Down and out in nowhere New York

George Orwell once wrote a book called Down and Out in Paris and London. I picked it up because I've been poor, and was sure that I would be poor again soon, so it seemed like a good idea to do a little research. The book is great, for the most part. It becomes a kind of travelogue of a poor vagabonding European.

I am, once again, poor. Before, it wasn't my fault. My dad was a relatively new cable guy and my mom was a grocery store cashier. We had no money because we had no real income to speak of. Two newlyweds with two kids living in the bottom half of a rented house on long island doesn't really smack of money. Now, however, it is my fault. I have not yet gotten a job. Without a source of income, what is left of my thin savings (scraped together from working campus and summer jobs for the past four years) will wear away soon enough.

I need to get a job. More than that, however, I want to get a job. I thought the reason I have been paralyzed all summer because I couldn't settle on a career path I was interested in. In reality, I think, it is because I was much more interested in taking a break. I love having summers to read, watch movies, set my own schedule and the like. I should have been job searching, but I could not get myself behind the idea. Every week I would swear that the following Monday would be the starting point.

Now, however, I'm getting bored. I want out, again. And I don't have school to escape to this time.

Here are some things that I am thinking about:

I want to work for a publishing company. Preferably one that focuses on new non-fiction (history, IR, political commentary...). Masochistically the idea of reading through hundreds of terrible manuscripts to find a few gems sounds good to me.

I want to work for an NGO specializing in foreign affairs like the Council on Foreign Relations or the Center for Strategic International Studies. I am currently looking at a bunch of cool internships.

I want to do something in education, though now that I am drifting further from college the kinds of opportunities I am interested in seem to be dwindling. I do not necessarily want to teach because I fear that I am so much more interested and passionate in the subject than in the actual teaching that I would make for a terrible teacher. I would not mind teaching at the tertiary level, except for the inevitable moral qualms about doing nothing with my life and perpetuating a cycle of school for school's sake. I want to do something outside of the school for once.

I want to write again. Preferably non-fiction. I could be a good research intern or somesuch, eventually aspiring to writing my own articles and maybe even books.

This is what I'm working with. Today, Tuesday August 11th, is my Monday starting point.

Plato and I

The last line of my last post has been bugging me.

I have no insight to offer.

Insight is the doing of wisdom. The word seems to come from the Platonic understanding of the universe wherein what we perceive is just the shadow of the true world thrown on the cave wall. To see past the facade, into the true nature of the thing. "Penetrating vision or discernment," says Dictionary.com. To imply that vision is penetrating is to imply that there is something to penetrate.

I have to insight to offer = I cannot see past the facade, I cannot see into the true nature of thing, my vision cannot penetrate.

My vision has never been more than adequate anyway.

The highest praise I have ever received on an essay was that I offered rare insight into the subject matter. That's right! I did not simply demonstrate proficiency in the content area, I saw into the truth of the subject. I pushed past the superficial and observed the deep, complicated truth of the subject.

And now I have no insight to offer.

Look. I am no Platonist. Not that I've read enough Plato to even fully comprehend what that means. I do not believe that beneath the surface of our perceived reality lies a more true reality. I do not believe that I am immobilized and chained to a wall observing the shadows cast by the real world behind me.

I am of the opinion that truth should come free of a capital 't'. I think that, while absolutes exist, shades of gray predominate.

However, I do believe in insight. The perceived world is just that - perceived. While it exists whether or not I perceive it, my perception may be superficial. My observations may not push past the obvious to get at the center of the thing.

Insight takes work. That is where I was going with this. Rather than throwing my hands up and declaring that I am all out of insight, I should have set myself to the work of penetrating the superficial and seeing beyond the obvious.

On talking to strangers

Other people are suspect.

I am very lucky in that I can usually tell what I'm thinking. After I sit down and work it out I can generally be certain in my beliefs.

I have to make a relatively tough choice by Thursday morning. Do I purchase a building that will take at least a year to get together? Do I wait and search more thoroughly for something that is a bit more expensive but can be ready sooner? Do I take my time or do I leap without looking?

I tend to be pretty impulsive, but I hate when people do not think things through.

The people offering the building are great and I am sure they have only the most genuine of intentions, but I'm not sure that we have compatible interests.

Business reminds me more of some branch of anthropology with its glittering subjectivity and pretensions at fact than of the serious investigation, analysis of relevant facts, and synthesis of conclusions that I had thought it would be.

I can offer no insight today.

Lord I was born a ramblin' man

When it's time for leaving, I hope you'll understand.

Facing the rest of my life as an unsegmented whole with only prospective plans to mar its unblemished surface is daunting. I know it's a false perspective to see it like that; like a man staring up at a sheer cliff face without looking down at how far he's already come. Still, there are ways of seeing things that are pretty ingrained in my skull regardless of conclusions I've come to proving the contrary.

There are things I am supposed to do now. Go to grad school, get a good job, make money, start a family, buy a house. It's a shame I won't live forever. I want to do all of those things. But not right now. I have too much to do first.

When I finally do get to settle down, I'll probably be approaching eighty.

Things I need to do before I start a family and find a place I want to live for a while:

• Start the bookstore
• Start the accompanying programs
• Go back to school
• Publish some short stories
• Live somewhere else for a while
• Explore
• Publish some scholarly works
• Figure out what I think is important enough to do for the rest of my life, and find an equivalent career
• Find the right person/people to work/live with

Things I can do after I start a family:

• Work at the bookstore/accompanying programs
• Help start a school
• Write a book/more short stories/more scholarly works

I guess the difference seems to be mobility. I like being able to, at the drop of a hat, leave. Despite its strains, I think that I like living at three different places at the same time on some level. I can't get comfortable like I could in college, but part of me really does not want to get comfortable right now.

