A Girl's Car

Tonight Sal and I went outside for some air at around 2AM. We stood out on the sidewalk, watching the drunks as they poured out the bars and into the streets, each surrepitously avoiding cops. "Is it, do you think, stigma or privledge, for a cop to have the Bricks beat on a Friday night?" I asked.

Sal began to parody a cop (a hick cop, apparently). "Oh, She-at, darlin, I godda go and work outside that Bricks place again on Frahday, with all them drunk godd daynged ass--holes. Sheet."

At that moment, we heard the sound of wrenching metal. A drunken patron had backed his car into another car. Sal and I stared at each other, mouths literally open, laughing, astonished, surprised. I felt a real twinge of empathy: someone was about to feel very bad; someone was about to join the system. The drunk driver pulled away from the damaged car, stopping at the edge of the parkinglot. He must have known already that his night was over; several cop cars were less than 20 feet away, several bored and tense cops were giving him long looks. He idled there, hunkered down in the driver's seat, waiting at the edge of the parkinglot, for a long moment, weighing his options. He must have thought about his night, I think; the girls he danced with; certainly he was suddenly capable of scheming, of calculated abstraction, real consideration of many things, a caged animal, prepared to run or drive or sneak or do whatever he might do. He chose to put the car into reverse, attempting to disappear out the back of the parkinglot, down a side street. Unfortunately, in so doing, he rammed into another vehicle, with another loud gnash of broken plastic and glass. Cops came running across the street: "Just get out of the fucking car! Turn off the fucking engine!"

And that's how it went. Sal and I walked over to look at him, slumped as he was in the driver's seat, looking drunken and somehow windswept: a blonde boy, sad, thin, white-t-shirted. He was, when we arrived, denying that the car was his ("Well whose car is it?" a cop inquired. "A girl's," he said.), denying consumption of alcohol.

And so on.

outbar conversation:

There you are. Come on. Where's Annie? Fuck is everyone. Christ on a pony.

It's Christ on a Cross.

Christ on a pony.

Cross.

[pause]

How was your night?

[drunken eye roll]

That good, eh? I feel the same. It's disappointing some time.

It's such a disappointment.

Some time I feel bad about it.

You know, all I am is just a bundle of emotion.

Yeah?

Yeah.

the boundary between literary analysis and philosophy

Who is going to substantially parse the difference betweeen literary analysis and philosophy proper? I mean, we can all agree that Derrida is a game played on both tables, but, what about Deleuze? Somehow he's more continental, which makes his work somehow more relevant. When talking to 50yearold ex-Mormon politics professors, Derrida can easily be dismissed as 'irrelevant' while Deluzian rhizoidal analysis is somehow more serious, full of epistemic consequences.

To me, there's a huge problem in the field of literary analysis if the works of prominent analysists/theorists can be more or less completely ignored in Dialogues outside of gradschoolEnglish departments: simply, because, literary analysis, even baldly politically-motivated-analysis, is making an entire host of subtle, or backhanded efforts at

1. critiquing traditional Foundationalist commonsensical epistemic frames
i.e.
2. making postulations about all things

I can't see how any statement can help but imply the entire world [to drop a lil' Borges: "A single word predicates the universe, whose most notorious attribute is its complexity."]--either inclusively, denotedly, articulatedly, or by exclusion, narratively.

To me this is merely a reworking of the traditional anti-pomo critique of the paradox of postmodernism (i.e.--i will tell you how things are. there is no way how things are. do.), I realize. But it's astonishing to me that there are many reasonable ph.d+'s who do not seem to acknowledge the necessity of engaging in dialogue w/ the variously-clumped po-everything-ist's. The po-ists are, to them, not doing philosophy but are simply howling, in a room, throwing feces at walls. I still don't know how Theoreticians (strictly defined) see their work in context of philosophy as a whole-discipline. I'm curious.

April

1. In this space in my previous blog-life I would highlight all of the events, both mental and actual, that I went through in the previous blog-title epononymous month.

