Nobody told me, but apparantly Earth Day is now a celebratory holiday. Campus food service put out plates of barbacue fare out by the fish pond, and everybody is just sitting around and chatting. There are banners, and a band is out on the balcony. If our voice mail were working, we doubtless would have received a chipper message about it from Vivian Duran, the consumptive switchboard supervisor. It is like croquet, only small and pathetic, and it doesn't make me want to cry quite as much.

A message to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Why do you have to suck so much? Everybody else makes sense, so you're obviously just not trying hard enough. Although it might be better for you not to try harder. I sure wouldn't want to see what shit you come up with.

What's all this crap about a "critique," anyway? Are you a movie review? I mean, Siskel already got a replacement, so it's not like you're going to make any money doing it. Or are you going to bring in your obvious old-time Chrisitain values and say that money is bad? Maybe you should get out more, talk to some other books and get some perspective on things. Epistemology will only get you so far, and in my house it'll just get you kicked out. Maybe if you weren't so "in German" and everything. But no, you had to go and sprach Deutch. Really mature, you putz.

Are you aware that you serve no purpose? Nobody reads you to learn anymore. You are certainly rather heavy, and usually bound with stiff blue covers, so I could use you as a weapon if it came down to it, but then, if I had to, I could use my ass as a weapon.

I used to keep a picture of you by my bed. I used to snuff in the fumes from between your pages, rub your blistering protective plastic library layer, and reach my ecstasy. I used to respect you, look at you as my equal. You seemed to solve so many problems, and now you just keep making new ones. Please die, and take your foul-smelling transcendental logic with you, priori I break your nose.

Did you know that your are badly written? Yes. Your paragraphs, though seemingly full of meaning, crumble under any scrutiny. It may take six perusals to pin you down, but once you're down, boy, you don't have too much to say. Figuring you out is like learning Ugandan just so I can talk to the guy in the dry cleaning store. You drain most of my time, and in the end you're just a regular guy. Now I know why Hegel hated you. Why don't you get a job filing insurance claims?

And if you could be so kind, Critique, would you give me a topic for my seminar essay? It's getting desperate here.

Lecteur, c'est peut-être la haine que tu veux que j'invoque dans le commencement de cet ouvrage! Qui te dit que tu n'en renifleras pas, baigné dans d'innombrables voluptés, tant que tu voudras, avec tes narines orgueilleuses, larges et maigres, en te renversant de ventre, pareil à un requin, dans l'air beau et noir, comme si tu comprenais l'importance de cet acte et l'importance non moindre de ton appétit légitime, lentement et majestueusement, les rouges émanations? Je t'assure, elles réjouiront les deux trous informes de ton museau hideux, ô monstre, si toutefois tu t'appliques auparavant à respirer trois mille fois de suite la conscience maudite de l'Éternel! Tes narines, qui seront démesurément dilatées de contentement ineffable, d'extase immobile, ne demanderont pas quelque chose de meilleur à l'espace, devenu embaumé comme de parfums et d'encens; car, elles seront rassasiées d'un bonheur complet, comme les anges qui habitent dans la magnificence et la paix des agréables cieux.

-Compte de Lautémont

Reader, it is perhaps hatred that you would have me invoke at the outset of this work! Who told you that you wouldn't sniff it up, bathed in innumerable pleasures, as much as you could want, with your proud nostrils, wide and thin, upturning your belly, like a shark, in the beautiful black air, as if you understood the importance of this act and the equal importance of your legitimate appetite, slow and majestic, the red fluxes? I assure you, they will delight the two unformed holes of your hideous muzzle, O monster, if at first you always set yourself to inhale three thousand times the horrible awareness of the Eternal! Your nostrils, which will be limitlessly dilated with sublime contentment, with unmoving ecstasy, will ask nothing better of space, having become embalmed as with perfume and incense; for, they will be satisfied with a perfect happiness, like the angels who live in the magnificance and peace of the pleasant skies.

-Compte de Lautrémont

Word to the wise: Anton Chekhov

These Camels are causing all of my problems. Not the living ones--those are cool. It's those tubes with tobacco in them, the little orange filter with white splash-pattern specks, the curling paper as the cinder rides against gravity, and the smoke, oooh, the smoke . . . all my problems. Why am I running out of money? I spent hundreds of dollars on cigarettes in the past year. Why am I always tired? Smoke is fucking with my oxygen intake. Why do I nevertheless stay up later than midnight? The seratonin is confused. Why don't I care about anything? It's not as good as a cigarette.

