering what that might mean for J--blon.

After about thirty seconds Blake happened out of an office, alarmed by the noise. When he saw what was going on he said, "Steve, man, breathe. Really, you're concerning me." He walked around the desk and looked down at the absurd figure. "Come on, get up. Stop it. Just stop it." Steve did not respond. The sick laughter continued. "I'm getting angry." Pause. "If you don't stop, I'm going to call security. I'm serious." The laughter continued. The supervisor leant slightly over the desk and said, "Steve. Cut it out right now. You're affecting everyone in the library, and not in a good way." He didn't stop.

I went behind the desk. The freshman was still peering over the desk, chuckling a bit from the absurdity but looking decidedly less amused. I asked the supervisor if he knew what started it. "This is one of those situations where it's best to know nothing," he said. I left in awe. Today I heard that J--blon kept on for an unlikely, awkward and annoying five minutes, until the last dreds of appreciative attention had left long ago and the studiers were restless and angry. I later found out what caused it, and maybe I'll explain it some time.

Today I played a game of Go with a 16-year-old French kid. I told him that "je parle un peu de Francais," which made things rather awkward. He said, "Je jeu depuis un mois." When I didn't respond quickly, as I was trying to think of the plural of "mois," he said, "trente jours." I said, "Moi depuis trois mois." At the end of the game we both said "Merci," and then he asked, "Quel age avez-vous?" I told him, he told me, and then there was nothing else to say. I left.

I just checked out Ghandi's autobiography to a junior named Eitan Fire. I am so nonplussed.

Does anyone in the world have a strong opinion of Robert Frost, bad or good? No one I've asked so far seems to. I wonder about that man. His poems are quite good for what they are, seemingly flawless according to their design and their context, and yet something prevents me from unqualifiedly liking them. They are so completely modern, the thought behind them so direct and pure, the images perfectly chosen and the words perfectly suited for communicating them, that perhaps I question them as a matter of principle; on moral grounds, as it were. I appear to be incapable of accepting the modern, because of its contrast wtih the more complex, uncertain postmodern. Not that there's any good postmodern poetry, as far as I know, with the possible exception of found poems. Is this even a problem? Why should I care?

I do care, though. I've been reading far more Frost than the assignments for language class require. I've been asking all the intelligent people I know what they think of him, and even some of the unintelligent people. I've gone so far as to consider a sustained study of poetry (which consideration isn't new in itself, but I haven't ever carried it out). How could I ever pick one interest to pursue in grad school/not-grad school if I continue to have three or four at a time? (Other current interests: Old French/history of language, psychology, postmodern fiction/fiction in general, progression of philosophy, and of course modern music and Go. All potentially life-long pursuits.)

Also, Pearl Jam don't suck. This is news to me. Thought you might like to know.

The "good chance" has turned into maybe three-to-one odds. I am not pleased. It hinges on whether anyone here is driving to croquet, because airline prices are forget it. At least when I run into the wall really hard I sometimes forget I'm inexplicably still in school.

There's a good chance I'll be at croquet. If I miss more than one of any class between now and then, who knows, perhaps I'll be home a good deal before croquet, and not return to Santa Fe. A senior's only job is to show up. I know it. Christ, everyone knows it. Now how much would you pay?

From the depths of Santa Fe I cry out to thee, o lord: please make me a sammich.

Eric is back in Olympia. The house has so much less possibility now; fewer ways to get cigarettes before my father goes to sleep, decidedly less weirdness, no unexpected calls from the hippie-punk photographer in Columbia, no phones answered with the musical quotation "You hear me talkin' to ya, I don't bite my tongue", no more mall walks which raise the hopes of every ring vendor.

Damn that's pretty:

Guillaume Apollinaire
"Le Pont Mirabeau"

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine.

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Les mains dans les mains restons face à face
Tandis que sous
Le pont de nos bras passe
Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante
L'amour s'en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l'Espérance est violente

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Passent les jours et passent les semaines
Ni temps passé
Ni les amours reviennent
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

*****************
Literal translation:

Under Mirabeau bridge slips the Seine
And our loves
Must this remind me of them
Joy always came after pain.

Let the night come sound the hour
The days go by I remain

With hand in hand let's remain face to face
Until beneath
The bridge of our arms pass
The so tired wave of eternal glances

Let the night come sound the hour
The days go by I remain

Love goes by like this running water
Love goes by
Like life is slow
And like Hope is violent

Let the night come sound the hour
The days go by I remain

The days pass the weeks pass
Neither the past
Nor the loves return
Under Mirabeau bridge slips the Seine

It's always this way. I walk outside and there's the holly bush, the little red honda, the stone house across the street, the badly paved driveway, all so expected and natural and without transition, like the last two months never happened. There are cats, at least. I had forgotten that somehow. Consolation, I guess. There's also an older, fifty-point-lower-IQ version of me in the basement at all times. In that room across the hall sleeps a wrathful God counting down the minutes to the moment he can smell my coat and confirm his true assumption. Not even the airport pickup and long island iced tea can put it off for long. I woke up this morning in Santa Fe and tonight I go to sleep in Ellicott City. A small portrait of hell.

I may suck at it, but playing Go is still fun. This is true of many things. In fact, I have no strong talents, but many things are still fun.

There are a few ghost cats on my block, ownerless, nocturnal, seen only by streetlamp and moon. They disappear whenever I bend and make the internationally recognized Call to the Unknown Cat. Rabbits also run away, but far less aesthetically. (An odd tie between the two campuses: the immense population of frightened little bunnies. Enough rabbits to store one in every dorm room and still have overstock.) Rabbits lock their muscles and stare into the darkness, sniffing, and then bounce stiffly in the other direction. Cats look up quickly, as though an action hero hearing an approaching train, incline their front, approach a bit, contemplate, quiver slighltly for a few seconds, then turn and flee in a fluidly choreographed move, not ceding territory but simply looking for something more awesome to do. They look back every few seconds as if expecting you to come see, and then the light runs out and they are gone.

I miss you, cats of the world. I would like to hang out with you, but you will not let me. Why do you tease me with your insensible image?

An older man comes into the library every night for three and a half hours and looks at bargain websites. This may be a more effective use of time than my own.

Intertextuality in Action: a play.