I want to move. I want my own space. Are those two desires incompatible? Whenever I travel I am sure to rent or share space, never to own or settle. When I stay still long enough, the space I stay in becomes my own. Can I shrink down what I consider to be my "own space" enough to travel with it? A few possessions (a few books and a towel)?

I don't think that would work. Possessions are not the same as space. I think it is familiarity that composes the kind of comfort I am seeking.

I do not want to stay where I am for too long. It is a nice area, but I have the itch to keep moving. And to form lasting attachments.

I am unclear.

Y'all don't know me

Right. So. It's been a long time.

I've spent the past few weeks doing all of those things that I love to do when I don't have something more substantial to do. I slept late. I read. I played many videogames. I watched a ton of movies and television. I thought about the future and I reflected on the past. And so on.

The trouble is that it's tough to stop doing these things when you've started. I would love to continue reading for hours upon hours every day until I get sick of it, as I inevitably will (as I do with everything). But in the end I never have the time. I spent almost a whole day playing videogames last week. I beat two of them in one day. I wish I could take the time to hit bottom with it. If I could just let myself be immersed in videogames for a week or two I would be so sick of them by the end that I would beg to go back to work.

It's a difference of happinesses, I think. These things occupy me. When I indulge in overwhelming quantities of reading, watching movies, playing videogames, and sleeping in, I am happy. For a time. But I am never satisfied. When I was writing my theses I was crazy and the pressure was intense, but I felt good doing it. And that feeling wasn't so fleeting as the feeling I get from beating a game or watching yet episode of The Office.

Now, don't get me wrong, I believe that reading (some) books is good for you. I believe that it can lead to satisfaction and durable, long-lasting happiness. In fact, I beleive that watching (some) movies can have a similar effect. As can playing (some) videogames. It's the overindulgence that gets to me. But I don't do well with pacing myself. When I was writing my theses I would do it in five or six hour shifts. Of course, then I would go home and watch some stupid movie or drink with my friends to unwind, but my point is that it was the same kind of immersion. I don't read just one book at a time.

My family does a reading competition every summer. We split into teams to handicap those with several jobs or a five-year-old reading level. I'm paired with my step-father this year. Any other year that would have been declared unfair (he used to do over 10,000 pages a summer), but he has a second job now that prohibits him from spending many waking hours at lesiure. My mom is with my brother, another previously prohibited pairing, okayed this year due to my brother's seeming lack of appetite for reading. My sisters are paired with my girlfriend, and the three of them are currently kicking our collective asses.

My oldest younger sister takes this competition very seriously. Whenever she has another book to add to the list she walks downstairs, book in hand, and takes her time writing the title, author, and amount of pages on her chart. Or she has me do it.

I don't ever remember losing. I'm sure I have, but I don't remember it. The losers buy the winners a book each.

I went to B&N yesterday. My grandfolks had gotten me a gift card there for graduation. I knew it was dangerous walking in. I had a $25 gift card. When I saw the buy two get one free section I knew I was doomed. I don't remember exactly how much I spent, but I do know that it was far too much considering how many books I still have to read and how unemployed I am.

I finally own The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. I also picked up two books by an author I've been eyeing for some time now, The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon (author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay). And I picked up one that just looked like too much fun to pass up, Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis.

Yes, I learned my lesson. When I open my bookstore the first thing customers will see will be a table full of irresistable titles with some kind of discount involved.

I want to start working out again. I get carried away with everything incorporeal and then I forget that I have a body that needs to be used as well. I forget sleep, forget food, forget interaction for hours if not days. If I could only wake up sometime before noon and do something physical I would remember to be human again.

But then I'd need to go food shopping.

What's that?

What is the difference between a good person and a great person? Probably quite a few things. But for me, one of the key differences is responsibility. A great person takes responsibility for their own lives and their own decisions. Generally, for a great person, if their life is shit they look no further than themselves for why.

Now, that is an enormous generalization. Mandela probably never blamed himself for being in prison for two decades. Then again, after having read his autobiography, though he was angry and upset about being imprisoned, I did not get the impression that he considered his life to be shit. In fact all clues point to the opposite. He studied by correspondence, he built a community in the prison, he continued to fight.

What I've heard of Martin Luther King Jr. suggests that he often despaired in his fight, that he was often scared and feared that his efforts were useless. And yet he continued on. He always had his faith in the group around him, in himself, and in his god. I would have entered into a ten round knockout fight with him on his faith in god, but I respect the hell out of him for drawing such power from it.

Now do you catch my drift? Great people take responsibility. And they fuck up. And they own it.

Example: Jon Stewart (yes, I am invoking a comedian as a great person) entered into an extremely long debate with Cliff May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, on our country's use of torture in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. During the course of this heated discussion Cliff May asked Jon Stewart, point blank, whether or not he thought president Truman was a war criminal for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was a pause, and then Jon said that yes, he did think that.

A few episodes later, Jon began the show by saying, "That was a stupid thing to say." He took responsibility for his words, did not blame the comment on May for having badgered him to that point, and simply apologized.

Guess what got me thinking about all this. Rocky Balboa. During the movie, Sly gets into an argument with his son after his son accuses him of 'casting a big shadow' and of being the reason his life sucks. This is Rocky's response (abbreviated):

[...] Then the time come for you to be your own man and take on the world, and you did. But somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you're no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. And not you, not me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! Now if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you! You're better than that.

Though the writing is a little less than subtle, sometimes its nice to be hit over the head with a message so clear. And the delivery is pretty fucking cool. It's hard to get chills from Sylvester Stallone's acting. And yet...

