No sleep last night, too agitated; no sleep today, too hassled. Finally slept a bit late afternoon. Woke, the sun plunging, and hurried to get out in the daylight yet for my walk. Needed coffee first. As I stumbled past my notebook on the way to the pot I paused a moment and wrote down this poem:
If she doesn't love me(I pronounce Beatrice with the same three syllable accent as Patricia.)
she doesn't serve me;
If not her business,
not my gift.
The image gone...
The real girl gone...
No Beatrice &
No Patricia.
Then walking quickly across the St Anthony Bridge to get to the West Woods, already the sun set, I paused to hurriedly write this one:
How far from the face of the cliff?And noted: The image gone, good riddance, I don't need it anymore, but I sure hate to lose that hoped-for Patricia. She sent me some photographs, God she's cute. The point is, there's been a change in personality, I just have no interest anymore in a semi-Beatrice type image, however perfectly that image might understand and support my aspirations; I want a real girl, one who will pat me on the head and say she thinks I'm a nice guy, (thinking, "God, he's a stud.") So anyway, is my dreaming, and I think it's sane. --I will pull-up my Cervantes poem in a bit; and I continue to speculate on why I'm putting down on a public access blog things I otherwise all my life have kept to myself. I think in part it may be because I'm finally ready to enter my society, I've been an observer long enough; and I think in part that readiness might be because now I'm not alone. I have an immense contempt for the intellectual West, I've had it all my life. But I'm no longer the Lone Ranger, there are millions now who share that same contempt. They're called, the "Tea Party." They not only rebel against the bossiness of the elite, they find them stupid. Welcome. I find them fine company.
"This far,"
(He held his fingers nearly touching)
"But not falling yet."
Will consider this more later. Have to go buy stuff.
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There's just nobody around=========
When everybody's dead.
If there's nobody "out there"
There's nobody "in there".
You can imagine an
existent friend existent
--and have a chat.
You can't imagine
a new friend existent.
You can chat with Cervantes
--and I do.
But if you don't have a friend
to chat about your chat
--there's nobody there.
Wretchard's quote: "When you come right down to it, any sentient being with a foreknowledge of his own death is either motivated to achievement by a dry sense of humor or the intuition that he's part of a game whose ends are not immediately discernible, but is worthwhile playing anyway."
That "...the ends are not immediately discernible" in any absolute sense is a given, so people chose their own. Those choices can be clear or vague; there may also be, in the wholesome individual, a sense that what ever choices are made they may not in fact be those for which he was created, but there will be a faith yet that if the effort is made, in the end, finally, the purpose, whatever it may actually be, will be fulfilled. This is faith, faith that there is meaning, somehow, in every life well lived. I believe this is how I've lived my own odd life --energetically-- if not particularly well in any other sense.
The comment that strikes me though is the first part: "...motivated to achievement by a dry sense of humor." This is Wretchard speaking. I pay attention to him. I don't really know what he means.
I know that in daily life I can not have a conversation without cracking jokes. I do like to make people laugh, and it has in the past been called a "manipulation"; but while it can be that, and while it certainly greases the social skids, I don't think that's really what it is. Somehow, when I'm with people, there are just a lot of jokes to be made. My emails contain wit. I note though, that in my notebooks --millions of words-- there may not be a single joke. So it may be that humor is the way I must necessarily --preferably, anyway-- relate to my fellow man.
This doesn't clarify Wretchard's point, but it may move me closer to understanding Cervantes, who didn't find his genius until he found humor.
He certainly was uncomfortable in the literary society of his time, with fundamentally no good work until late in life that humor broke everything open. He didn't find comfort until he stepped outside his society and created his own world, making it perceptible through humor. The humor is of treatment, verbal and episodic, but primarily of concept, the Don, so far removed from sanity he couldn't be taken seriously, but so deep, true, and vital he couldn't be ignored.
There is no such character in my present imagining, but I do think I need something of that nature if I'm again to write well. I just do not like my society. I speak of "art", "serious literature". It reeks. I don't note it, it's been thirty years since it's even occurred to me America might have culture. It doesn't exist. I read a great deal, I've studied paintings --but absolutely nothing "serious" that's contemporary. There is good genre work, there's absolutely nothing presently "serious" that's worth the dirt between my toes. I pay little attention to the dirt between my toes, no attention at all to present "important work". But it is a huge isolation not to have a serious culture. --I do not think this culture can be faced. It would be like facing stink. Stink can't smell itself, everybody else knows it's stink. I think there has to be a "Don" somewhere, something totally outside of present opinion, a totally different world. If such a world were created, such a personality, it would resonate with those who still can think; and some note might be taken of academia and "culture". It would be mockery, but only as an aside. I could only be an aside, or the work wouldn't be truly serious.
Note on Wretchard's writing: It doesn't contain humor, it does contain wit. The wit could be seen as "dry humor", but I don't think that's at all his reference. I think his reference is his life; he knows how far he's moved outside of the elite circumstances wherein he was educated. An extraordinarily gifted man. He must have hoped for recognition from those people, but the more he works the further he moves away, and the less chance then he'll have that he'll ever be respected by that class to which in a better society he would naturally belong. This might be the "dry humor he sees: The harder he works, the further he sinks. The greater his insights, the more he fails. He just ain't gonna make it. Initially that had to hurt, now he probably sees it as an inescapable fate, and so sees it with humor. Irony would be an appropriate term. He emphasizes the humor --"dry humor". --He does have a great following though, among those who have sunk so low they're actually concerned with what is true. Losers! --These are good men.
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Can't sleep.
I'm eighteen, she's lovely.(Slight touch-ups on this thing three times. Think I've finally got it right.
Not eighteen, not even close;
She's lovely still.
I've no idea
what makes it so.
She's lovely.
=========
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