Marx: There is a double error in Hegel.
Faulkner: A bear or a deer has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.
Marx: It would therefore be unfeasible and wrong to let the economic categories follow one another in the same sequence as that in which they were historically decisive.
Faulkner: But he aint gonter never holler, no more than he ever done when he was jumping at that two-inch door.
Marx: For this very reason, however, every medieval craftsman was completely absorbed in his work, to which he had a contented, slavish relationship, and to which he was subjected to a far greater extent than the modern worker, whose work is a matter of indifference to him.
Faulkner: So he comes to work, the first man on the job, when McAndrews and everybody else expected him to take the day off since even a nigger couldn't want no better excuse for a holiday than he had just buried his wife, when a white man would have took the day off out of pure respect no matter how he felt about his wife, when even a little child would have had sense enough to take a day off when he would still get paid for it too.
Marx: Take, for instance, the fattening of cattle, where the animal is the raw material, and at the same time an instrument for the production of manure.
Faulkner: Major has to get on back home.
Marx: On what grounds, then, do you Jews demand emancipation?
Faulkner: There aint any law against a man rushing his wife into the ground, provided he never had nothing to do with rushing her to the cemetary too.
Marx: It is still a matter, therefore, of the Jews professing some kind of faith; no longer Christianity as such, but Christianity in dissolution.
Faulkner: Come one, let's get back to town. I haven't seen my desk in two weeks.

I'm so green, I'm losing my Vitiman C. Wanna ask but I just stare.

Readers who know listen to Electrelane. They're like an all-woman Velvet Underground fronted by The Pastels' Bernice Simpson. Don't believe the implication of the band name, by they way--they're not electro, neither are they lame. Real live drummer who plays drum machine loops, jangly little rythem guitar, vocal melodies that sound sampled if only because she never really hits notes, but miraculously repeats the exact same mistake-sounding pitches multiple times. No Korg, but then, nobody's perfect.

Also good: Can is really good.

True, and if you ever need structure for your thoughts, bring them to Kay Duffy. She'll tell you what to do, with a hastily scribbled outline and a request for falafel balls and tzaziki. More revisions would still be appreciated. Any takers? How about you, Jellybaby? I hear you're reading a lot of crap for that Review thing, maybe you'd like to read something good for a change. J$, you're an author, right? I think I saw some of your work in The Education Gadfly. Anne, you have the essay already, or will by the time you read this.

Hey, is that a shiny object? I'm gonna go look at it.

"I know a girl named Elsa,
She's into Alkaseltzer."
-Noel Gallagher

I just read an essay by Octavio Paz in which he states that a poetic image at its most powerful unites two mutually exclusive objects, while retaining their individuality nonetheless. His example image used throughout the essay was based on an example of what he called the opposite type of thinking, logical scientific thinking. Such a statement as "a pound of feathers has the same weight as a pound of rocks," he says, deprives both feathers and rocks of their individuality and nature. The poetic image "feathers are rocks," however, combine the two without losing either. Though it breaks the law of contradiction, it is still true, part of the reality of realities.

Octavio Paz, it seems, is a douchebag.

We Shall All Be Healed has no sing-alongs. This is its biggest flaw, as far as I'm concerned. Often, the songs are very close, but there's obviously too much personal meaning in them for Mr. Darnielle; the choruses (when there are choruses) don't work on the same level as in earlier Mountain Goats. Where they used to invite you to exult with him, or to join his pain, these choruses don't. (Imagine singing along with "I am a mole." Can't do it, can you?) Mr. Darnielle probably didn't even write them with the intention of sublimating emotions; these songs are emotions. So the album's biggest flaw reveals itself to be that it's too powerful.

And yet also too subtle. All the Mountain Goats albums that I've heard are subtle, sometimes even maddeningly vague. I still can't put a story to any of them, and I would guess that's intentional. This album, although its story takes about as much form as any of them, remains outside my experience. I can guess what he means by most of the songs, they even make me feel a certain way, and yet they don't go under the skin. I still feel like I'm studying them, and they remain somewhat abstract. This is the album's second biggest flaw.

The music is great. I dont' mean the instruments, although they're more than adequate (and that organ on "Quito"--mmm, batampt). It's the vocal lines. They've got great fluid structure to fit the lyrics and the beat at the same time, great phrasing. I quite like the lyrics, too, but here, I think, is the reason for the prenominate greatest flaws. They're almost straight poems, with very little bowing to traditional song structure. They have stanzas rather than verses, and the choruses are often just two lines.

Plenty of exceptions. "Palmcorder Yanja" has a great chorus, song-like and quite fun to sing along with. "Whe-ere they-ee maaa-nu-fac-shured what I nee-ded!" Then there's "Garden Grove," and that "aa-ahh-oo," no complaints there, song as much as a poem. The aforementioned "Quito" is ear candy (that organ, woo). And the last song, again fun to sing along to.

I'm not saying that the rest is filler, I hope you'll understand. The rest also has great music, very memorable, hyper emotional. But what do you do with lines like "And once there was a deskAnd now it's in a storage locker somewhereAnd this song is for the stick pins and the cottonsI left in the top drawer"? Typical Mountain Goats, yes. Inventively fit into the song's rhythem, detailed and empathetic at the same time, sounds good when Mr. Darnielle says it, but . . . You know what, I'm wrong. That's a great line. I take back everything that sounded disatisfied.

Why I love Bob Dylan, vol. 1

I have a joyful feeling when I think about Dylan albums. He created so damn many (ten perfect albums in the 60s, a muddled but still Dylan period in the early 70s followed by two more perfect albums, late 70s Christian period, absurd yet endearing commercial albums in the 80s, a second act as big as Jesus's in '94 and '01), and with this constant output he revealed himself entirely. They all have a single mood: the expansively romantic feeling of an epic poem (Highway 61). the painful examination of a failed love affair (Blood on the Tracks), the paranoid, shiftless, claustrophobic sense of you against the world (Blonde on Blonde), playful absurdity and group mythmaking (Basement Tapes), dreamlike visionary spiritualism (John Wesley Harding). They're like old friends. I've seen every side of them, been through everything with them, know all their secrets, love hanging around with them.

Then there's the style of the songs. Overflowing words and a huge range, so you can quote them at any time, in any context. The voice, disentegrating over the years, always just beyond my ability to imitate, probably the best possible for these songs. The abounding energy of the music itself, alternately rollicking and whispering, echoing and air-tight. God, that guitar, strumming percussively away in the background, that high moaning train-whistle harmonica. The world never knew a 4-5-1 progression could have so many masks.

Also, just look at them. They're so pretty. Each one with a mug shot of Zimmy himself, drugged out or pissed off or grinning or staring or reclining or self-consciously posing. The minibus on Freewheelin'. The silly hat on Desire. The 'stache on Love and Theft. Dude, Bringing it All Back Home? Best album cover ever.

