...

I worry that "You can't make a god out of someone when you watch them get dressed in the morning." ~R.S.

I met a man named X and walked him from Hill House, past the Mobil, up from the hill behind the library, to the Pub, and back to Hill House at 2:46 AM yesterday.

I saw Brian E. at Slave to the Grind and caught up with him about his life. He told me that after working in the library during the summer, where Janet didn't have much to do for him but still made him come at strict hours, he became so depressed that he couldn't get out of bed and is taking a year off to go to therapy and stuff. No surprise. I recommended that he get a job at a jet set magazine or a place that has interesting people/is as interesting as a job possibly can be. I think he needs more dynamism in his life and has stopped believing that that's possible. I also told him to try and switch his life to a 9 to 5 schedule and get up at 6 because being up in the daylight hours will make him happier.

I am looking at profiles of former Sarah Lawrence students, the beautiful, well read girls who are content to sit at home and read. That my friend Carl would admire on Sunday nights. They are more interesting than me.

Hank Williams

Lord I think I'll get to ramblin'
Got to leave this lonesome town
This old place is way too lonesome
Since my sweet love ain't around.

Why did I take this writing class? People have said things way more poignantly than me. Maybe I should write about something I don't know about completely. A kid in my class says that contemporary writers write as though modernism never happened because of their emphasis on the confessional and their lack of radical experimentation. I would say that they've developed the runoff of the Beat/confessional aesthetic that could only have happened with modernism. It now has its own parameters (not capitalizing shit, free verse, incomplete sentences, attempts at LANGUAGE poetry...) things that aren't said but clearly known in poetry classes. The ruts of the literary world like the freaky ruts of the academic world. "God is dead." Okay. Helene Cixous, deconstruction, postcolonial theory with its references devolving into meaninglessness, the idea that truth is not possible without social context which ultimately empties out language, fear and focus on language in philosophy, multiculturalism and the attempt to look at history from several perspectives at the same time, attempts to resurface the "suppressed narratives" of women's, black, and minority history, all of which are juxtaposed against the demonized imperialising 19th century dead white man Enlightenment rationality bourgeois point of view. Before vs. the now that is better. A simplification that aims at dualism, something that theories that absolute truth or parameters of human nature are impossible spit on. Balzac vs. modernism which is better and truer vs. postmodernism which is better and truer. There is a blanket term for what deconstruction and ideas of multiple truths are aiming for, an abstract term for various things that human reason can't apply itself to, chaos. But I'm ignorant of various philosophical arguments and the stuff I try to diss. But it freaks me out to my very core. The professors that teach literary theory and contemporary philosophy come home to kiss their children and eat breakfast, the kids who are into it will still talk about boys. I trust that the lives we lead and the thoughts we have while doing daily shit often diverge from our theories. Oh well. I bitch and moan about this all the time.

People sometimes write very beautiful blogs, stories, memoirs, based on their experience and a genre that seems to be about small, keen powers of observation and sensation. I always think it's in the style of William Carlos Williams' "This is Just To Say." Really, I just get the same feeling from them. They kind of chill my skin. And they make me see things, even a girl playing footsy with a boy in a diner (a short story someone wrote in my high school), differently than I did before. Plus, it makes me ashamed that I haven't experienced life in this way. My sense of reality is so permeable. I decided I'm living under a bell jar. But it's more like yellow goop. There are many things I could do to change it. Like do my work. When I sort of get down into the feeling, I get a yellow emptiness in which there is nothing to say. There are many things I could be doing right. Using my time wisely, aka organizing my daily life. Saturn in Virgo style. Instead I talk my head off about trivial things and new feelings. For instance, now I can identify the feeling of missing someone from the pit of your stomach and wanting to share all types of activities with them. I talk the things I feel into the ground until they are entirely divorced from reality. As usual, my mind, body, heart, which are all connected, are all freaking out. My mind is mad that I don't do my work, trying to prove its own intelligence, yet is ignorant/not book smart, my heart is doing various things, and my body needs exercise. My mind has various grievances like the stuff above, but I don't know about any of it so I can't argue. I really am sick, sick of my own perspective, I thought I was lovesick (a novelty that I'm now throwing around insincerely), and I'm physically sick. I'll sit down to read and go do something else. Many people don't understand what I'm up to or how I manage to waste all of my time. The seniors smell like business and are never around, studying, hanging out with friends, doing the right things, and somehow are in solidarity with each other though I don't know about it. Asking them what they've been doing and whining to them about what I've been doing doesn't help. I need to find a way to catch up. Otherwise I'll be swimming in my feelings like I do in my poetry all the time, searching for something that can be good. I can't turn to anything I don't know, either, or even make it look like the poem isn't about me (write something about a guy in New Mexico, a witty poem about an orange, read Du Fu and imitate him). Of course I could read more, good poetry, good fiction, but then it would change my perspective and as usual, shame me that I haven't seen a thing like that before. And then I'll start to imitate it. Maybe I need to go away for a while. But that won't help either.

I just read over some of my high school poetry. I was so much clearer then. So much more idealistic.