This is also why I have nothing to say, ever, when I'm writing: I'm inside, and thus not smoking.

I don't want to be in school right now. I don't want to be in school right now. I don't want to be in school right now. I don't want to be in school right now. I don't want to be in school right now. People, I'm not kidding. I really don't.

"Look at me, I'm a blog entry."
-The above blog entry was written by Dave Eggers

I should very much like a snort of Adderal right now. How delightful would it be to blow congealed blue powder out of my nose for a few days, to grind my teeth helplessly despite the water I might drink, to experience distate in regarding food of any kind, and to have great bouts of wonder at the spectacle of ants like Euclidean points turned into a spectacular diagram of Maxwell's equations, bursting from all points onward to infinity, scrambling over the tiny grooves in the pavement, getting bogged down in the dusty pebbles, staring blankly at their perverse existence with a quietly posed question on their rapidly twitching mandibles, for crushing. La.

Behold speaks the sign, and it is too late to heed its message in any useful way. It really says, "you are a jackass." It was designed by Russian surrealists in an ironically ironic statement protosting the Danish pop invasion. They trusted in numbers and were disappointed. Freaky Wedding by a good five paces. Bland up to his ears, but a good runner. Reports have come in from Athens, they've decided on the shape of the phantom letter and it looks something like a mouse on fire. Twist, kneel, revive. Then suddenly a pair of disembodied sunglasses, pure reflecting surface and no frame, floated over and crashed the party, drinking more punch than most men can without becoming punch. The guy in the overalls gave them the nod, and they danced most appropriately, given their social standing. All were delighted. The clock struck three, and it was time for the night watchmen to poke his head in. The flashlight struggled to get a grip on the mass of vibrating slime in the south-east corner, then inverted and blinded the poor man, who was advised to mediately seek a doctor. The draperies combusted, having previously been dipped in sulfur to celebrate the occasion, and the Spaniard contingent rejoiced with great plosives and weirdly accented vowells. The mailman threw a missive through the parlor window; though a great partier himself, he didn't like the looks of this scene; and the letter sank diligently, aware of its duty, and landed slyly and precariously on the least crowded edge. "Check it out," cried Lady DeLaune, "he's barracking." And indeed he was.

There were, however, a few more vapid guests, who had never heard anything played without a hot mama beat, and they missed the reference entirely. The soirée ended nonchalantly on an unharmonious chord.

I have eight weeks of school left. I don't know where I am. There are old ladies in all of my classes, and they like to bring me cookies and teach me physics. By studying their wrinkles, I get ideas about erosion; by examining their hair, I notice the nature of the wavelengths; the light reflected from their oversize glasses teaches me about electro-magnetic fields. A different one accompanies me back to my room after each class, and I have to show her how she could get home. Don't read that the wrong way. I'm watching you.

If there were a way to change your structure such that you could be the biological parent of puppies, would you do it? They would have some resemblance to you, but would definitely be puppies. But maybe there are risks involved. There are usually risks involved.

A word to the wise: Leonard Cohen. (And girls, in case you didn't know, he's from Canada! Isn't that cute? He jams sometimes with Sarah MacLachlan and Joni Mitchell! Isn't that fun! Neil Young and three members of The Band went to high school with him! Isn't that great? Radio stations called him occasionally in the mid-nineties and asked him what he thought of Barenaked Ladies and Our Lady Peace! Isn't that just amazing? It's so fun I might just bust a gut when I hear him say "about" in "So Long, Maryanne", oh me oh my, yes. Well. I've done soiled myself with laughter.)_

I woke up this morning dreaming of vampires. I blame Martin's server.

They only had to touch me and I was infected. They had gravelly hands. They were, perhaps, ninjas.

Telegram Sam, you're my main man.

This Dylan lyric (upper left) and the next one (tomorrow), by the way, can never be topped. The job of poetry was done once they were written. Don't believe me? That's your problem.

Another word to the wise: Joan Miro. With a little grave accent over the "o" of "Miro" which I can't reproduce here. But if you're wise, you already know what I mean.

I am editing Noah's essays and feeling that great optimistic idiosyncratic ball of love that is Noah. This man wins like no other. He has more truth than an encyclopedia. I want whoever taught him to play to be my teacher as well.