Tomorrow: my current thoughts on We Shall All Be Healed. I'll put off writing this essay if it kills me.

Sleeping way too often. Feeling weak in limbs and mind. Seeing many unlikely things in peripheral vision (today a lamp post was an eagle). Getting less sun than even I need. Constantly beset with compusion to go to indian casino. If had brick, would throw it through neighbor's window just to hear it smash. WhErE ArE yoU? ARe yOu tHEre?

Yes! I have received my awesome Beikoku Ongaku Japanese music magazine! Fewer pictures than I expected, but hey, a few of them is a Japanese hipster shopping for CDs. Also, there's a hella obscure mix CD of their favorite pop songs. And an article featuring a Japanese take on Lost in Translation.

Oh man, why did I buy this?

Infinity has changed HFS into a Spanish language/Latin music network. At least they let them go out with dignity. Or in great shame and as a travesty of their former selves, then kept around for cash.

Sometimes, yes is you. In any case, yes.

Fact: I really feel like writing aimlessly. I could write the essay, but that has an aim.
Fact: Flagg has become more vocal since the last time I was here. He will make little whiney mewing noises with no provocation, and also louder whines with provocation.
Fact: I like to tell myself I inherited only good traits from my parents. I have my mother's liberal openness, and her usually easygoing manner (and I at least don't think I'm lying). I have my father's interest and reasonable taste in art (not specifially paintings, mind you), staunch Democratic leanings, and intelligence. I did not inherit male pattern baldness (mother's father). I did not inherit lack of ambition (father's father). I did not inherit rage and strictness (father). I did not inherit terribly off-pitch singing (mother). I did not inherit shitty short-term memory (mother).
Fact: the reason the last fact was only "I tell myself" was because I did inherit bad sense of direction (mother), occasional ignoring of problems (father), a curt manner that makes sales clerks and non-friends on the phone think I'm angry at them (father), tendency toward overeating (mother), obliviousness (both, sometimes, to different things, both genres of which I got in varying degrees).
Clarification of parenthesis in last Fact: my mother can walk down fifth avenue and not notice the neon. (I can live in Annapolis for two years and never quite process the fact that it's on a shore, even though I often went to the harbor and saw a beach.) My father can be unaware that he is subtly implying things he does not intend to imply. (For example, I've gradually learned that some of the times that he sounds pissed off, he isn't. Also, I often think he is making jabs at relatives and friends, and he never is. I am aware that minor noises, glances, and pauses I make imply irritation when I feel none, and don't intend to express any.)
Fact: Jeff was awake when I got home, yes, at four a.m. He had woken up without reason and was watching the extended version of Fellowship of the Ring.
Fact: I often find myself choosing not to become interested in things that have the potential to fascinate me, or freak me out. I am self-aware about this. It is a strange thing which perhaps you will not identify with or understand.
Fact: Hydroplaning is all fun and cookies until you run into a guardrail. (I didn't run into a guardrail, or anything else, although I found myself widely varying in speed on Rt. 100, sometimes going down to forty-five, sometimes up to seventy. Luckily, I had the road basially to myself.)
Fact: I enjoy the taste of saliva-activated envelope glue. It is a taste unlike anything else.
Fact: An operational CD player will produce music when the play button is depressed.
Fact: Secret doors will sometimes open in secret locations when the secret trigger is depressed.
Fact: Skin will transmit a sensation to your brain via your nerves when it is depressed.
Fact: I am not depressed.
Fact: this list has gone on long enough.

4 Jess

Everyday, everyday, everyday, everyday
...And we pray, and we pray and we pray and we pray.
Everyday, everyday, everyday, everyday...
See you at the crossroads (crossroads, crossroads)
so you won't be lonely
See you at the crossroads (crossroads, crossroads)
so you won't be lonely
See you at the crossroads (crossroads, crossroads)
so you won't be lonely
See you at the crossroads (crossroads, crossroads)
so you won't be lonely,
And I'm gonna miss everybody and I'm gonna miss everybody
And I'm gonna miss everybody and I'm gonna miss everybody
And I'm gonna miss everybody and I'm gonna miss everybody
And I'm gonna miss everybody and I'm gonna miss everybody
And I'm gonna miss everybody and I'm gonna miss everybody
And I'm gonna miss everybody and I'm gonna miss everybody

I see you got your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat. I see you aren't aware of it. Well you must tell me, baby, how your head feels under something like that. (Uner your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat.)

Eric just called me to tell me that the ventriloquist's dummy he found in our uncle's basement is really freaking him out. He's alone in a Brooklyn loft with the dummy staring at him from a windowsill. This and other things are not good ideas.

He can't smoke in the loft, so he went to the hallway while we were talking. He can smoke in the hallway, and he really doesn't know why, but he doesn't question it. We should really go up there and visit him. He's leaving Friday, so we should really take advantage of this opportunity. I'm looking at you here, Scott.

We talked about this over the phone, and also about how he's going to a play with our aunt, to a part of town she doesn't go to. She's been living there her whole life and there are parts of town she doesn't go to because she gets lost. Then he went back inside and, he claimed, the dummy had moved.

Scott, Anne, thoughts about going to visit Eric this week?

My mother received some gifts from her coworkers, and one of them freaks me out inordinately. It is a travel game, like the magnetic chess that was once taped to Blue Thunder's ceiling. This is weird enough already, because there is no reason to think that my mother would want a travel game. Already, the explanation must be pretty strange. She was perhaps shopping at a hobby store for Crimmas decorations, tripped out on shrooms, when she remembered that she needed a gift. Her claw hand grabbed a travel game, and the next day she was still starry eyed and hazy from the shrooms, so she didn't realize what a strange and inappropriate gift it was. That's not reasonable, perhaps, but it is conceivable (proof: I just thought of it). Here's the kicker, though: it's travel tic tac toe. A metallic cylander with nine holes, and two sets of wooden pegs, one blue and one red. And a two-page rule book. For tic tac toe. This rule book freaks me out over and above the coworker, because someone had to write it, and someone else had to ask that person to write it, and there must be a shop somewhere that printed it. It's like something out of David Lynch. I can see Agent Cooper buying one for his cousin, the camera lingering over the felt box that stores the travel tic tac toe with the little glossy label that says "travel tic tac toe." Now, if the coworker's child had made this thing in shop class as a final project, I would be somewhat comfortable with its existence, but as I've already described, that didn't happen. So the existence of the thing is creepy enough. Then there is the problem of what was going through the coworker's head when she decided to give it to my mother. I fall over crying when I try to think of this. My mother says that the woman, whose name is Diane, happens to be one of her more intelligent coworkers. A quiet woman, but when she spoke to her, she seemed okay (which is more than she can say for most of her coworkers, who are rabid Bush supporters, and foreward vicious ill-conceived badly written e-mails about the tax code, and the people Clinton offed, and that sort of thing, and probably joked about the election to make my mother feel bad, and who cackle). If anyone has insight on this critical issue, i.e. the gift, please tell me, because I'm cracked up about it. I'm thinking the world is not even approaching logical if this sort of thing can happen.

