It was so easy, and it was so hard: you were clutching your copy of Kierkegaard. Repetition. Repetition.
-The Extra Glenns
I got something off of my chest just now. It didn't feel like much. A feeble first step, maybe. Anything, really, to begin to plumb the depths of my being. Since I have felt shallow for so long now. I have begun to collect the answers. But I don't know the questions. I am happy. I am satisfied. (I should be.) Yet I can feel the twitching of adventure. I don't know where it will begin. I don't know the full scale of the journey. I don't like thinking in metaphysical terms. Because I get anxious with metaphysical questions. I can't answer these. I want to, certainly, but what is there, really? When we come to it, won't I just end up naked and screaming something from Tolstoy from the rooftop until the police come for me? I don't have the courage to scream anything from anywhere, and I'm far too bashful for rooftop nudity. But at least I have Tolstoy. Sometimes I think that I'm too narrow, too limited. But I have some Ignatius somewhere, and I have enough poetry to get me through/into a lot of emotional imprisonment. I have the Elder Edda in a place of particular prestige, right in between The Kalevala and Chaucer. Am I being clear enough? I keep trying to ground myself, but every time I try to do so, I am probing Walden's false bottoms. I have constructed this edifice. The sheer and interminable facade. I wish I was a better writer. Maybe then I could publish and gain immortality. But I have spent my life in sloth, and have come naturally into no talent. I have no grasp on human speech, human psychology, or human relations. My essays are miserable and ill-formed. I brood. What is there for this brooder? Where might this brooding reach? Maybe I'll find the other brooders. I'm sure there are others, somewhere. Maybe it is just me and the teenagers in art schools. I can move back to Portland and spend my days smoking pot at Reed. Maybe I can take responsibility for something. Certainly, I am having some great responsibility thrust upon me. But what of it? I will simply try to form up myself from this innocent. To perpetuate my sorrows, and in that way, grant upon them the gift of immortality.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
"Ends"
-Everlast
Maybe. If I were to ever write anything, I would call it You, me, and the Escatons. But I will never write. And I have nothing to say about the ends. (What ends?) But I hear about it a lot these days. I have decided to look into Christianity again. Since High School, I have been there and I have been back again, and I haven't given much thought to religion in the meantime. So I start where I always start these days. With the academy. I don't work any more. I listen to lectures that Yale put up a couple years ago. I'm making my way through the curriculum. They are mostly just entry-level classes, but I don't care. Anything for a taste. And so I found the religious studies department. And I went out and bought the most liberal Bible I could get my hands on and started reading. I read the historic-cirtical critique of the gospels and Paul. (I don't care much for Paul) And then I read about the history of Religion in America, and the book was so boring, Jesus isn't mentioned once. Paul isn't either, but they just say Calvin, Calvin, Calvin. The history of Religion in America is Calvin. This is why I had to stop being a history teacher. I can only say "Calvin" so many times before I become maddeningly depressed. Where is the sadness in the world? It seems like America is oppression and nobody bothers to be sad about it. We are the un-elect. We, the un-elect, who sit at our desks listening to the Yale lectures or the Daily Show in the background, staring at graphs to make it look like I'm working. Always working. I'm never working, ever bored. I want to rip open my Bible and find the saddest verse in the whole damn thing, some pitiful wail of some lost prophet, probably. I would paste it to every wall in the dirty city. So that I can feel again. I am stuck here. Stuck in my charts, in the endless lines of code that don't mean anything or do anything. I am trapped with dozens of engineers. I can never tell if they are as bored as I am, or if they are thrilled with the thought of every day. I have no right to complain. I am wailing in the desert. I am the un-elect. Where in America can we be sad about that? Maybe my brother knows. He, who is in the throes of passion. He works too hard and takes too many drugs. He is living life in the trenches. Maybe. I am removed here. Removed from everything but the gentle, slow condemnation of John Calvin and endless Puritans. And I can't complain because I am somehow winning. Or treading water. But in America, even that is winning. Where is life? Where does it end? What is the span? What is its measure? What depth?
Look. I am alive. On what? Neither childhood nor the future grows less...