Olivia's birthday

The Thursday before and Friday of Olivia's birthday were pretty sweet, all in all. I had only one day to shop for Olivia so I skipped my 12:30 and 3:35 class and went to New York on the 11:00 train. I decided to take her out for birthday lunch and she had Pad See Ew and I, beef teriyaki at cafetasia. Afterwards, we went for bubble tea and she took some time to do her work in her room while I went hunting for a present for her. I walked in the East Village and went into a store called something like Himalayan Visions. At first I couldn't see much and the Nepalese or Mongolian vendor was aggressive and I was getting a little freaked out. Then I found some delicate necklaces of sterling silver with gold plated chain, some with peridot beads, one blue topaz drop and one larger amethyst drop that were wired on to the somewhat thin and short corded necklaces. I wasn't sure whether to get Olivia the blue topaz which I thought caught the light better and would match with her coloring better or the amethyst from India that had a deep color and didn't think the simple cutting or gold plating was worth the price of $60, nonetheless I came out of there with an amethyst necklace and hoped she would like it. Then I went to Toy Tokyo which I have been procrastinating on going to for a while and found the amazing fun boxes of surprise mini food (some sets were sushi, rice balls, broiled eels, soba, seafood soup, apple pie, bread, collard greens in the vending basket. etc.). They also had surprise boxes of sneakers, small ones like SB Dunks and Bathing Apes, but those were a little too expensive. It was completely amazing though, and I got one special occasions fun box for Olivia and one for me. Luckily Olivia was done with her work and wanted me to accompany her to the cab so I came to her dorm and waited for her. When she came out, I knelt before her with the box with the necklace and said, "O Olivia, I wish you would have a good birthday and be happy and healthy and wealthy and long living," something along those lines. Her fun box was soba and mine was rice balls, she likes rice balls better and they look more interesting so we switched. She was a little hungry so we went to the Max Brenner's in the East Village that is at the end of her street for fondue. It was the first I've ever had and she had a pink strawberry drink with clear gummy bears on it and I, the Cookieshake. I took her into the cab and we talked for a while and she met Becky to watch Spring Awakening, the musical. Afterwards, Becky took her to a corny Italian restaurant. The next day I had to meet my mom and Garik, a man who she once thought she was in love with before she knew my dad who is visiting from Odessa and is an annoying, milk toasty man. We went to the Met and I went through the Flemish Primitives, the Rembrandt exhibit, and the Lehman collection rather fast. My dad refused to meet us in the Met and we had to come to 49th and meet him. On 56th or so we went to Wondee Siam for Thai food. I couldn't eat that much but I did order the Noodles Talay. My parents and Garik and I walked to the MoMA and it was 6:00 by the time that I made it to coat check so I had to leave. I had to meet Olivia at 6:30 at Ruby Foo's. It was raining and I did stop in Zara to look for a coat for Olivia. I also went to Swatch and found a watch whose strap was astroturf which I think would have amused Olivia if I wore it. Olivia and I met in Ruby Foo's though she was 6 minutes late. She bought mojitos for the both of us and still Becky didn't show so we sat down. Olivia was worried about her, worried that she might have been mad, and I was worried that it would spoil her meal. We found out after a while that Becky was in the hospital because her brother got into a car accident. We ordered a platter of dim sum, a sample platter of Ruby Foo's house rolls, the bento box of dessert, a lychee mist for Olivia, and ginger passion flower tea. The sushi was great, there was sushi with sirloin steak in it, Chilean sea bass, smoked salmon lollipop roll, and another fish. The plum sauce made all of them taste like eel. The bento box dessert was really creative because it had apple pie in the shape of sushi, basically dough curled around apple curled around dough curled around apple and there was a macaroon sushi that was chocolate on the outside, coconut in the middle, and chocolate on the inside like a salmon sushi. There was also an ice cream in the middle that you had to grab with a straw. All in all, we were very satisfied and slightly drunk. We took a cab to Spring Street and Employee's Only. It is a bar that serves absinthe, it has an Arabic or key as a title and only the word Psychic in red in the window. There is red light inside and art deco painting the shelves of the drink display are clear green tinted glass lighted by normal colored Christmas string lights. The public is trendy, post hipster 30 year olds, the men were for the most part good looking as older men go and the women were conventionally good looking. We started with two absinthe drips in which the waiters lit a cube of sugar on top of the drink held in place with a spoon on fire and dropped it in the drink. It tasted like licorice and extremely strong. I was very afraid of it so I only sipped it and got about one centimeter through the drink. Olivia had been drinking and drank both our absinthe drinks. She also had one of the fancy drinks they made at the bar, some were of elderflower, pink with champagne, she had the one where they mash ginger, dried cranberries, and sugar in a tall glass with a mortar, pour in some lemon colored alcohol, and mix it. It was very fresh tasting. Olivia tripped off the absinthe and said that colors blurred when she shook her head around, was mesmerized by candles and lights, and said the bathroom tiles changed from red to black. Olivia also got a Tarot card reading from the psychic advertised in red on the window, a girl with black hair and a big hat, about choosing the more intelligent of two lovers. She continued to trip when we went back in a cab to the East Village where we went to m2m and I bought her an alaska roll to sober her up and myself an alaska roll and radish kimchi which was not that good. She was still tripping, but was very tired and I was going to stay over until at the last minute I decided to take the second to last train, she went to her dorm, and I went on the 1:20 train.