Jeff still thinks about going to New York for Christmas the way I would have when I was twelve. He makes statements about how he shouldn't have to do something he doesn't want to do, and that we are just going because society makes us, and my mother could go visit her family any weekend she wanted and is thus only going this weekend because of society. He denies that computer games have anything to do with his not wanting to go, and when asked what he would do if he stayed home, he says, "what I want to do." He keeps asking if we're really just going to stay in my aunt's house all Saturday. His voice, while he says these things, comes from some treaty between his nose and stomach, so that it sounds tight and nasally, but also has a lot of breath.

When he left the dinner table, I asked my father about disowning Jeff. He said he was considering it.

Have you looked at the moon tonight? Over here it's got a pleasing cloudy aestheticly cut-off bit, and the rest of it shines through atmospheric conditions that have the same consistency of, say, a jar of vegetable oil. It's a few minutes up from the horizon, which is sloped upward from where I was standing, and is cased in trees and a few barely showing stars. The purple and diffracted light of Baltimore's suburbs overpowers anything else, but that moon is something. Look at the moon!

Almost there, David Foster Walrus. So very close. And then you will be done. FOREVER! Afterward, I will take a much needed rest, and then maybe make a sandwich or something to celebrate.

Contrary to popular opinion, I did not lose $100 at the Casino last night. Sorry to let you all down. It was really just $94.

I'd rather be sitting at home with headphones playing something swirling, perhaps drinking tea and looking at a book with pictures. It would be nice to do this until Sunday, in a sort of motive cocoon that would scratch my head and refasten the buttons on my jacket and prop up my back and sing about aphids, making me whole again before the flight home. Who cares which slit the photon went through? So what if some space has Riemann geometry? Is that cemetaire marin going to don a blue sweater and sing hymns to the hipsters? No, fool! It's not! "Also, your dreams are boring and I don't like you," it says instead. Me and my black bag are going home now, and we're going to try to forget that we have precept at 8. Maybe if I'm lucky the campus will blow up in my absense.

I'm aware no one will comment to that, so how about this: who here likes cheesecake?

Yesterday rose bright. The people were out and smiling, and you would have smiled too, even with the knowledge that you were being sappy. We sat on the balcony and smoked, and talked about sitting on balconies smoking. Someone said the words "party" and "apartments." We went, because at night it's cold and there's nothing else to do. Phone call first, because phone calls are important. Then party: Little room under a staircase dripping snow water, ash everywhere and people grinding to Michael Jackson. They charged for the beers, but I got them free because people like me somehow. Was told by a girl she hoped that I didn't despise her, even if I hated her, and I told her I didn't despise her. She's more attentive than I thought. This is the one with a face like a decaying block of cheese, who picks at her beard and makes the world dirtier. The one without the chinhair anymore told bystanders sexist jokes he "heard from me" (people here are very witty). Got a ride with a drunk beefsteak to a closed Bell, then back to drive home and shamble.

Blake has shaved his head. He looks like a disgusting British schoolboy from a bad movie. Mark Ingham was once again the inspiration for a group uglification, although this time there is no shaving kit bought from a D.C. crack dealer, and fewer Febbies. If you have a message for Blake, leave it here. If it involves his blacke jean jacket, press one. If it is about the white shirt that hangs below this jacket, press two. If it is about how funny you find his diabetes, press three.

Tim Kile put me on the guest list for the show, and then he took me and four other people back stage. Oh, by the way:

Attn: Scott White

Wyn Butler remembers you and your interview, and he said he had a good time answering your questions.

Hey guys, who wants to go see The Arcade Fire tonight at the Paramount? Anyone? Anyone?

Oh, that's right, you can't go, because you're two thousand miles away! Ha ha!

I almost passed out while shelving books yesterday morning. That was real fun. I had just gotten up from a crouch to find the proper place for some Buddhist commentary or other, and my hand refused to rise any more. I had a strange feeling, as if my body were oscillating back and forth in something like a sine wave. Then I fell backwards and hit the shelf behind me, after which I failed to get a grasp on something and so dropped to my knees and fell sideways, knocking books off the shelving cart.

Something like this happens a few times a day, although I rarely get all the way to the ground because of it. Yes, I think I have anemia.

An open letter to my throat, James.

Dear James,

I'm dreadfully sorry that I fell asleep in the smoking study room, not only for my sake, but for yours as well. I am very glad that you're still alive, and I would do anything to make it up to you. If only you told me your wishes. Why do we not speak more often? One would think it only natural, but alas, you are sadly incommunicative. Perhaps you were trying to say something when you grew that lump this last Tuesday, but I can't quite make it out. Are you angry with me? You should know by now that I don't respond well to violence. Remember those times you got me out of school whenever I wanted by pretending to be infected with strep? And then in the empty house I would eat ice cream for you to make you happy? I wish we might soon return to days like that, if only you could tell me what the lump's about.

Was it friction from the smoke, or your attempt to seal yourself and keep out the harshness of that guy's pipe? Did you raise that bump because you are happy? Is it a cry for more syrupy coffee drinks?

Anyway, I hope you read this. I never meant to offend you. Please come back to me, baby.

Your most dedicated friend, etc.

You know that part in "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" when the voices rise up like wind in a really nasty fight with itself, and there is a beat that no one has named? When the words, that periodically give way to "woo-we" and "woa-ho," send you flopping on the floor no longer searching for completion because that is it right there? That's what I don't feel like. I skipped my classes Monday. That was nice. Around four in the morning the air got close, like it was watching me. Outside was empty except for the dead leaves, all crunchy and wondering why they'd ever grown at all, and there weren't too many of them either. Every cigarette was better than the last. I did some cooking and stared at the walls, which have round corners that flop down from the ceiling like a trench coat hanging close to the floor. Time as measured by the clock passed quickly, but my mind couldn't tell. At times like these I feel like I've been left by people who have no use for me right then but will come by to pick me up when they get the chance. Not much to do but wait.