The point I am lamely attempting to make is this: This doesn't feel like a moment of crisis to me. Maybe it isn't one. But it is indubitable that there is too much work to be done for the good people not to be great. If we prove unequal to the challenges facing us, if we shirk our responsibility and blame a failing economy or the generations that came before us, if we locate our strength anywhere but inside ourselves, we will fail just as many good people have before us.

Commencement

The event of beginning.

I am now commenced. Which is to say that before this magical event I was not commenced. I had not yet started. None of that counted. What freedom! What a fucking waste!

What were the past 21 years if not a commencement? What are the next fifty? The following thirty? Does life not really begin until death? I know far too many people who died before "commencement" to make that title seem anything but a trite and slightly insulting premise.

It seems almost classist in its ignorance. As if all those who did not "commence" never began their lives. Don't even get me started on "graduation"...

Anyway, the college umbilical cord has been mostly cut (but for the part where I am serving on the Board of Trustees for the next two years), and I am now set adrift to "start" my life.

But fuck y'all, I started years ago. Didn't we all?

For example. Three years ago I moved to Washington DC for two months. Yes, it was a limited experience. But for those two months I lived on my own in an apartment that I paid for out of my own pocket. I bought my own food, paid my own way for transportation, and fell flat on my face in any attempt to build my own community. Thank fucking god I had that experience.

I'm looking for an apartment. A place to put my stuff. And I want a job. Something to pay for the apartment and for food and some transportation when my bicycle is not sufficient.

I'm also looking to finally put together that bookstore I've been hinting at all year. Let's see if I can do it before next spring.

I also want to take a break. I've been going nearly non-stop for the past seventeen years in a constant cycle of academia, almost always subjected to other people's standards. The way I learned to deal with that was to set my own standards higher than theirs. I want to take a break from that, if only for a few weeks. I want to read what I want to. Write whatever. I want to watch TV all day again, like I did over the winter when I was without motivation, but I want to enjoy it. I don't want to feel that quiet desperation that nags at me when I have something else I should be doing.

Commencement is a beginning in the same sense that every change is a beginning. One might as well hold a ceremony like that for learning how to drive, reading a great novel, having the kind of conversation that gets burned into your memory, and so on.

I'm beat. I moved out of the place that I've called home for four years today and I know that I will never live there again. Oddly enough, I don't feel all mushy like I thought I would. Maybe it will hit me later. Maybe I'm not that nostalgic.

The good times are killing me

I should be editing my theses so that I can turn them in tomorrow.

Instead I am procrastinating by going fucking crazy.

I feel like my insides have been carved out to make room for more space. Needlessly more efficient in one sense. My eyes are itchy. They won’t stay dry.

I feel like a song by the Presidents of the United States of America.

Lump lingered last in line for brains
And the ones she got were sorta rotten and insane
Small things so sad that birds could land
Is lump fast asleep or rockin’ out with the band

I mean really, what the fuck?

Kitty on my foot and I want to touch it.

I repeat; what the fuck?

Every time this happens I can feel it coming. I spent as much of yesterday as was humanly possible alone in my room, studiously copying J.D. Salinger in his cowardice. Sometimes I need days off. I can’t bear to be around other people. Or do anything productive.

I mentioned to one of my closest friends today that I was looking forward to therapy tomorrow because of all of the things from my past that I’ve been reliving this week. He laughed at me and said, “We have such tough lives, you and I.”

That man is a fucking genius.

And that was the essence of the matter. My life is the only compelling argument that can be made for an ‘intelligent designer’. I am cushy and coddled by all of life’s eccentricities. I am probably the luckiest motherfucker ever to have been conceived.

And yet.

Sometimes it takes me a while to shake it all off. It reminds me of when I used to pole vault. Because nearly everything does. Every now and again, especially when you are as inconsistent a person as I am, you have a terrible vault. You’ll end up gasping for breath staring up at the sky covered in bruises and scrapes laying on the ground somewhere surprisingly far from where you meant to land. And it’ll take you a while to get back in. In high school I helped coach the new kids. Every time one of them would have a truly disastrous fall we would tell them, “Okay, now you’re a real pole vaulter.” In the end, you knew who were the best vaulters, not necessarily from how high they could vault, but from how quickly they could brush themselves off and get back on the runway.

I remember days when I would fall every time. I was getting on a stiffer pole or something and every fucking time I jumped the pole would spit me back out onto the runway as if I’d just slapped its mama. And every fucking time I would pick myself back up, sometimes bleeding, sometimes bruised, and get back behind the pole until the coach told me to stop.

It’s much easier to throw yourself twelve feet into the air over and over again without knowing if you’ll land on the mats after having fallen a few times than it is to throw yourself back into life after having fallen a few times. When you fall in pole vault it makes you angry and excited and you need to keep going until you get it right. What the fuck is right in life? Pole vault is so much less ambiguous than other things. Questions like, “were you doing the right thing?” boil down to, “are you bleeding?” Very easy to tell.

I want to punch the world in the face. I’d give up my easy-ass life if everyone I came into contact with could have an easier life. Why doesn’t life work like that?

Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?

Hey! Hello in there! Hey, what’s so important? What’cha got here that’s worth living for?

All that I need to know in life I’ve learned from movies. However, asking a Mostly-Dead man such a tough question is pretty unfair. Most Not-Even-Somewhat-Dead people can’t answer that question on the spot. Trust Westly, the man in black, the Dread Pirate Roberts, to nail it on the first try. While Mostly-Dead.