Unfortunately, I started working, so, my mental and cultural life has vanished almost entirely. All I've thought about lately are considerations of money & the like. I'm planning. Scheming.

[walking through the mall]

Hmm. I have 400$ in my pocket. What do I want? You know what I want? I want new cologne. I want an entire collection of perfume for dudes. I want to have six or seven artful little colored glass bottles sitting up in a row on top of my dresser.

I plan it out. I'll buy new shoes ever 5 weeks. Three breve lattes. Dinner for my friends on Saturday night. How about that? Oh, and, I want new jeans every week. Or so. Depends on what I can find. I spent a few hours looking at used cars on ebay. I'm a sad douchebag.

I bought a new laptop last week. Windows Vista is a goddamn annoying fucker. I spent a few hours deleting programs and features I don't want. I spent about five hours trying to configure my wireless network settings. Strange programs pop up and I don't want any of them (including an almost endless stream of reminders/warnings telling me to register my laptop, though I do not wish to do so).

The new laptop is beautiful, though. It's black and metallic and there's a analog-style clock on the desktop. I have been found, several times as of late, at my desk, watching the digital hands moving around the dial.

2. Also this month, I moved into town. New apartment. It's nice.

3. Music.

I liked Wilco's Sky Blue Sky. The title track is my favorite track. It's not as eclectic as previous Wilco albums---it's disappearing, floating, mellow folk-pop. But that's been my mood so it's okay.

I've been listening to The Pony's new album, Turn the Lights Out with a good deal of pleasure. It's shoegaze-y and melodic and feels relatively balanced. It hangs together nicely as an album.

Also been enjoying more of the Essex Green's production. "Uniform" is a lyrically fun if not musically inspired track. But most of this month has been devoted to music from my past, including most particularly Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's first album (still one of my favorite albums ever, easily).

Others: Cornelius' 1998 Beckesque album Fantasma and The Field's somnolent electronica From Here we go Sublime. Bright Eyes' new album wasn't so great. I'm over that guy. "Lime Tree" is a nice surreal quiet album-ender, though. Also, I know I'm too cursory, but I didn't really dig the new Arctic Monkeys or the new Kings of Leon, but, I'm going to have to listen to them again.

Also Most Dug of the Previous:

Liars - Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack
Panda Bear - Take Pills [still on heavy rotation during the first two weeks of the month].
Rilo Kiley - Teenage Love Song
George Thorogood - One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer

4. Movies.

Enjoyed "Shattered Glass"--flick about the plagiarist/sociopath/retard New Republic writer Stephen Glass. Rewatched "Annie Hall" with pleasure. Suffered through "Rent"--while explaining obvious features of the flick to my mom & a christian kid I know who was apparently too thick to realize that the transvestite character "Angel" is, in addition to being a guy, also suffering from HIV. So disgusted was he upon this revelation that he refused to keep his copy of the movie that he'd provided for our inspiration and entertainment. Surreal but true.

5. Epiphanic Moments

1. a long drive through shithole Idaho (including the worst town in the entire world, Reubens ID)--a town covered with junk (each house features its own protective barrier of junk cars, debris, woodpiles, dilapidated outbuildings, &c, in case of invasion from illegal immigrants. I particularly enjoyed the graffiti on the stop sign ("Oh Yeh," penned by some bored hick) and a Ross Perot 4 President sign painted on the walls of a plywood shed.) But, I drove through the prairie, through the mountains, through various weather, alternately snowing, raining, wind blowing, and sun shining. It was really nice, in a way, I felt all right, I looked at clouds and the fields and the prairie lakes.

2. A few weeks ago, I was power-washing a house by the river in the late afternoon, watching a rain of paintchips and water falling through the air, this artificial rain falling all around me, a cascade of water pouring down a roof and through a grove of birch trees in deep shade, with sunlight in the distant street, and I felt that everything would be fine.

3. On a Monday night, driving along the ridge at sunset, I looked down at the river in the sunlight and it seemed to have the consistency of oil. The tops of the waves were folded into the river by a steady breeze and a pink and orange color went dark all along the river, and it was beautiful. But I drove on and didn't pay it any attention, though I wanted to.