Then the sun came up around seven, and some dense orange light poured out of a hole in the sky onto the clouds. It looked more like something that ought to be reported along with the weather than it did like a sunrise. I remembered going to the harbor one night in Annapolis to watch the sunrise, but I still can't remember if I was still there when dawn came that day or not.

We don't see very many things from day to day, but we don't notice this. It doesn't occur to us, because we don't ask ourselves if we're doing anything new. If we did we'd be really bored. I want to buy a house in upstate New York with friends and record songs in my basement. They'd all be songs of transport, not the public kind, more like the rapture kind. Anyone want to go? It's cheap up there, I swear, because in upstate New York you don't need to eat. The air brings you all the nutrition you need. If you want tobacco, there's tobacco. You want liquor, so too, there's liquor. The trees are happy to have you up there, they're so fine to everyone that they pay you just to be. Body of water called the Hudson Bay, and also the Hudson River. Your spit freezes before it leaves your mouth, it's great. We don't have to go to Woodstock if you don't want to go to Woodstock, that's all up to you. Don't tell me yes or no right now, just nod if you feel it.

On Sunday I drummed with Tim Kile. We are going to be the best ever death metal band out of Santa Fe, particularly since Tim's songs are not at all like death metal. In fact, he sounds a lot like the Arcade Fire. He has a strong idea of what he wants each instrument to play, and even told me what kind of beats he wanted. This makes for a tense jam, but seeing as he knows his shit, I bow to him.

Oh, and by the way, Tim assumes "Laika" is about a former member of the band, whose last name was Alexander. He was older than the rest, and for a while was the only thing keeping them together. He left eventually in a state of dissolution and anxiety.

Did you know that I'm not particularly liberal? Turns out I'm center-left. The Socialist Party, they're liberal.

Furthermore, did you know the word "liberal" used to be applied to capitalists, the "new men" in the late 19th century who figured out how to make a lot of money out of nothing? Marx used the word to refer to capitalists.

I'm also not progressive, apparantly, because, according to neo-cons, the end result of the Democrats' policies would be a fixed, permament, unchanging social state. It would just stop after a while.

Go figure.

There seems to be a problem here. The trees are white and pink instead of green. The bushes all have yellow leaves. The ground screamed and split with pain. Overnight Santa Fe turned into a wasteland. For the last six thousand years this area had a tropical climate, people lounged naked by the water and ate berries and pomegranates, wildlife flocked here for relief and earth love. And then, sometime around 4 a.m. this morning, everything died at once. The police found signs of a struggle. Every animal with tear ducts is crying right now with a deep body groan that's sending the grief of the earth up to God. Who turned out the lights? Who turned out the lights?

I did it. I wrote a first semester essay on Hegel titled "Hence Certainty: or the 'Gist' and Kant on LSD-25." I even quote Morrissey. I so win.

A bit of poetry on my blog:

Well, I ride on a mailtrain, baby,
Can't buy a thrill.
Well, I've been up all night,
Leanin' on the window sill.
Well, if I dieOn top of the hill
And if I don't make it,
You know my baby will.

Don't the moon look good, mama,
Shinin' through the trees?
Don't the brakeman look good, mama,
Flagging down the "Double E"?
Don't the sun look good
Goin' down over the sea?
Don't my gal look fine
When she's comin' after me?

Now the wintertime is coming,
The windows are filled with frost.
I went to tell everybody,
But I could not get across.
Well, I wanna be your lover, baby,
I don't wanna be your boss.
Don't say I never warned you
When your train gets lost.

I believe the last post was ironic, but I'm not really sure at this point. At any rate, although I technically included the words "Thanks, Anne", I should repeat it in a better context. It was very nice of you, and I appreciate it.

And I'm still in the library, two hours after the end of my shift. I need a car badly. Scott, if you want to drive Blue Thunder out here for a last hurrah and give it to me . . . . Hmm. It occurs to me that there's not logical way to end this statement. Ah, yes: if you and Anne want to drive Blue Thunder out here for a last hurrah and then give up UMBC, we could pool our resources to rent a practice space. Then we could be a band together, and immediately start making money (and perhaps music) because that is what bands do. And then I wouldn't need a car at all, because I'd be cool and people would ask to give me rides, and I wouldn't have to work at the library, and I wouldn't even have to go to school.

Some people would have assumed that I didn't fix my comments because I couldn't, having absolutely no knowledge of computer language, web site programming, the ins and outs of blogger's "Templating" (I assume that's how it was done), or just what the problem in the programming was in the first place. But Anne, vicious and conniving plotter that she is, knew better. I was obviously just being lazy.

Thanks, Anne. It's nice to be able to consciously ignore your comments, rather than just hoping I was doing so.

*
lest i give the misimpression that it took me over an hour to figure out greg's password and fix his blog, i would like to point out that in the time intervening i made dinner, took a walk, fed the cat, fed the dog, watched the cat beat up the dog, wasted a halfhour of my life i will never get back watching basic cable, knitted a scarf, wrote a song, smoked six cigarettes and had tea and gingersnaps.

man, i'd forgot how hard blogger sucks. five minutes to load a page and counting. there is not enough cock in the western hemisphere for blogger to sufficiently satiate its sucking.

la.

*as you may have figured out, this was not, as advertised, posted by greg. we now return you to your regular, albeit dull, programming.

Je suis assis en une chaise peu confortable, pleurant la perte de mon chaton. Il partit cette matin, parlant que il allait chercher sa maman. Eh bien, je dis; portez la moi et je la choierai. Mais mon pauvre chaton n'est pas revenu, et je deviens tourmenté.

Il faut que je vais; Bob Dylan est sur le couverture de Newsweek.

Chances are I am more tired than you.