Though that is one of the few parts in The Princess Bride that I don’t at all jive with. Okay, so Westly answers Miracle Max with, “True love.” But who the fuck would love Buttercup? Not only is she marrying some other guy, but she is fucking miserable for the entire movie. What a terrible character! Fuck, I would prefer to marry Inigo, motivated my revenge, or Fezzik, motivated by friendship and love, than Buttercup. Why is he so in love with this bitch?

Consider the following: Buttercup bosses Westly around incessantly in the beginning of the movie. Apparently Westly is already in love with her at this point and this bossing does not deter him. Why the fuck not? She is being mean! Has he no foresight? This will come back to haunt you after the passion has died. Believe me, man, I’ve been there.

Next: She agrees to marry Prince What’s-His-Fuck. Why? Because “according to the law of the land, he can choose any bride he wants”? Are Florin and Guilder code for Saudi Arabia and medieval France? And she takes it? Balls.

Next: “Will you promise not to hurt him?” Once they escape from the fire swamp, Westly is ready to fight and if need be to die in order to stay with the one he loves. Buttercup pretty much gives him to a man that she knows she can’t trust. Jesus.

Next: Only AFTER a fucking nightmare about being publicly shamed for her misdeeds does Buttercup realize that she can’t marry Humper-Fuck. It takes her conscious manifesting as an external character (“Bow to the Queen of Slime, the Queen of Filth, the Queen of Putrescence. Boo. Boo. Rubbish. Filth. Slime. Muck. Boo”) for her to man up and tell Humper-Boy no. And even that she fucks up. She speaks in ultimatums. Either you call off the wedding, or I’ll off myself. How tough is it to counter an ultimatum? We’ve been in Humper-Slut’s shoes before. Just step to the left and parry. Hmm… Cake or Death you say? Well, I’ll have the chicken then. Easy fucking peasy. Whatever peasy is.

Next: At the end of the movie that bitch jumps out the window and falls for like a full thirty seconds. If there is anything that I have learned from Monty Python and the Holy Grail it is this:

Sir Bedevere: There are ways of telling whether she is a witch.
Peasant 1: Are there? Oh well, tell us.
Sir Bedevere: Tell me. What do you do with witches?
Peasant 1: Burn them.
Sir Bedevere: And what do you burn, apart from witches?
Peasant 1: More witches.
Peasant 2: Wood.
Sir Bedevere: Good. Now, why do witches burn?
Peasant 3: ...because they're made of... wood?
Sir Bedevere: Good. So how do you tell whether she is made of wood?
Peasant 1: Build a bridge out of her.
Sir Bedevere: But can you not also build bridges out of stone?
Peasant 1: Oh yeah.
Sir Bedevere: Does wood sink in water?
Peasant 1: No, no, it floats!... It floats! Throw her into the pond!
Sir Bedevere: No, no. What else floats in water?
Peasant 1: Bread.
Peasant 2: Apples.
Peasant 3: Very small rocks.
Peasant 1: Cider.
Peasant 2: Gravy.
Peasant 3: Cherries.
Peasant 1: Mud.
Peasant 2: Churches.
Peasant 3: Lead! Lead!
King Arthur: A Duck.
Sir Bedevere: ...Exactly. So, logically...
Peasant 1: If she weighed the same as a duck... she's made of wood.
Sir Bedevere: And therefore...
Peasant 2: ...A witch!

That bitch floats. She’s a witch. Burn her.

In conclusion, I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s so important. What do I have here that’s worth living for? It would be interesting to have to justify your existence every now and again, even if it was to Billy Crystal dressed up as an ancient Jewish grandmother. I think I’d be able to answer the question. Maybe not if I were put on the spot and Mostly-Dead.

What do I have that’s worth living for? Other people. Unfinished and never to be finished work. Potential. The sheer amount of great films I haven’t yet seen or books I haven’t yet read. All of the experiences I haven’t had yet. All of the places I want to go. All of the things I could begin enthusiastically and end cynically. All of the problems I haven’t solved. All of the Mondays I have yet to hate and all of the Fridays I have yet to enjoy. The kids I want to have. The sorrow and despair I have yet to feel. The videogames I have yet to play. The love I have yet to make. Every grey hair and inevitable lack of hair I have yet to earn. To feel my body begin to lose its grip, and to know that every wrinkle, scar, paunch, and loss of motor control was worth having had those things. All of the music I have yet to listen to. All of the fights I have yet to have.

That kind of stuff and some more.

I wonder if Miracle Max would have brought me back, if my cause would have been worthy enough. Or if I would have grabbed his ass by the throat (strange visual, no?) and demanded my life back.

Jesus balls.

Memorial

And so it came to pass that they did gather together to mourn his passing.

The memorial was yesterday, and it was beautiful. Quite a few members of the literature faculty were involved. Very few broke down while they on stage. The readings were moving and varied, centering around his tastes and what was important to him.

Trying not to cry for over an hour is pretty exhausting. Every tear that escapes your control feels as hot as blood. Every tactic you use to keep from breaking down (breathing deeply, distracting yourself, biting your finger, concentrating on something simple, and finally, looking up to keep the tears filling your eyes from spilling down your face) ends up taking much more energy than it's worth.

And in the end, who cares? I was trying not to cry because I knew that if I was to start crying I would be A) loud and B) unable to stop for some time. But if I could have done it quietly, if I could have sat there and leaked stoically for an hour and a half, I would have felt so much better after.

I hate to be touched when I am not feeling good. When I am sad, upset, depressed, frustrated, angry, whatever. I hate physical contact. I didn't realize that until yesterday. When I'm in a good mood I want nothing more than to touch, to hold, to brush against, to cuddle, to fight, to play. In a bad mood nothing feels good or comforting. I'm realizing more and more that I am the only person that can bring me back around. If I get upset, I need to be the one who calms myself down and sets myself straight. That used to be my mom's job. Strange, right? You only realize when you grow up all of the things that were done for you as a child.