Maybe. If I were to ever write anything, I would call it You, me, and the Escatons. But I will never write. And I have nothing to say about the ends. (What ends?) But I hear about it a lot these days. I have decided to look into Christianity again. Since High School, I have been there and I have been back again, and I haven't given much thought to religion in the meantime. So I start where I always start these days. With the academy. I don't work any more. I listen to lectures that Yale put up a couple years ago. I'm making my way through the curriculum. They are mostly just entry-level classes, but I don't care. Anything for a taste. And so I found the religious studies department. And I went out and bought the most liberal Bible I could get my hands on and started reading. I read the historic-cirtical critique of the gospels and Paul. (I don't care much for Paul) And then I read about the history of Religion in America, and the book was so boring, Jesus isn't mentioned once. Paul isn't either, but they just say Calvin, Calvin, Calvin. The history of Religion in America is Calvin. This is why I had to stop being a history teacher. I can only say "Calvin" so many times before I become maddeningly depressed. Where is the sadness in the world? It seems like America is oppression and nobody bothers to be sad about it. We are the un-elect. We, the un-elect, who sit at our desks listening to the Yale lectures or the Daily Show in the background, staring at graphs to make it look like I'm working. Always working. I'm never working, ever bored. I want to rip open my Bible and find the saddest verse in the whole damn thing, some pitiful wail of some lost prophet, probably. I would paste it to every wall in the dirty city. So that I can feel again. I am stuck here. Stuck in my charts, in the endless lines of code that don't mean anything or do anything. I am trapped with dozens of engineers. I can never tell if they are as bored as I am, or if they are thrilled with the thought of every day. I have no right to complain. I am wailing in the desert. I am the un-elect. Where in America can we be sad about that? Maybe my brother knows. He, who is in the throes of passion. He works too hard and takes too many drugs. He is living life in the trenches. Maybe. I am removed here. Removed from everything but the gentle, slow condemnation of John Calvin and endless Puritans. And I can't complain because I am somehow winning. Or treading water. But in America, even that is winning. Where is life? Where does it end? What is the span? What is its measure? What depth?
Look. I am alive. On what? Neither childhood nor the future grows less...
Monday, January 14, 2013
Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe
--Okkervil River
I am thinking of the word 'residue'. It has been with me, stuck with me, unmovable from me, since half-way through the overly-dramatic Les Mis. So much of that story is a part of me, a determined stain. I remember, think thoughts of Paris. I read it there, some of it, or Burgundy, where I ended up finishing the whole thing. I remember the priest, dead now, who sent us there. I remember the insolence and petulance with which I insulted him when I returned. I remember the shame of hiding, not finding all that there was there. A tiny village. A chateau of some sorts. I took a run, was immersed in so many solitudes and obsessions.
I biked up a San Francisco hill to an Episcopalian Church Wednesday night for the residue there. A shadow of a shadow. It was dark and quiet. A candle-lit cross. I made a crude joke to Ben about it. I feel dim. The single voice of the chants. Dull. I end my days consumed. I find no time to live. I flit out barely my existence. I am no voice, not even the single determined voice. I am a whisper in the darkness. Lost in the flickering shadows.
I do not know if I am returning or leaving a final farewell. My head is fuzzy, my thoughts unclear. My writing has atrophied, clearly. I am crass and cheap. Still adolescent in my thoughts and words. I have wasted so much. Felt so little, loved so poorly.
I am thinking of the word 'residue'. It has been with me, stuck with me, unmovable from me, since half-way through the overly-dramatic Les Mis. So much of that story is a part of me, a determined stain. I remember, think thoughts of Paris. I read it there, some of it, or Burgundy, where I ended up finishing the whole thing. I remember the priest, dead now, who sent us there. I remember the insolence and petulance with which I insulted him when I returned. I remember the shame of hiding, not finding all that there was there. A tiny village. A chateau of some sorts. I took a run, was immersed in so many solitudes and obsessions.
I biked up a San Francisco hill to an Episcopalian Church Wednesday night for the residue there. A shadow of a shadow. It was dark and quiet. A candle-lit cross. I made a crude joke to Ben about it. I feel dim. The single voice of the chants. Dull. I end my days consumed. I find no time to live. I flit out barely my existence. I am no voice, not even the single determined voice. I am a whisper in the darkness. Lost in the flickering shadows.
I do not know if I am returning or leaving a final farewell. My head is fuzzy, my thoughts unclear. My writing has atrophied, clearly. I am crass and cheap. Still adolescent in my thoughts and words. I have wasted so much. Felt so little, loved so poorly.
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