Wow, I've really let this blog go. It's gotten old and withered in my absense. In case you were wondering, nothing has happened here. I saw the Pixies, but this can't be said to have happened in Santa Fe qua Santa Fe. (In fact, I saw the Pixies in Denver, which is definitely not Santa Fe.) But I don't think anyone reads this blog for news. So here is some ranting:

There are some excessively ugly people here. I'm looking right now at a guy with long, mildly balding, unwashed brown hair, wearing a red-and-black checked fake flannel jacket. He's got a face like a portrait of the word "hypocrite." He is often smiling a drooping leer of a smile, a self-satisfied ass-wiper's smile, a giggle-suppressing "look at me, everybody, I'm ugly and I think it's cool" smile. His face is flabby in odd places and has wrinkles reminescent of a heroin-addict's arms. Maybe he shoots up in his face. Ultimately, he reminds me of a petulant five-year-old who farts a lot and smiles at everybody in the room. I think this guy's over forty, but can't tell. A few days ago he came into the study room where I was reading, splayed himself out on a couch in his socks, and coughed every thirty seconds. They were little dry flu coughs, which made me want to go get some tea and immerse my head in warm water for several minutes just to get rid of the forehead tingling and chest clenching these coughs were eliciting. If you've ever had anything scrape off some of your skin, not realized it, then looked down and seen what just happened, that's the sort of feeling these coughs elicited. And his cheeks have disturbing pools of saliva, which make his voice sound wet and moldy. The guy just looks like a diseased rat, is all I'm saying.

Also, how might I listen to music more frequently? I've found lately (like, for the last year) that I feel like I "don't have time," which is ridiculous; I have lots of time. Please advise.

Mr. Bibey substituted for Ms. Dougherty in our math class, and spent half an hour pontificating about how unlikely it is that the Lorenz transformation equations prove anything, and that we shouldn't believe in no principle of relativity/constant velocity of light schtick. "Here's this 26-year-old postal clerk telling me that the station-master on the embankment and the conductor on the train which is moving at 'very fast' velocity are both going to see light moving in a spherical wave? No way! It's gotta be like an ellipse for the conductor, doesn't it? How the hell could we both see the same thing? I may have a two digit IQ, but there's no way this punk, with his poofy hair, is gonna convince me. Hippies are gone, buddy. Spherical wave. Yeah, right. Bull shit, Einstein! I'll bet you anything it's not going to work. Look at those equations! They're not even symmetrical! Here, I'm going 'all-in' like it's Texas Hold-em. And now, of course, someone's going to put up these equations and prove me wrong." Thirty minutes he did this, while the class just stared at him. I was slack-jawed and stupefied with the innecessity of his speech.

Another class for which my parents paid $150.

In senior lab we do an experiment based on an experiment of Robert A. Millikan's, which he described in a book called The Electron, a guide to social dating among homosexuals. We have a machine called the Millikan Oil-Drop Apparatus, made by Pasco. This experiment is that hardcore, unusual, complicated, and Necessary, that we couldn't rely on our normal, fucked-up equipment. Basically, we look at tiny drops of oil (far less than a millimeter in diameter), through a microscope with a cross-hair grid. The drops of oil display several modern night-club dances, put on clothing designed for the opposite sex, grab each other by the buttocks, lisp a lot, and like to drink Hypnotique. One lab partner observes the swaying of one particular oil-drop's hips, and the other lab partner times its oscillations with a stop-watch. The frequency of hip-sways, omega, is determined, in an attempt to discover what song the drops are dancing to. According to seniors who graduated last year, most found that the song was "Smack My Bitch Up" by The Prodigy. Others guessed "Ladykiller", by Lush. Advance reports claim that this year the oil-drops have gone goth, acting as though they didn't even have hips with dance moves such as "Digging the Grave" and "Closing the Lid". We'll need to observe the drops for several hours, some times as many as fifteen, in order to get the most accurate information about how the drops tire, and to make a fluid chart. Fluid charts usually get about as complicated as you'd expect; these drops are always horny.

This is the first experiment we've done at St. John's that I can appreciate. Usually I enjoy them about as much as pulling iron filings that have lodged themselves in my leg, but this one has an obvious educational value. For once I feel secure about the purpose of lab at St. John's.

Things I am happy about:

1. Camel Wides. They have the feel of a straw sucking up really delicious soda, soda that lasts for at least five minutes of dizzying consumption.

2. Infinite Jest, which is the most entertaining book I have ever read. This at least suggests (not verifies) that everything Anne says is right. Speaking of:

3. Anne is blogging at her pre-Cayman pace (even if it is more downtrodden information than normal . . . wait, no it's not); and even Scott is picking up steam.

4. The unidentified insects that like to sneak in to my house when I'm not looking don't seem to like going on my mattress very much. They prefer to die quietly by the side of the mattress, where I find them in the morning and shriek.

5. Einstein and Hegel make good sense. Just imagine Kant on LSD-25. (I plan to write my first semester essay on Hegel, and to call it "Kant on LSD-25".)

6. There is a tutor here, Mr. Carl, who went to grad school with John Darnielle. He relates that John was really into Latin literature, pre-modern history, and performing as The Mountain Goats before anyone had heard of him. I am trying to get Mr. Carl to renew the acquaintance, so that John might come for Reality, or at least stop in New Mexico on a tour.

That's a complete list of things that make me happy right now. It accounts for roughly 3% of my time. Maybe 4% if I keep getting Camel Wides.

You know how, over the summer, I occassionally said I wasn't doing anything? How being in school gives me enough of a format that I could do things in it, even though I had less free time? I was lying, like I normally do.

Can I have some of my readers' opinions of hippies? Let's have an archetype, shall we? Tie-dye t-shirt with loud-colored unmatching pants, walks around barefoot either out of laziness or pleasure, eats a lot of raw food, showers maybe once a week, at least on a first-name basis with marijuanna, smiles more than average person, knows everyone in a quarter-mile radius, often found sprawled out almost to the point of uncomfortableness, rarely or never shaves, messy, greasy hair, likes Bob Marley a LOT. Some opinions, please? Your opinion need not be of the archetype specifically, but of what you associate with that kind of person, what other traits you think they'd have, stories about hippies and you, etc.

Let's have some comments.

A freshman came up to the library desk looking for recent reports on the college by faculty members. He was interested when he read about such reports in a book on the college from 1954. He checked out The Meaning of a Liberal Education, and will probably read it. Awed by the fact that I'm a senior he asked with sheer, giddy, fresh-faced optimism, "Do you feel like you're any closer to the Truth?" Well, do I?

This is a first. Blogger is currently working faster than hotmail or gmail, both of which aren't loading at all. I'd write them a letter, but I'd need to open up another e-mail account.

My less boring thoughts lately have mainly been about people greeting people and forming relationships whether or not they care. Yesterday I watched my friend Geoff Hoffman walk through the administration building, going from office to office, chatting people up, asking how they were, listening, responding with sympathy. He would sit down and wait politely for them to get off the phone, and then chat for a few minutes, ask how things were going at the club, whatever. It was genius, it was beautiful, it was inspiring, it was hilarious. He was bumming a cigarette.