A word to the wise: Paul Klee.

The failure wakes up just at dusk, so that the sun is sinking over the mountains, even farther west than he is. Some nights are crazy, minor epics in themselves, but most are like caverns. Life falls into them and looses its way. Small actions, amounting to nothing in themselves, reverberate against the water and the stale air and waft back in little puffs of doom. Thoughts ram themselves against the looming walls everywhere pressing in, in, they just go up forever, those walls, no opening, no ceiling, they have nothing to hold up so they become loads pressing down and toward and against and upon. And then there are the zombies. Sometimes I hear them bumping into things and calling to each other about beer and dance clubs and pool. Every so often, they catch me and hold me down and commence eating, sapping, but I can escape them when I want to. Usually they just make a spectacle of themselves.

It is spring break. I am now at the library, working for $8.50 an hour, and God only knows how I got here. There is a man who was in my seminar last semester, sitting at a desk ten feet away from me, reading. He has several books open. It is doubtless intellectual stuff, stuff I ought to know by now and probably never will. He is trying to show me the Way, but I doubt that I can follow. He has been here since nine o'clock this morning. I wonder how much of his life he's devoted to learning. I have failed to complete any of my projects. Perhaps this is because I always took on too many, but perhaps I never had a chance. Variety is bad. Distractions are bad. It's just me with my ambitions, and that should be enough, but I'm all alone and lost. I've been reading old e-mails and getting wistful. I never knew these people, and I don't know them now. It is particularly interesting when they are replies to my own e-mail, and they neglected to delete my writing. I've said everything and nothing in the past five years.

Faulkner had it figured out, but then again he didn't. Kerouac never had it figured out, but sometimes he did. And Kant. Ah yes, Kant. Even now I haven't shamed myself enough to actually work on Kant. Anyone for Latin flashcards? Do you know how to play Go, and would you like to teach me? Isn't sunlight strange, the way it beats everything into submission?

The Moon Pays Cash Money
In the back alleys and barroom brawls
Where everything happened I once thought real
One night a chimney puffed gray bricks
And the sad faces stared at the dart board
Pierced it every once in a while
Three men sat at a broken table
One in a cheap suit with torn pockets
One in what used to be a pea coat
One in soot stains and charcoal beard
They drank hard liquor in succession and grinned
It might have been pain but I think it was show
They were looking nowhere in particular
One winced and waved his hands and opened his mouh
And after a pause for effect said,
"There's a guy in my building playing anti-brain-waves.
They come out of his speakers at two in the morning.
It makes no sound but it wakes me up somehow."
There was a wait and then another man spoke
(This time I believe it was the one in the suit)
"There's a place in New Jersey with unlimited parking.
I drive out there each Sunday and have a look.
After a couple of hours I drive back home."
For a second I think the guy in the pea coat looked up
Then he caught himself, had some liquor, and grinned.
"My mother yelled at me often when I was young.
One day I stood in front of her with empty pockets.
She took a long look at her shoes and never yelled again."
Then the man with the soot or maybe the one in the suit
Put some money on the table, tied his shoe and left.
The other two sat for a few minutes more
Then followed suit, or soot, payed and got out.
I go back there now for a few hours each Sunday
Sit on a bar stool and think of my empty pockets
Then go back home and wake up at two in the morning.

How does one react upon realizing that one knows, has always known, "I am not a genius"? It's such an obvious thing to realize that it shouldn't have any effect. Nevertheless, I am aware that I will never be inspired to write anything special. I might write good books, but I will never produce a classic. I'll never be a masterful songwriter, either, or a genius at playing an instrument. I'll never be part of a brilliant group of friends who say such witty things that everyone listens. I'll never revitilize science, or anything much that doesn't relate directly to me. There's no chance I'll become a brilliant artist, whether I start training myself or not. I won't develop a system of philosophy, probably at all but certainly not one so radically new that people want to study it. I couldn't become a brillaint chess player, or get rich off the stock market, or become a worshiped national figure, or make perfect movies. I don't have the potential for any of this.

This shouldn't require much of a realization. People like that must just know what they're capable of, whether they do it or not. I only feel special when I'm around miserably poor people, such as many of the juniors on this campus. Even there, I'm judging based on too little information to know that I am verifiably smarter than any of them, more capable of grand action. It is likely that I'm not.