It's too easy to stay in a funk. A man that I admired, a man that inspired me, a friend of mine is dead. I have no possible future with him in it. I can no longer send him articles from the Times that I found interesting. I can no longer expect snarky return messages that point out eight things I had not even begun to think about. And I treasure that sorrow. But I also get this picture of my head of Steven looking at me mourning him and saying in that characteristic Steven manner, "Well? What are you waiting for?"

And so I reorient myself, forever changed and forever remembering, but moving onwards, towards the goals he helped me set.

Damn I miss him.

Haec credam a deo pio, a deo justo, a deo scito?

Back to the use of the word ‘I’. Have you ever noticed the possessive sound of that word? I lost a friend recently. It was my loss, my grief. You can't have any.

As if no one can ever feel what you are feeling.

I get sick of people who feel they are unique. I got sick of myself feeling that I was unique. That somehow I had the very hardest life imaginable. That my regrets were somehow especially regrettable, my dark past even more mysterious and ominous. We get lost in the myths we create for ourselves. I know people who have had lives that are more terrible than get described in the most intense novels and movies, and I know people whose lives are worse than that. I understand that, “someone else has it worse” is no comfort to anyone, but when you’ve seen it yourself (I’m not talking even about experiencing it), it makes it more difficult to dole out the same sympathy.

I do feel sympathy, and I am sorry for their loss, but I am also more aware of the greed involved in grief. Death is a difficult subject. A lot of people try to avoid thinking about it. When someone dies there is inevitably a vacuum where they used to be. The rest of us stand around that vacuum thinking that we’ve just lost something. But we never had it. Not in the abstract legal sense like your home or your person. We had it in the fleeting, temporal sense like the water flowing down a rushing river can be said to be water rushing down a river. Sure it is, right now, but in moments it is vapor, or water pooling into a pond, or water cascading down a mountain. Your house is yours because you paid for it (hopefully). Your person is yours because of your inaliable legal rights granted upon birth in this country (Locke did specify Life, Liberty, and property, but Limb was included in his discussion in the second Treatise). The more temporal loss is healed by memories and such. The more abstract is healed by replacing the object lost.

So we lose people. I lost him. But some people do both. They lose him, and they lose him. They lose the temporal, fleeting ownership and the abstract ownership. The former is constructed of interactions and communication, the latter of a kind of objectification. The person lost becomes less than a person to someone who held onto them as property. They are then like the house, owned but not respected, mourned until replaced by something else to mourn about.

What I'm trying to say is this: There is always an element of ownership in our relationships with other people. It doesn't have to be objectifying ownership. Death makes us come face to face with how we own people. I think Paul Varjak put it best in Breakfast at Tiffany's:

You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.

Drink all day, 'cause the country's at war

I didn’t know you could cry in dreams.

I had a dream not long back wherein I sobbed like I do when something breathtakingly bad happens. I was crying because a friend of mine, who I recently lost,-

Notice the use of the word ‘I’.

-was there. I don’t recall what he said or did. He may just have stood there, just slightly to my left and facing me, and said nothing. I knew he was dead in the dream and that was why I was crying. I remember vaguely that when he first appeared I was overjoyed to see him. But then I remembered that he was dead and the conversations that I wanted to have with him died on my tongue.

And I sobbed. I cried so hard in that dream that it hurt. When I woke up I realized that I had been crying into my pillow. Real life being a slightly easier environment to control yourself in, I quickly got a handle on myself. My friend had been dead for weeks and I was beginning to move on. At least consciously.

So that’s when I learned that you can cry in your dreams. I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised. I’ve had sex in my dreams, I’ve been stabbed and shot in my dreams, I’ve been dumped in my dreams, I’ve fallen from great heights in my dreams. Why should crying be exceptional? But it was.

Lump sat alone on a bench in the park

I rarely shave. Or cut my hair. But I did last night. It was too humid to go on with a thick, scraggly beard and a mop of hair. My friends can hardly recognize me. I tend to do this twice a year now. So I can see where they get confused.

I look like two different people. One is bigger, fuller, and seems to have a bigger appetite. The contrast between my eyes and beard, the way my hair never stays in the same place, these things, I think, help to create a persona. When my hair is short and I am (relatively) clean shaven, I look more severe. My head looks taller. I look more like the scholar-athlete I once was. Though, ironically, when I was a scholar-athlete I looked like a crazy hippy.

I go through two or three days of people running up to me to feel my face. I get compliments and comments. “Did you lose a bet?” “You look gorgeous!” And so on. It’s interesting, because I don’t see much of a difference. For me, it’s just hair, despite the apparent perceptions I’ve noticed above.

The one difference I notice is this: I pay more attention to my appearance. It’s a habit thing. I don’t often look at myself in mirrors. I don’t often pay attention to how I look. My self image is fueled nearly exclusively by how I feel. I feel great about myself when nothing hurts and I am full of energy. I feel down on myself when I feel sick or pained. However, when I have to pay attention (to make sure I don’t cut my ears off or something), and then double check to make sure I don’t have an accidental and asymmetrical soul patch, I pay attention to myself. Then, for the next few days, I look at myself in mirrors. I notice how my body changes throughout the day. I even wear clean clothes and pick them out based on how they look on me rather than on what’s closest to the top of the pile.

Strange, right?