If I could ever get to this level of ingenuousness and affability, I would feel a huge load of inadequacy slip off my shoulders. Most of the people here have superb people skills, with varying levels of inauthenticity and shallowness, so I have plenty of models. I would also develop the ability to read people, and would write better characters. So this is all very boogie.

Oh, and a message to Anne: Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan. This is not me asking you to send Blonde on Blonde. This is me asking you to listen to it. I am reading Infinite Jest, as I said I would. Now it is your turn.

I am alive. I frequently wake up in the morning and have a cigarette. It tastes like freedom. I have a record player, and records by Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Ramblin Jack Elliott, Cisco Houston, The Velvet Underground, David Bowie, New Order, Van Morrison, The Smiths, Neutral Milk Hotel . . .. Life is reasonably good.

My main source of protein this week has been Taco Bell, which is emerging as the curse of the traveller. This will probably wear off within a month as my mind realizes that I once again live here, and there is real Mexican food if I want it. I can then get back to making milkshakes my main source of protein, even if Denny's is the only diner out here. I don't care. I can get a blender, or an egg beater, or a milkshake machine, or an ice cream truck, or a manservent if I want.

If you're reading this, I miss you viscerally. I think of you and you only for hours before I can fall asleep, and you make it safe to leave the house. I just wich I knew who you were. Leave a comment, why don't you? And tell me what you want to hear, because I'm past my prime of blog writing, and can no longer come up with much of anything on a regular basis.

It definitely isn't June anymore. It's not even last Monday.

Jesus Christ you guys Monday I am out of here so hardcore like you would not believe. Good goddamn, Santa Fe, here I come. I was so right last year when I considered that it would be best never to live at home again. So right.

Art is grand, but most writers and musicians have forgotten what art is. Saying that art is dead is passé, every generation does that; but it seems every generation is somehow right. Name me a recently written book that has enough passion and innovation to give new reason for living. Try to recall a movie from the last decade that has made you look up and say, "goddamn, no one has ever made anything like this before, and I am jealous!" (Let us think of Evangelion and smile every so often.) Play me a song not written by Jeff Mangum (thank God for Jeff Mangum) that brings some previously unknown part of you to tears. Extra points if the song is not by John Darnielle, or Bob fucking Dylan.

Where is our D. motherfucking H. Lawrence? Our Fyodor grandholyshit Dostoyevsky? Our Franz shitlicking Kafka? (My, what kind of people will find this page through Google?) Our Gustav cocksucking Flaubert? They do not exist! People aren't even named Fyodor, Franz, Gustav, or D.H. anymore! How can we have artists with such mundane names as Chuck, David, or Neal. We can't.

My God, I have just spent an hour looking through reccomendations Amazon has made based on my account, rating stuff, clicking on "I own it" or "Not interrested" . . . how addicting and sad.

I may drive over to Scott's house just to use his stereo. My old stereo, a clunky three-disc changer with pretty good speakers, is in the dump because it started eating Bob Dylan CDs. I respect its taste, but it wasn't asking my permission first. The CDs would slide under the plastic case that was supposed to hold them up, and I could hear the player licking them and getting closer to Bob Dylan than any machine has a right to get. It hasn't been reliably reading CDs for years now, anyway, and both of its tape players were broken. The radio never got good reception, either.

Jeff's old stereo had been on the porch for two years, since the last summer Eric stayed here. He would sit out there at night listening to Ella Fitzgerald and jamming with the cats. He's long gone, to bigger and brighter porches where the spiders don't go and the people all know "Howl" by heart; the CD player was nearly unused. I took it into my room. For a while it was great. Though it was built in 1994, it read burned discs, self-released discs, slightly scratched discs, and Smiths CDs, all things that confused and angered my old CD player. For several days, however, the disc drive has revolted and refuses to open, and I am very sad. The player seems to have rejected my taste in music, and is holding out for the good old days of swing. Now no one is appreciating Bob Dylan.

I think it would be pretty sad to go to Severna Park just to listen to music and maybe use the swing set, but tonight I may do exactly that.

A message to Blake, who does not, as far as I know, read my blog:

You shouldn't have told my cat that you wanted to kick him. He hasn't left the spot by the porch door where you drunkenly brayed at him that you hated him, and swung your leg unsuccessfully in his direction. You thought he was an ordinary cat, I'm sure. If he were an ordinary cat, no harm would have been done. But this was Mulder you insulted. He has been fuming for more than a day now. He's collected some dead bugs and formed them into a makeshift Blake pincushion, and he's been swiping at it and muttering, "Who do you think you are, kick at Mulder, don't even live here, I will eat you, meat, meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeat! You goddamn puny bastard, you, I am bigger than you, I am huge, and you are going down, kill kill kill kill" etc.

Well, Blake, you've made my life pretty miserable. I can't sleep now because I hear Mulder. You've gotten the Japanese all in a tizzy. They're expecting an attack, and they didn't send the last check. They seem to think we've let Mulder out, and based on the chatter they're picking up, I can't blame them. You had better come back here and apologize. Japan has been investigating uranium enrichment, and we all know how dedicated the Japanese can be once they have a project.

Hey, is Anne still on that cuh-raaaaaaay-zee 5 ayem schedule?

I am starting an over-ambitious novel, which I have done three times before. This time, however, I am plotting and working out characters beforehand. The story was inspired by a dream, and the attempt is inspired by the song "Novelty". It will be awesome or, at worst, incomplete. I will see if I am capable of any sort of poetic narrative, which has been generally absent from my writing. I can attribute this to lack of trying, because this is my podium and I can say whatever I want.

My first cigarette of the day now tends to dull the information sent by the nerves in my limbs and face, rather than making me float.  Have I graduated to addict from "afficianado" or something?  Also, why do I have the urge to talk to the bitter, mean walrus who has the weekly night shifts at my 7-11?  The woman has grey hair, a bulbous body, and facial expressions ranging from annoyed grimace to disdainful scrunch, and was bothered that I made her stop mopping for a minute to sell me some jades.  And yet, as another side effect of that first cigarette, I felt some slight affection for her and wondered if she might appreciate a customer talking to her to lighten the gloom of a tedious and uninspiring job.  What is wrong with me?

I have a place in Santa Fe now.  This is good, even though I was somewhat looking forward to wandering the streets of hippietown with a bag full of CDs on my shoulder, looking for a place to circle and lick my hair before going to sleep. 
 

I will be living in a guest house.  My father originally misunderstood this term.  He thought it was like the servants' quarters.

