Lucinda Williams was on Letterman. They never show her up close, because she looks like some 100 year old Aunt. Really beat. Fact remains, she's one of the greats, and even if she's all torn only some sick blackhearted motherfucker would hold it against her. She is one of the greats, plain and simple. "Are you alright?" she sang over and over. It was too good for television -- too real. Uncomfortable. Only her out of focus, faded face made it televisual.
*
During jits, I went into the secret hidden upstairs and lay on my back. My facial tic is exploding and my left eye closes. I have no idea why. I can barely lie on my back, because the muscles spasm. Something is wrong with me. What is that something? Just growing old? Not having a career? Maybe it's coming off a week's sickness. Maybe it's seasonal affective disorder. How the fuck should I know how to live in the world of doubt. All I know is that I can feel the muscles in my back releasing and unreleasing and my eye is closing up even as we speak. There is the part of me that has given up, and the part that perseveres, time after time. I've been writing since before I had pubic hair, since before I had an inkling of a sense of who I was. And yet, here I am.
While rolling, still, perhaps because I'm coming off that bout with a lung infection, I gas quickly. "Maybe you're just bored," the guy I'm rolling with says to me. I lie on my back and think, well, that's the thing. I'm not. I learn something new about jits every day. It's daunting. So much. A world lies ahead.
A week ago, someone gave up while rolling with me. He said he'd have enough rolling with, what he called, the "Zen Mountain." Of course, this is flattering, although I never thought of myself in those terms. It was exactly what I wanted to be, at that moment, but it was only his ignorance that lead him to believe this was anything more than an illusion. I don't even know what a zen mountain is.
*
Flattery. Someone wrote me to express sympathy that I couldn't take pictures without my computer, and the way they said it, it was as though I was a runner with a foot cut off, unable to get out among the trails. I liked that. It confirmed that this was part of me, or some essence, at a time when I'm questioning what that essence is. And of course it bothered me. And of course, taking up the camera again made me feeling somehow whole. But still, it was only her ignorance speaking. It's no more what I am and what I do than anything, perhaps except for this. Not even this. Don't fool me. The essence of all things, to the oldest and wisest and pre-idiotic philosophers was change. I change here and you change here. Let's me lucky if we meet briefly for some french toast at breakfast. It's all we can ask for.
*
I've said it before. The problem with the writing courses at UML is that the profs try to make them too literary, and most of the students don't relate. And it doesn't matter to me, that they can't relate. They shouldn't relate, so it's not just that.
It's something else.
How to explain?
There is this instrument, writing, and you want to introduce it to the tribals, so do you have them read Henry James and spend five years pointing out psychological nuance that most of them will never recognize or even want to recognize? Do you have them read shitty essays and brainwash them into being good liberals? Do you make them doubt God? Do you make them save the seas? So you think back -- what is writing and what is it for and what is good writing and why does it work. Writing as a hammer. Building, destruction, contruction, repair.
In the next major paper, I'm going to have my students explain to me how to survive a zombie infestation. Sounds lax, no? And yet, in this, there is much. Problem solving. Thesis. The sense of a contemporary plague. Values: do we band together or do we fight alone? How do we survive? Objectively, candidly, without reservation, what does it take? And this in the face of the irrational. I'm having them read about the history of the black plague this week, because I'm that kind of guy. Why did Chaucer live in the plague, witness the distinction of, perhaps, a third of all humanity, and not mention it in his writing? Why is Chaucer not the exception? We put the question in forty minutes time. Beneath it all: aesthetics and God. During the plague years, so many gave up their values for fucking in the streets and stealing and backstabbing. How to survive the plague? I hope you see it is no simple question.
*
During jits, I went into the secret hidden upstairs and lay on my back. My facial tic is exploding and my left eye closes. I have no idea why. I can barely lie on my back, because the muscles spasm. Something is wrong with me. What is that something? Just growing old? Not having a career? Maybe it's coming off a week's sickness. Maybe it's seasonal affective disorder. How the fuck should I know how to live in the world of doubt. All I know is that I can feel the muscles in my back releasing and unreleasing and my eye is closing up even as we speak. There is the part of me that has given up, and the part that perseveres, time after time. I've been writing since before I had pubic hair, since before I had an inkling of a sense of who I was. And yet, here I am.
While rolling, still, perhaps because I'm coming off that bout with a lung infection, I gas quickly. "Maybe you're just bored," the guy I'm rolling with says to me. I lie on my back and think, well, that's the thing. I'm not. I learn something new about jits every day. It's daunting. So much. A world lies ahead.
A week ago, someone gave up while rolling with me. He said he'd have enough rolling with, what he called, the "Zen Mountain." Of course, this is flattering, although I never thought of myself in those terms. It was exactly what I wanted to be, at that moment, but it was only his ignorance that lead him to believe this was anything more than an illusion. I don't even know what a zen mountain is.
*
Flattery. Someone wrote me to express sympathy that I couldn't take pictures without my computer, and the way they said it, it was as though I was a runner with a foot cut off, unable to get out among the trails. I liked that. It confirmed that this was part of me, or some essence, at a time when I'm questioning what that essence is. And of course it bothered me. And of course, taking up the camera again made me feeling somehow whole. But still, it was only her ignorance speaking. It's no more what I am and what I do than anything, perhaps except for this. Not even this. Don't fool me. The essence of all things, to the oldest and wisest and pre-idiotic philosophers was change. I change here and you change here. Let's me lucky if we meet briefly for some french toast at breakfast. It's all we can ask for.
*
I've said it before. The problem with the writing courses at UML is that the profs try to make them too literary, and most of the students don't relate. And it doesn't matter to me, that they can't relate. They shouldn't relate, so it's not just that.
It's something else.
How to explain?
There is this instrument, writing, and you want to introduce it to the tribals, so do you have them read Henry James and spend five years pointing out psychological nuance that most of them will never recognize or even want to recognize? Do you have them read shitty essays and brainwash them into being good liberals? Do you make them doubt God? Do you make them save the seas? So you think back -- what is writing and what is it for and what is good writing and why does it work. Writing as a hammer. Building, destruction, contruction, repair.
In the next major paper, I'm going to have my students explain to me how to survive a zombie infestation. Sounds lax, no? And yet, in this, there is much. Problem solving. Thesis. The sense of a contemporary plague. Values: do we band together or do we fight alone? How do we survive? Objectively, candidly, without reservation, what does it take? And this in the face of the irrational. I'm having them read about the history of the black plague this week, because I'm that kind of guy. Why did Chaucer live in the plague, witness the distinction of, perhaps, a third of all humanity, and not mention it in his writing? Why is Chaucer not the exception? We put the question in forty minutes time. Beneath it all: aesthetics and God. During the plague years, so many gave up their values for fucking in the streets and stealing and backstabbing. How to survive the plague? I hope you see it is no simple question.
rabidus:
sounds interesting...