(no subject)
Three candidates for a song--mine:
Smooth Criminal (Michael Jackson)
I Am Waiting (Rolling Stones)
Out on the Weekend (Neil Young)
Because of the refrain, which goes
See the lonely boy out on the weekend
Trying to make it pay.
Can't relate to joy. He tries to speak and
Can't begin to say.
Which I admit is a little corny, but. No problem! Allusion: Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Which reminds me that I ought to do something new for a change. I've had the same favorite movie since eleventh grade (Rushmore). Nostalgia's fine, but it's better with more to build on. More of a substrate, if you will (I won't). Not so much Castle in the Sky (ho ho ho: that's Miyazaki!). But for real: I might want to lay off the pretension and the irony and maybe the snobbery, too, and quit being a jerk about everything. Nah. It's a pipe dream--I'm a barber's son.
I had a nicely hurried morning this morning. Shaken. Some time after I woke up, I said Hi to my poster people (Hello, Mamimi. Hello, Canti-sama. Hello, Ta-kun. Hello, Naota.)--from the shower, because I'd forgot when I woke up. Summer work's lots harder than the school-year routine. I was disinfecting a hair brush in the fifth-floor bathroom this afternoon and sort of smirked in the mirror (speaking of Tarkovsky, which I was, briefly, yesterday, I'll remind myself to watch Solaris. Everyone's invited). I want to be in North Carolina in March, and reading something (anything!) besides shitty know-it-all junk psych books on adolescence in small-town America. K. showed me a picture--I optimistically called my profile hawkish, but that's about as credible as my New Year's resolutions (the first: never be embarrassed. The second: never hold unhealthy regrets).
The folks at 42 played music and frisbee outside before dinner (I noticed at A Minor Thing, which I can't help but like). It's been pleasant (nice is good!) borrowing friends these last few months, but I wonder about intellectual pollution sometimes (ideational miscegenation?). I was different a year ago, by a far sight, which was the product of Cadbury (a lame excuse) or my free-ranging (milk-fed!) self-regard or my general social neglect. Which, historically, I've attributed alternately to ineptitude and disinterest. Compare to hemispheric neglect. Now I've resolved not to watch another movie I've seen before. For the duration of the summer. Although we've ordered The Big One. But I haven't seen the whole thing through, I don't think. Morgan Spurlock's doing a reality-ish T.V. series that the Voice has compared (unfavorably) to Nickel and Dimed, which I still haven't read. I end too many sentences this way. Both A.s have recommendations.
I heard myself whining about work today and felt a flutter of doubt. This hasn't happened for some time now--not about the rightness (rectitude?) of my future in psychology. This needs to get quashed, and fast. This is no time for clearheadedness or thinking-through. My doctorate and I, and our luxuriant flowing hair, will laugh about this twenty years down.
If anyone's moved to get me a present, I'd be happy to get a green suit or red beret a la Rushmore. Or cat ears. Or a haircut, or a stern talking to. Summers get diffuse, whatever I have to say about it. I adapt frighteningly quickly--things seem always to have been exactly as they are. Which I know to be false, considering. See above. I wonder if drugs might help. I remember the Adderall business a few months (a year?) back. I think I've decided that I don't care about the ethics, only the results. I want to be sharper. I don't like being so obviously inferior to the people around me. I'm sick of having things explained to me like I'm a child (which, to my immense frustration, I remain). I saw Sideways again last night and thought some about declines. I was more of a shit the first time I saw it, and more of a dupe (stooge! ass! good-for-nothing doormat hangdog wishy-washy fuck-up!), and there's little doubt things are better now. But. I feel Odyssean and laugh some (darkly) at that, because one isn't allowed a decline without something epic before.
Look at this.
but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
And
that which we are, we are;
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
This reminds me of the one Hopkins poem I like, and that maybe I shouldn't have abandoned English and reading and writing. Maybe three months ago I resolved I'd convince someone to write it in calligraphy for me, or at least the lines I remember.
Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist--slack they may be--these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
As usual, I take things too seriously--or not at all. I may need a change, or a new pair of sandals, or strawberry shortcake.
Someone: let's see a concert, or bike to Swarthmore, or go to the zoo.