Is there a support group for people without creative passion? Wannabes Anonymous, perhaps? But then, the "anonymous" would be too cruel. Aspiring Creators United. Mediocre National.

Still on some level I believe that if I put enough time into it, I might get there. There's a level of work required, and no one is necessarily excluded. Ah, puritan work ethic, come back to me in a perverted form. Maybe, though. It's possible that I could decide, willfully, to become capable of great art. The fact that I haven't yet made this decision, and that most people make it when they're young, and unconsciously at that, the fact that it doesn't seem like a decision at all . . . that's nothing! You can do anything you want, right? Shit. Didn't they teach you that in Elementary School? Originality is just premeditated passion. Great work not only can be willed, it must be. Talent is undefinable, and probably along the lines of fortunately stumbling upon a certain kind of brain activity which which everyone is potentailly capable of.

Yes. Tomorrow, we win.

Yesterday I received a hand-addressed package from Athens, GA. Cloud Recordings had sent me the two Olivia Tremor Control albums. Suddenly the world rocks a whole lot harder; classical music is that much less cool.

Last night an old woman with brown, wrinkled skin cried in a garden in Combray as the rain broke over her gray hair. I have started The Big One.

Haiku written at Beethoven string quartet concert this Friday:

I. poor innocent bows
dragged by players tired of life
dhoking on music

II. each laxly held box
spits up notes like a baby
nauseous with cholic

III. four bored, slack faces
intent upon sheet music
like factory workers

IV. they bounce up in time
excited to ease the pain
of their flattened butts

V. poets of the note
they burn with all the passion
of a Rent-A-Cop

VI. sat through two quartets
watched two forced rounds of applause
had a cigarette

VII. dear first violin
either resign from your chair
or learn how to play

VIII. with such subtle squeeks
why are they not recognized
as the avant garde

IX. shake it for me now
rock me like a hurricane
kill that Beethoven

X. were it up to me
this last one would rip your soul
right out of your throat

XI. juxtaposition
of unimpassioned faces
and stunning music


Notes: X spoken by Englishman townie who sat next to me at previous quartet concert. He then turned to his wife and said, "Brecht was right."

VIII was perhaps due to the fact that the instruments used in the concert were constructed in the seventeen-hundreds. Regardless, they were getting some sounds uncomfortably close to the Kronos Quartet.

Do not hold my Haiku to the classical standards, e.g., "aren't Haiku supposed to be about nature?" They're supposed to be in Japanese, too. Take the aesthetic and run with it.

Aphorisms:

1. Let's all get together and track deer back to their nest or lair or whatever deer have. Then we'll take pictures of them licking each other and sleeping, and post them online for a small fee, and make a million dollars.

2. The snow knows when you're under it. The tree knows when the snow knows. Don't look up.

3. People in small groups enjoy penis jokes much more than they do on their own. This is because when people congregate, they get high on phemones and, also, marijuanna.

4. Frankly, I never really loved you. I was just putting on a show for your father. Now that he's dead, I can finally go back to St. Louis.

5. You can rate a band by the quality of the bassist's hair. Malkmus was wrong about the drummer. The drummer's hair is merely incidental. It is the bassist who picks up the karma waves of the band's relative goodness or badness, and manifests this physically in his locks. Look at the Beatles. Paul had a pretty stupid hair cut, no?

6. An epiphany may come at any moment. Most commonly, however, it comes while listening to My Bloody Valentine.

7. The French word transir, to chill, is very useful when you're making Cat Stevens jokes.

8. Scott's lists always were better than mine.

I spent an hour today piling watermelon rinds, banana peels and leftover lettuce on top of a compost pile, then covering this with leaves, then shoveling dried horse manure on top of everything. This was one-tenth of my penalty for missing six lab classes last semester. Shouldn't they make me study the material I missed, or put me on probation, or ask my tutor if my performance was satisfactory, or find out why I missed so many classes? A week ago, I walked around Uppers for two hours picking up assorted detritus, broken bottles, candy wrappers, and the like, and staring at the sky and the dry brown hills. Then I swept organic matter away from the stairs, onto the ground by the tough trees and persistent little bushes. I didn't think about much of anything while doing this. I examined, which is my primary mode of cognition; I examined growing things, land, and the effects of two generations of unthoughtful students on their surroundings.

I can't put this into a context. I can find no connection between my six missed lab classes and my ten-hour introduction to Buildings and Grounds. Somehow, I don't mind this. I don't take it as absurd. It is, to be sure, Puritan and inexplanable, but it makes a kind of sense in the back roads of my logic.