I like the way I look. I understand that I don’t demonstrate many excessively aesthetic physical qualities that people tend to look for, and that’s not me being self-deprecating. This will probably sound pretty egotistical, but I don’t look for those things in other people, so I don’t look for them in myself either. I have never met another human being who agrees with me on who is beautiful and who isn’t. My girlfriend and I come close to agreement, but usually only on famous people.

I don’t give a fuck about the size of her tits or the shape of his ass. For me it’s about the whole. And how a person moves in and thinks of themselves. I am not physically attracted to someone who isn’t physically attracted to themselves, though I’ve made mistakes there in the past.

What I’m saying here is not that beauty is completely subjective or relative. I am just convinced that it is more comprehensive than the particular.

For example: types. What the fuck? “I only like tall blondes.” “I only like younger redheads.” And so on. What does that even mean? It sounds like something they heard someone cool say when they were young and decided was cool to imitate. Where do people learn this stuff?

For me it is a lot like only being attracted to one sex. Limiting and silly. Maybe you’ve never been attracted to anyone from the same sex, or the opposite sex. Does that necessarily mean that you are never going to be? I’ll never understand straight people. Or gay people.

What I’m saying is this – these designations are arbitrary. “Straight” really means “relatively straight.” Just because you are attracted to redheads doesn’t mean you won’t fall for a brunette. And in the end, I think that people will realize that their so-called types are really just what remain of their young fetishes. Maybe you like tall blondes with big boobs. What you are probably saying is that you are abstractly/generally more attracted to tall blonds with big boobs. In reality many particular people, of many different ‘types’, attract you to them – regardless of blondness or boobness. And there’s probably a pretty big psychological component. The social component makes sense. You seek to emulate those you look up to, and they say that big boobed blondes are the way to go, so you hold that up as the shining light of beauty.

I am, needless to say, not a big boobed blonde. I am a mid-sized, brownish-haired, athletic-ish, young man. And I like my body. I joke a lot about my enormous ego and inflated opinion of myself, but in reality I think it’s just the right size. I tend to judge myself by the same metric I judge others. And vice versa.

Those poor fucks.

I'm so happy, 'cause today I found my friends

Have I become the character I once created to entertain?

That's the question that's been haunting me for the past (let's see now) three minutes or so.

Listen.

I'm the kind of person that really likes to make people laugh. When I find that a certain style of joke or an inflection in my voice or whatever elicits more laughter than something else, I use it more often. I continually seek to improve this, but I occasionally get stuck in habits and sometimes I just think about other things and let autopilot kick in.

In effect, what happens is this. I create a character - a clown of sorts - in order to make people laugh. I create this character intentionally and with the explicit purpose of entertainment. I assume that everyone still knows me. I assume that everyone knows that I do this to play and that this isn't who I am. When I say shit derisively or in mock angry tones I expect that my friends will understand the distinction I have drawn between the joke, which they usually laugh at, and how I feel. I'll make fun of movies that I really love if someone else likes them and I'm feeling playful. This is not to make the other person feel bad about liking this movie, but instead to make them laugh with me about it.

I forget sometimes that not everyone can read my mind. I am often told that I am nearly transparent. I prefer being transparent. I feel like it is more honest. This is one reason why it confuses me when people tell me that they can't tell if I'm joking, or say that I often behave like a dick.

So what to do? Have I become this character, or is it just that my friends and so on are too quick to judge? Have my jokes become more subtle? Un-fucking likely. Should I quit the character and playing and just deliver things straight up? I feel like that'd be boring. Plus, I don't often perform in my life unless it is in this venue.

I think I have a better idea. I will be me, as always, and if who I am is distasteful to others, they can tell me to my face, like I would them. Is it bravery or honesty that makes you tell your friend when they crossed a line? For me it is honesty. Bravery implies you are doing something extra. Honesty implies that if you don't do it, then you are being dishonest. If you aren't brave people forgive you. If you aren't honest, there are negative implications. Perhaps it is also brave to be honest.

Doesn't everyone think like this?

A crisis of faith

What the fuck am I doing?

When you spend five to ten hours a day in front of a computer screen, you sometimes lose focus on why the fuck you are there in the first place.

So, I was browsing facebook for the first time in weeks when I happened to glance at some new feature or whatever that lists recent posts or whatever that your friends have made. I recognized a good friend of mine in army fatigues in an album labeled "Iraq". I new she was headed out, but seeing her with a gun in her hand, smiling on Saddam's old throne and so on, was way more than I was expecting.

Facebook does this. It is like the New York Times, but all about your friends. You are looking for one thing, but meanwhile several other things catch your eye, and half of them have to do with the cruelty of man. It's like riding your bike too fast in a densely wooded area. You are focused on the path for fear of falling otherwise, but you want to focus on avoiding all of the branches that keep slapping you in the face.

Seeing her there, all purposeful and full of purpose and so on, really put into perspective all of my sitting and writing. What have you done in the past few months, Lis? Oh, just traveled to Iraq, led a squadron of men, and disarmed some IEDs. Probably saved a bunch of lives. You know. The usual. What have you done with your fucking life, Chris? Um, I wrote some papers.

I am nothing but potential. What the fuck is potential, anyway? It's a pretty amorphous thing. I could potentially contribute to the discourse about conflict resolution and peace making. I could potentially attempt to spearhead a local educational reform movement. I could potentially open a great local bookstore. I could potentially be the one who finally normalizes relations between the US and Cuba, or Iran, or whatever the fuck. But I haven't. And I probably won't. At least not any time coming soon to a theater near... and so on.

I don't know, man. I just feel disgusted sometimes. But what the hell else am I to do? Somewhere inside I do feel like these theses can contribute to making the world a better place. Sometimes I am really convinced that this bookstore is going to happen, and that it will be the stimulus for the community to rally around when I finally launch into local educational reform.