Smooth Criminal (Michael Jackson)
I Am Waiting (Rolling Stones)
Out on the Weekend (Neil Young)
Because of the refrain, which goes
See the lonely boy out on the weekend
Trying to make it pay.
Can't relate to joy. He tries to speak and
Can't begin to say.
Which I admit is a little corny, but. No problem! Allusion: Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Which reminds me that I ought to do something new for a change. I've had the same favorite movie since eleventh grade (Rushmore). Nostalgia's fine, but it's better with more to build on. More of a substrate, if you will (I won't). Not so much Castle in the Sky (ho ho ho: that's Miyazaki!). But for real: I might want to lay off the pretension and the irony and maybe the snobbery, too, and quit being a jerk about everything. Nah. It's a pipe dream--I'm a barber's son.
I had a nicely hurried morning this morning. Shaken. Some time after I woke up, I said Hi to my poster people (Hello, Mamimi. Hello, Canti-sama. Hello, Ta-kun. Hello, Naota.)--from the shower, because I'd forgot when I woke up. Summer work's lots harder than the school-year routine. I was disinfecting a hair brush in the fifth-floor bathroom this afternoon and sort of smirked in the mirror (speaking of Tarkovsky, which I was, briefly, yesterday, I'll remind myself to watch Solaris. Everyone's invited). I want to be in North Carolina in March, and reading something (anything!) besides shitty know-it-all junk psych books on adolescence in small-town America. K. showed me a picture--I optimistically called my profile hawkish, but that's about as credible as my New Year's resolutions (the first: never be embarrassed. The second: never hold unhealthy regrets).
The folks at 42 played music and frisbee outside before dinner (I noticed at A Minor Thing, which I can't help but like). It's been pleasant (nice is good!) borrowing friends these last few months, but I wonder about intellectual pollution sometimes (ideational miscegenation?). I was different a year ago, by a far sight, which was the product of Cadbury (a lame excuse) or my free-ranging (milk-fed!) self-regard or my general social neglect. Which, historically, I've attributed alternately to ineptitude and disinterest. Compare to hemispheric neglect. Now I've resolved not to watch another movie I've seen before. For the duration of the summer. Although we've ordered The Big One. But I haven't seen the whole thing through, I don't think. Morgan Spurlock's doing a reality-ish T.V. series that the Voice has compared (unfavorably) to Nickel and Dimed, which I still haven't read. I end too many sentences this way. Both A.s have recommendations.
I heard myself whining about work today and felt a flutter of doubt. This hasn't happened for some time now--not about the rightness (rectitude?) of my future in psychology. This needs to get quashed, and fast. This is no time for clearheadedness or thinking-through. My doctorate and I, and our luxuriant flowing hair, will laugh about this twenty years down.
If anyone's moved to get me a present, I'd be happy to get a green suit or red beret a la Rushmore. Or cat ears. Or a haircut, or a stern talking to. Summers get diffuse, whatever I have to say about it. I adapt frighteningly quickly--things seem always to have been exactly as they are. Which I know to be false, considering. See above. I wonder if drugs might help. I remember the Adderall business a few months (a year?) back. I think I've decided that I don't care about the ethics, only the results. I want to be sharper. I don't like being so obviously inferior to the people around me. I'm sick of having things explained to me like I'm a child (which, to my immense frustration, I remain). I saw Sideways again last night and thought some about declines. I was more of a shit the first time I saw it, and more of a dupe (stooge! ass! good-for-nothing doormat hangdog wishy-washy fuck-up!), and there's little doubt things are better now. But. I feel Odyssean and laugh some (darkly) at that, because one isn't allowed a decline without something epic before.
Look at this.
but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
And
that which we are, we are;
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
This reminds me of the one Hopkins poem I like, and that maybe I shouldn't have abandoned English and reading and writing. Maybe three months ago I resolved I'd convince someone to write it in calligraphy for me, or at least the lines I remember.
Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist--slack they may be--these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
As usual, I take things too seriously--or not at all. I may need a change, or a new pair of sandals, or strawberry shortcake.
Someone: let's see a concert, or bike to Swarthmore, or go to the zoo.