Four weeks ago I shovelled snow. It snows here with frequency but not much quantity. Matt Aranoff, the young alumnus who runs Buildings and Grounds, gave me an ice breaker, two snow shovels and a bucket of salt. The ice-breaker worked best if plunged perpendicular to the plane of the ice. The shovels proved ineffective for most of the work. After scattering the ice, I returned to the office and worked for another forty minutes shovelling the parking lot outside B&G, which Matt counted as an hour toward my ten. When it snowed again that night, the areas I had salted remained clear of ice. Salting the ground, usually, has the connotation of cleansing it from evil and preventing anything from growing. It is an image which shows up occasionally in old tales of the supernatural.

I usually feel revulsion at the expression of the concept that exercise somehow improves the workings of the mind, clears the soul. I would say simply that physical action provides satisfying relaxation on a cognitive level. The mind does no thinking; I don't think it regenerates while it rests. There is, of course, a satisfaction that you are doing something, accomplishing necessary work, improving, rearranging, purifying, whatever. This appears largely to be imaginary, although not false. This work is frequently unnecessary, and creates only minor aesthetic pleasure or benefit to the community once it's done. It thus seems unrigorous to claim that it is even community service. I would not call it punishment either. It seems almost a form of meditation. There is, of course, also no connection between meditation and missed classes . . .

I don't mind that people aren't reading my blog. That's fine. I just mind that those people who aren't reading it also post no comments. Is this some practical joke? I don't get it. Why have I gotten no responses in over a week? You know as well as I do that the only reason people write blogs is to have people respond with comments. I'm not writing this for my health. If I cared about my health, I wouldn't smoke, or eat M&M brownies. This is about verification, proof that people I can't see still exist. You people better start verifying, or I'm going to stop believing in you.

Is it something I've done? Should I stop talking about metaphysics, for example? Because I can do that. No problem. You just tell me what you want me to write about, and I'll put it down, and everyone will be happy. I will sell out for you.

Are you people going through some sort of slump? Are you, maybe, involved in something else, like bein' sad and stuff? Because, hey, I'd like to read about it if you are. Why? Because I'm just that kind of guy.

I can only cry so many tears before the pain from my rejection turns to rage. Better watch out, mothas. Ever wonder how I got the name Dr. Dark? It wasn't shifty-eyed Dan. That guy wasn't poet enough to create a shopping list. Eat my appendix.

My mind is currently occupied with Latin, French, German, Kant, Newton, Proust and Rosenzweig. It used to be occupied with music. I have been listening of late mainly to The Basement Tapes, Louder Than Bombs, and Yo La Tengo, and these only infrequently. It helped quite a bit to have music playing while at the computer, and this is now impossible. That is why my writing has been uninteresting for the last several weeks, in case you were wondering.

Right now, even, writing this rather trivial post, I am aware of how uninteresting it is. There is no excitement, no content bursting to get out. I am doing it mainly to keep up appearances.

I would like to leave. Not in any real sense: I have already decided rather firmly to graduate next year. Yet although I am, for the first time, starting to enjoy it here, I cannot help but wait impatiently for college to end. I have never experienced so distinctly the constant engagement of my subconscious mind on school work, reading, philosophy, call it what you will, to the extent that I have nothing to say when I try to write. It's a dismal feeling, even though most of the time I'm pretty pleased and excited. It is strange to be truly excited about academic material. I feel as if I'm writing like a high school student here, but there's no other way to say it. I allot almost no time to "relaxing", a term I scorn, and yet I rarely feel stressed. When I wake up, I learn twenty Latin words before showering. Then I exercise and go to class. Every class has become interesting, and I've surprised myself by talking of my own will. When I get back to my room, I usually do my seminar reading (I've actually started trying to read them at least twice) before dinner.

I'm not sure what I'm saying in this post. I'm not sure why I'm writing at all. However, since this is the only thing that comes to mind to write about right now, I am. At any rate, it's starting to make sense to me why so few people do anything special while going to this school, although I still wonder why so few alumni do anything, either. I feel like I'm cheating myself somehow by not developing my writing, but there's not much I can do, and when I consider it, it seems perfectly reasonable to wait until I've finished this education. Whatever it's doing, however it's doing it, I am definitely beginning to learn something of real value here.