I just don't want to be locked into mindless academia, producing bodies of work that will be read by no one but those who grade it. Fuck that. The stakes are too bloody high. What will I say when some kid asks me, in ten years or so, what I did when I saw injustice? What I said when I saw a system that was broke beyond recognition? I feel like Lis will say, "I stood up for what I believed in, fought the fight I thought was right, and did my level goddamn best to make this world better for all who inhabit it." And I'll stand convinced. What the fuck will I say?

Depression shmepression

Who's gonna save my soul?

I've dropped off the face of the earth for a while. Didn't see it coming, but then again, who does? If you saw the end of the earth, you'd probably stay the fuck away. Maybe you'd post a huge sign saying "END OF THE EARTH. TURN BACK NOW, YOU SILLY MOTHERFUCKERS" so that others could hope to avoid it.

A professor (and I like to think a friend) of mine died last Thursday. They say it was cancer. I say it was his body's jealousy of his mind. The man was chock full of wit, energy, and insight. He was 70, so his body must have been looking at that mind and thinking to itself, jealously. It must have been thinking, like an old man whose beautiful wife ages much more gracefully than him, "this is unfair. Just a few years ago I was the coveted one, I was what people were attracted to when they sought me out." And like that jealous husband who eventually goes insane from the jealousy and the paranoia that his disproportionately beautiful wife sleeping around behind his back, his body may have reasoned that simultaneously ending its and his mind's lives was the only way they could be equal and together again.

Yeah, that was fucked up.

I miss him. I keep thinking of his laugh, his tangents during class, his mocking and provoking emails, his passion for his work, his ability to fuck with you. He understood wit in a way that I've never seen before.

So I fell off the edge of the world. Didn't see it coming. And now I'm scrabbling back up. I met with my therapist earlier in the week. She remarked that she hadn't seen me this bad before. Which got me to thinking about times that I was much further down than this.

Quite a few people I know have died in the past year or so. Steven was the most recent, but my uncle died last term and my great-grandfather died over the summer. My step-father's grandfather died over the winter. My girlfriend's grandfather died in the winter as well.

Losing my uncle was probably the hardest for me. To some degree all of the rest (except for Steven) were very old and not completely present. My uncle was in his thirties and he was gunned down by a friend of his. It's fucked up to think about it, but I think I may be more upset about Steven's death than my uncles. I was closer to Steven. My uncle I hadn't seen in years and when he was around he was pretty peripheral to my awareness. Steven was front and center of the classroom, he was in my inbox, his comments were on my papers, we met in his office to discuss politics and the state of the news-media.

I feel like this is some kind of grief-quantum. Attempting to measure how much grief I have experienced over certain people's deaths. Yes, I get that it is disrespectful and a bit disgusting. Hey, the US did it with blood back in the day. Blood quantum anyone? If your father was full-blooded Cherokee and your mother was full-blooded European you were less than 1/2 white (or something) because the man has more power or something. I don't really remember. I do remember that it was racist and arbitrary.

To be perfectly honest though, the worst depression I've ever had was after a girl broke up with me. I feel like I'm saying this a lot in this post but, how fucked up is that? Great men die and I am sad for a time. A girl I dated for a year and a half breaks up with me and I descend to the greatest depths of depression and don't even attempt to crawl back up for months. I remember laying on the floor of a shower in a hotel in Matagalpa, Nicaragua, crying because I was so feverish and delirious that I thought that girl was in there with me, still breaking up with me. Or something.

So I've been worse, even if worse was less justified.

The trouble with this depression now though is that I need to write. I can't focus when I feel like this. Or maybe I can't focus and I feel like this? I can't focus and so I feel like this? I'm not sure. The bottom line is that I am still struggling on a chapter for my thesis that should have been done on Wednesday. At least I can put pen to paper now. That's an improvement. I just need to be able to write more than a page a day. Unless I get an 80 day extension.

I'm beginning to look at graduation with the hungry eyes of someone who has been inside a really comfortable and engaging jail for the past 17 years. Academia is really all I know with any experience or certainty. My academic career has advanced in fits and starts like a kid learning to run. I'll get up and start running, fast enough to escape my protective mother, and then promptly fall on my face. I'm ready to get out of here and fall on my face somewhere else for a while. Then I'll probably come back. I've heard that prisoners who have been in jail for a substantial amount of time crave the bars and the routine when they are finally released.

Anyway, every day is a little easier than the last. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut;

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

I miss him too.

Also

The college administration wrote their own response to the article long before I finished mine. Here is theirs:

To: The Bennington College community and the wider Bennington community

From: Elizabeth Coleman, President, Bennington College

Date: March 23, 2009

Re: The facts about conversations between Bennington College and North Bennington Trustees

A recent article (Friday, March 20, 2009) in the Bennington Banner regarding Bennington College’s discussions with trustees from the Village of North Bennington demands a response from the College because of the importance of the issues involved and the extent to which the statements in the article misrepresent the facts. The discussions focused on a voluntary contribution of funds by Bennington College to the Village of North Bennington beyond the taxes and fees the College already pays.

The College has been in conversation with North Bennington trustees for several months about the College making a voluntary financial contribution to the community because of the acute fiscal pressures they are facing. Although we are under no legal obligation to do so, we entered those conversations in good faith while working within the context of several critical constraints: A significant increase in financial aid over the last decade (currently 75% of Bennington students receive financial aid) has meant that tuition revenues account for less and less of the College’s operating budget. This puts ever-increasing pressure on annual fundraising to fill the gap. In addition, during a time of tremendous national economic contraction, the College is grappling with a much more challenging fundraising environment; helping families of its students who are under greater financial strain; and, as a major employer in the community, maintaining its commitment to its employees.