 

My place is not far from the ironically named Santa Fe river, which is now nothing but a dusty culvert for most of the year.  The house is one of many bumps of adobe sown into the landscape of foothills, pebbles, tough and ugly bushes, long and angled shadows, and druggy college students.  I've seen a picture of the lawn.  It looks like a nuclear test site, and maybe it was.  This is New Mexico, after all.  The dirt has been baking all summer, and is ready to freeze and crack this winter. 

 

The nights are long in Santa Fe, and the bars are western-themed.  The moon frequently has a very pretty ring of light around it, the stars are far more visible there than in this smogy and bright area, and it's the first place I was able to see the Milky Way.  During the winter it was usually cold, but not too cold; and in the spring the sun shat its blinding rays upon us and I stayed inside for most of the day.

 

Anyone want to visit me next year?  I'll build a guest house to the guest house if someone comes.

My always expanding opinion of Jess Castle:
 
Jess qualifies as "a pretty cool guy," and yet, when my mother asked if Jess is "nice," I said, "no."  It never really occurred to me before, but Jess really isn't nice.  Neither am I, for that matter, as my readers would likely agree.  Jess and I are assholes.  This term often means one who makes himself look bad in the view of qualified judges of character.  In this case, however, it means we often think badly of other people.  We are qualified judges of character with a lot of cynicism.  Jess's descriptions of people he doesn't like are often howlingly funny.  He tells me that I, too, have a talent for describing people I don't like with exceptionally unflattering terms. 
 
I had previously thought of myself as liking "nice people."  This is not true.  Scott, you are nice, and I like you.  However, I probably don't like you because you're nice.  If you weren't nice, I wouldn't like you any less. 
 
Jess has above-average intelligence, and he makes efforts to build on it.  I respect that.  I couldn't say why.  I suppose I subconsciously think of him as a useful resource, likely to be a good person to know in the future.  There are probably other, less selfish reasons, but I don't know what they are.  It's similar to cats: do I like cats because they provide me pleaseure, or because they're "cute?"  I dunno. 
 
Intelligence gives people the option of having complicated and enjoyable discussions, of course.  That probably has a lot to do with it.  But I respect the fact that Jess builds on his intelligence (studies national issues and philosophy with equally scrutinizing care).  Why should I respect this?  Hell, what's respect, for that matter?
 
So, if anyone has comments on Jess, namely, those two of my readers who met him last night, please give them to me.  I study all of you all of the time, just so you know.  You are never alone.

Things Scott could have done in New York in addition to eating at McDonald's:
 
1.  See a movie that's also playing at the Harbor Center.
2.  Look into a mirror.
3.  Exercise.
4.  Talk to his brother.
5.  Clean his glasses.
6.  Buy The Capital.
7.  Pet a puppy.
8.  Go to sleep.
9.  Masturbate in a bathroom stall.
10.  Obsessively button and unbutton his pants.

Vet go "hello, cutie." Midnight go "rwarrrrrr!" Vet go "That's alright, I've got magic fingers. Let me just get you out of there now . . ." Midnight go "Rwrarrrararrrwrraarar!" Vet go "Shit! Sedate her! Sedate her!"

Here's to Scott, who cannot tell a lie and didn't have to chop down a cherry tree to prove it; to Scott, who is a model of a struggling artist; to Scott, whose mere existence gives me pleasure. I hereby dedicate to you the meatless supreme pizza I am heating up. Now please, blog already. I've been going to sadpanda several times a day in hopes of seing another post, however small it may be. I am even glad to see your new comment (which is awesome, as usual). Please think of me, and all your fans.

And now I've got a pizza to attend to.

Tonight I was driving home from D.C. on 97 north. The road splits a thick forest, winding past gaps and ditches, over bridges and up hills. During the day, I usually speed by; Maryland forests are pretty boring, unless you're walking in one. I have never driven there at night, however; and, although it still wasn't visually impressive, what with the darkness and all (I could only see about ten feet in front of me, and not at all on the sides), when I saw a 40mph limit sign, I decided to go 30 instead. Lot of deer around here, I thought. Within ten seconds of slowing, a deer appeared in my headlights and slowly ambled across the road. If I had been going 40, she would have died.

This is my 100th post. Unlike most of its predecessors, this post is written mid-day. Sunlight's falling on the mouse pad and keyboard, having been strained through the window screen as if by cheese cloth. Ray Charles's group is smearing keyboards and horns all over the living room; they are drenching the carpet and furniture, and the funk content in the air is even higher than when Flagg walks by.

Jeff woke me at 11 this morning and shouted at me to look at highlights from last night's game between the Yankees and the Red Socks. I watched as Derek Jeter caught a ball and, propelled by inertia, tumbled head-first into the stands. I saw the two home runs hit in the twelth inning. I heard the fans exult, and saw the team rise up and devour each other in a pile as if they had just won the pennant. Then Jeff left, and I went back to sleep.

Jeff has been a fan of the Yankees since the early 1980s, when they sucked. My father has been a fan since the early 1950s. Some time in the last forty years he has developed a neurosis that whenever he watches them as they are playing, they begin to lose. He knows this cannot be, but he believes he is cursed. Jeff tells me that every time he calls my father in to watch, when the Yankees are up the the ninth inning, things begin to go wrong. The oppossing team begins to get a few hits, and Rivera turns at the camera to shake his fist. When my father passes by the tv when a game is on, the other team gets a double play against the Yankees, or the Yankees begin making errors.

He tapes the World Series when the Yankees are in it, so that he doesn't have a heart attack. He stays up at night if he has heard that the Yankees have lost, thinking about God knows what.

The pop-psychological diagnoses are, of course, fascinating, but I find the symptoms themselves to be intriguing enough. This is a man who uses reason in most every aspect of his life. He is not religious. His biggest faults are quickness to anger and excessive worrying, but he rarely displays fear. And yet he experiences an intense and irrational effect on events that are taking place hundreds of miles away, which prevents him from taking joy in watching his childhood team.

Whenever Jeff sees the Yankees losing, he gets sick to his stomach and turns the game off. He also gets feelings about what Yankee batters are going to do at the plate, and he is frequently exactly right. "Gonna ground out at second. Gonna get a hit way into left field. Gonna hit it right down the line for a triple." He has no such ability to predict the performance of other teams.

For those who don't know, my family is from Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and my father was born in 1951, long before the existence of the Mets. They are not Yankees fans because of the team's outstanding abilities, or because it is trendy. They do not have a hatred for the Orioles, but simply feel no connection to that team.

That is all, 100th post.