4. Went to a wine-tasting thing. It was really nice. There were a lot of wealthy people standing around having a good time and I feigned wasted and wandered around talking to all of these people that I knew. I felt at home in the world, almost, for a few minutes. The event did highlight my general homeless losery feelings of calculated performance, though. But all in all I convinced myself that I felt fine during the whole thing.

6. Intellectual Shit

I've been thinking somewhat. Mostly though I'm too depressed and bored and tired. I feel like the new posterboy for Marxist dissociated alienated labor what-have-you. I could be happier and I could do more of the things that I want to do but I seem to lack the energy, even as I make the observation. All the important thoughts for me personally are in the past and from here on out it seems that self-discovery or discovery of meaningful dialogue or important things of any kind is not a matter of anything that might carry with it visceral import but is only a matter of convincing others that my views are correct. I witnessed an incredibly depressing exchange on a blog that I enjoy and it seemed to prove all kinds of points about pointlessness, futility-in-the-world, et al.

Anyways. My life is trucking along just fine. See previous posts for other epiphanic / monumentous shit. Also, don't anyone download the music I'm listening to. It's all incredibly lame.

Apri: 7.0.

3 Thoughts

1. What I love about The Hours (the book) is its interiority. When turning the pages, I feel an introspective glow about myself, hyper self-and-other-conscious, all but tingling with awareness, an Idealization of experience. The big show is, as Vonnegut said, inside my head.

Wow, I think. There are Clouds. There is the River. It is Blue. And Grey. And Brown. I'm thinking these thoughts. How wonderful. How wonderful it all is.

&c.

2. Work is the worst possible thing, in a way. While working, I feel dull and thick and thoughtless. Homo Bovinus. (perhaps an unfortunate conflation, considering the implications of 'rumination' and cows---unless we clarify that a cow's thought process, even if circular, probably isn't terribly active). One feels the day begin to slip away. Bleary and cold and clear, walking to my car in the dawn, I see the sky: beautiful and hopeless.

All of last week I watched the progress of the Pink Dogwood trees that line the street where I park. On Monday, the boughs were bowed heavily with bunches of pink blossoms, hanging as full and heavy as grapevines. Each tree was entirely covered with flowers, a pink cloud. I walked into the cool shadow of the tree's underbelly and felt a strange hush fall over me. The street was quiet. Drops of dew were gently loosed from the tree above me, slowly spotting the pavement all around me.

On Thursday, a wind came up in the grey sky; after work, I was hearing the Liars - The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack and watching a sheet of pink flowers being whipped around the parking lot. It was good.

3. And the weekends have a tenuous fragility, preciousness. Today, I listened to the new Arctic Monkeys album. Lit a bonfire, snapped a few pictures. Watched Unforgiven in the mild Sunday afternoon. Smoked a few cigarets, walking in the cut grass. Made coffee and called up a few friends. The lilacs are beginning to bloom and it's always my favorite time of year.

6.13 AM

We were watching the news and drinking our morning coffee when the press conference disclosing the identity of the Virginia Tech gunman came on.

In addition to mentioning his name, it was also revealed that the gunman was an English major.

The two of us, Cory and I, English majors both, realized that we were, suddenly, by implication, clumped in with homicide.

"An English major!," Cory said. "Why? What was an English major doing, shooting up a building full of engineering students?"

"It's the revenge of the Humanities," I said. "Fuck the Technical Sciences."