Oh, and Scott, that post was awesome, and I've often felt the same way, but didn't know how to express it. You're really getting at something.

I talk to Will Jensen every Sunday. This is by his request. He lives in Chicago with no friends, goes to a school he hates, and until this week, had no job. His parents are divorced, his mother doesn't like him, and he gets depressed when he talks to his father, who has tenuous employment; he's never had a story accepted despite trying since high school. He is twenty three and has never had a girlfriend, and he tried to kill himself at age five. Even though I don't enjoy talking to him, it's hard to say no.

This week, I had to tell him I don't have enough money to travel with him over my spring break. It's true, anyway, so what the hell. "Hey, if anyone understands not having enough money, it's me." (Here's the general course of our conversations: we trade stories about anything we did that week. For my part, there's a lot I don't tell him, because I don't think he'd understand; for his part, he usually hasn't done anything at all. Then we make whatever possible comments there are to make, which usually peters out after about three minutes. This is followed by seconds of true abyss as the phone makes audible our lack of similarity.)

"I'm gonna have to drive down there myself some time. But anyway, I was thinking, how about this summer you and me just drive around, not doing anything, see the country. We'll swing by the coast, you know, maybe stop off in Nevada at the Bunny Ranch. I was thinking, you know, all my friends back home are married or practically married, engaged, you know; you're really the only free friend I have left."

I was, for a moment, too surprised at his casual reference to getting prostitutes that I didn't say anything. Then I explained that when I said I didn't have enough money to travel over spring break, that would go doubly for the summer. That I had a couple of options as to places I'd stay, but the'd all involve either working or taking a course. I added to this that the fifties are over, and it is no longer possible to travel cheap like Kerouac. Will is aware, on some level, that things really have changed since the fifties, but he persists in wanting to live in them. His favorite authors, it should be noted, mostly died under bad circumstances.

After an hour, I was able to break off the conversation. Kant proved too much for me in the state I was in, so I tried Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space to see if it made more sense. It did.

During "Electricity," Jess knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to go to 10,000 Waves, a local spa which seems to be a rite of passage for Santa Fe students. I hear about this place at least once a week. So, being the follower I am, I went with Jess.

My readers (you guys are still there, right?) probably can't imagine me in a spa. I'll keep my description brief. The hot tub was too hot, and I wasn't wearing my glasses, so I couldn't see the topless girls. The cold plunge made it a little more pleasant, but then it was once again too hot. The sauna, how surprising, was too hot. We stayed for about an hour and a half, and I was most relaxed just sitting on the edge of the tub, not touching the water. I doubt that it would have come up, but nobody buy me a spa gift cirtificate for Christmas.

Self-awareness sometimes fades for me, and frequently heightens. At both of these times I feel like I am becoming aware of some truth, and then I promptly realize that the very idea is absurd. I'm considering a Junior essay on the concept of wanting out of your skin. A great piece of obvious and already known knowledge was given to me two days ago. For these essays, people should first think of what they want to write about, and then pick the work. The tutors here won't tell us this, because they think it heretical. "What? You can't find an honest topic? Why don't you write on Descartes? You seem to like the study of knowldege. Or how about Hume? He's post-modern, right?" Now, perhaps no one reading this will care, and quite understandably. Sometimes considering this college is boring to me even while going here. But generally it remains a powerful paradox which bears sorting through.

Why are so many students drunk all the time, and stupid even sober? And yet some of the most impressive people I've met, I've met here. What could I make of the persistent vulgurization of all culture? Particularly when I am aware of its influence over me. Is it possible to affect someone who lives in the unenlightened manner of the great mass of humanity, who is bigoted, unaware, resistent to change, and content with a stupid life? But then, maybe I'm not qualified to judge such people, and maybe I'm wrong about the quality of their lives; maybe mine is not better.

In the development of philosophy (and why should I care?) the trend in the last two hundred years has been away from the dogmatic confines of logic and toward something much more complicated and less seemingly applicable. It is as if philosophy has been examining its own subconscious mind, and has found great depths of mystery about what had been seemingly the simplest of concepts. And yet, if it remains mystery, why should I trust it, and what could I hope to gain from it? What could my role in such a thing possibly be?

Writers seem to stuggle to remain relevant. What, then, is relevant? Why does this generation seem to me to be incapable of great art, to the extent that we cannot even judge ourselves?

Oh, and why did I write this blog?