________________________________________

I should point out that I realize that this event (incident? the word seems too weak. episode? it's not a goddamned CSI show) is a tragedy in any sense of the word. I do not intend to demean the death and suffering of the victims and their families. However, I should clarify certain aspects of the kind of world I find in: Routinely, I can slaughter hundreds of people on Grand Theft Auto, not that I'm completely desensitized, but, ultimately,....death comes to me a media event. Also, I am surrounded by prospective death whenever I move anywhere in the social world: thousands have died in Iraq, from plague, after obscure religious torture--thousands are dying all the time--and, in addition to having an already over-exerted outrage gland, the Virginia Tech event does not, when considered in its very essence (if i can be permitted the generalization), blow any of my mental circuits. I have been living for some time now as quite aware of being in a world where it is possible for violence to be perpetrated in any form, at any moment.
_________________________________

6.16 AM:

"You know what really bugs me, man?" I said. "Just...why the fuck did he have to be an English major? Why couldn't he be a nursing major or something, torn apart by his diffuse sexuality and the rigorous demands of Human Physiology & Anatomy 267? I mean, he was an English major for chrissakes? Why didn't he just write a short story about a massacre, instead, get his aggression out on his keyboard, the fucking douche bag."

"Well," Cory said, "That'll make us think twice about next time we criticize someone too hard in workshops: yeah, it could be a cliche... but only to some people. It's a good story. We love it!"

"Yeah," I said.

a very good place to start

As with any other traveler, idiot, intellect, pundit, commentator, the first question must be: What it is that we are doing here? Upon that, what next?

1. Regarding my status on the internet--this place that we're at--I'm happy to say that I'm a myspace refugee. My happiness in this respect has nothing to do with a perception on my part of myspace as puerile or clunky: it's just that I've done it so much. I've pissed away literally thousands of hours on that godawful site, going nowhere, talking to chicks, listening to bad music, engaging in pointless social maintenance with people I've known in the past--that entire nested (and limited) world, of comments, picture comments, kudos, amateur html design, friend requests, rearranging my top-8, aggh, the whole mess of it, all if it, at root, going nowhere, doing nothing, miserably flogging out my loneliness, spare time, boredom, and social voraciousness throughout and within that venue. And I'm over it, plain and simple--I lack the discipline to relegate it to a small corner of my life and I lack the actual social apparatus around me such that I could live the social life that I want to live without the benefit of an online community, but, when I put it in perspective, the community I've made for myself on myspace is stagnant. And maybe there are hundreds and thousands of people on myspace that I might befriend and enjoy, on any of dozens of levels, but at present, with the myspace life that I have had, I realize poignantly that there are other things that I would like to do, with my life, my mind, my time.

2. So what now?

This blog will be, hopefully, an opportunity for me to start over, setting up shop in a new town (so to clichédly speak), in a place where I know virtually (ha) no one, developing in this densely-populated-but-entirely-anonymous space the concerns and projects that to me
will define the hours and values of my future.

What 'concerns and projects' would I like to develop?

A. For years, I've been arrogant, insufferable, and overbearing. Even in high school, my calculus teacher warned me of the danger of trying to ride my pre-existing body of knowledge in the outside world--riding a junk car arrogantly down some shit street, deluded, believing that the street was Broadway and the car a white limo.

The worst part of this strange body of delusion is that, living where I live, surrounded by the people that I admired and wanted to emulate, it became clear from an early age that even though I was completely ignorant, I still somehow knew much more than my peers--which led me--when confronted with actually knowledgeable people--to see them as ignorant and unreflective. For years, I've persisted in this delusion. I do so still.

B. One of the values that I picked up somewhere along the way was an emphasis in my thought on control, power, and efficaciousness. These qualities, when tossed into the blender along with my arrogant (and ignorant) solipsism led me to all kinds of odd mental and social mishaps. I don't see any reason to go into all of that here, but, suffice it to say that I don't want to be ignorant. There is an entire language--of learning, poetry, and consideration--that I want to have at least some acceptable fluency in.

For the most part, I'm interested in contemporary fiction, poetry, literary analysis, intellectual history, epistemology, indie pop, &c.

So. Though I don't think I can bear to make in this blog a significant departure from my self and the concerns of myself over any other thing, I would like to at least try to spend as much time as possible saturating myself in concerns that are contemporary, valid (on whatever canonized/social level), and outside-of-myself. What first? I don't know. Suggestions for consideration are always welcome--from here, I suppose I can go...well....anywhere.