We appreciate that the North Bennington trustees are also facing difficult economic times. In our most recent meeting, we offered a contribution to the village of $20,000 annually (with consideration of a cost of living increase) for the next five years. To put that in the context of comparably sized institutions in the state of Vermont that are making any such contributions, Vermont Law School contributes $16,000 annually to its local town and Landmark College contributes $25,000.

What follows is a response to a series of assertions by members of the North Bennington trustees in the article that are singly or together untrue, misleading, or inflammatory.

At the end of our last meeting, the North Bennington committee said that they would get back to us after further consideration of the College’s offer. The first we heard of their rejection was when we read about it in the Bennington Banner. Moreover, we did not fail to respond to an invitation to attend the Town Meeting at which the offer was apparently discussed, as a statement in the article alleges. The fact is we were not invited to the meeting.

In the article, the trustees’ selected Tufts University in Boston as an example—Tufts contributes $135,000 as a voluntary contribution. Not only does Tufts have a billion dollar–plus endowment, it has nearly 10,000 students. Prorated by enrollment income or by number of students, an equivalent annual contribution from Bennington College to the Village of North Bennington would be $10,500. Prorated by endowment, the equivalent Bennington College contribution would be $1,350.

Throughout the article, the trustees suggest that the relationship between the College and the wider community has been one-sided. In referring to the allocation of funds to Bennington College through the Vermont Economic Development Authority Tax-Exempt Revenue Bond Program, for example, they fail to mention that the purpose of that program is to help enable institutions to fund building and renovation projects, thereby providing jobs and fortifying the local economy. What they did mention—that making use of this program “saved” the College $3 million—is hypothetical and, under any hypothesis, wildly exaggerated. Would that it were so.

In discussing the upgrading of a water system some years ago to accommodate the College—the trustees’ statements are, in every respect, at odds with the truth. The village had nothing to do with that transaction. The College worked directly with the Water Board and assumed responsibility for all of the ensuing expenses. This has been the case in all of our transactions with the Water Board. The North Bennington trustees have no authority over the Water Board nor have they played any role in the working relationship between that board and the College, which, by all measures, has been noteworthy for its cooperation.

In addition, the charge that the College is fostering a “culture of elitism” and student isolation by directing students away from their desire “to do things in the community” is both untrue and unhelpful. I cannot speak for what has happened to attendance at Kevin’s Sports Pub by Bennington College students (an example used as evidence in the article) but I do know that Bennington students, faculty, and staff are deeply proud to be part of this community. Last year nearly 20% of Bennington students volunteered at community schools—including the North Bennington Graded School— and other local not-for-profit organizations, in addition to faculty and staff who volunteer regularly in the community. Moreover, far from fostering greater isolation, this coming winter 30–35 first year students will remain on campus during Field Work Term—a term where students are normally required to work off campus—in order to work with organizations in this community.

And, as is common knowledge, performances in dance, music, theatre, lectures, readings, and art exhibitions take place non-stop at the College and are open to the community free of charge.

Finally, the claim that the community would be much stronger financially if there were no Bennington College is manifestly thoughtless as well as extremely provocative. In addition to the number of people the College employs, there is the substantial economic contribution of the students and non-residential faculty to the local economy.

This would be a difficult matter to resolve under the best of circumstances—the current economic pressures make it all the more so. We deeply regret the decision by the North Bennington trustees to reject our offer and to do so in a way that undermines the good faith that is essential to the success of our shared enterprise.

The latest controversy

I tend to get swept up in controversy. Maybe it's because I care about a lot of things. Maybe it's because I have invested a lot of myself into institutions and systems that tend to get attacked. Maybe it's because I love to fight. Regardless, this is a recent article that was published in a local paper:

Friday, March 20
NORTH BENNINGTON — A committee formed by the village trustees has gone public with a request for Bennington College to pay the village a voluntary yearly stipend.

Committee members believe the college owes it to the community for being such a large tax-exempt property, much like state sites that are required to give towns Payment in Lieu of Taxes by law.

'A difficult thing'

"They've been here 76 years," said Robert Howe, a committee member who serves on the village's Planning Commission, on Thursday, "and, as far as we can tell, they've never really paid anything to the village. ... That's why our taxes are so high."

The committee, made up of Howe, trustees Matt Patterson and David Monks and Alisa Del Tufo, has been meeting in private with representatives from the college, namely William Morgan and Joan Goodrich, both vice presidents at the college. "We're trying to keep things civil," Patterson said Thursday. "It's a difficult thing to approach."

However, at their last meeting, committee members said they would go public at the village's Town Meeting, which they did this past Tuesday. College officials were invited to the meeting but did not respond to the invitation.

Officials remained quiet on Thursday, declining to be interviewed.

"The college is in ongoing discussions with representatives from the village," the college said in a statement. "Our discussions have been very cordial
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and we have nothing more to say at this time."

The college's board of trustees authorized officials to pay the village $20,000 per year for five years, according to the committee.

The committee declined the offer. "What sticks in my craw is they've offered us a little tiny bit," Howe said, "and when you look at the dimension of what goes through the college all the time, we're talking about millions of dollars."

Committee members have proposed $100,000 per year as an initial payment for three years. "We have discussed larger numbers," Del Tufo said, "but we thought this was a good first level of commitment."

Members have also proposed establishing an ongoing "town/gown" committee, comprised of college and village officials, that would look to strengthen ties between the two. Patterson said the college has shown "no interest" in forming such a body.

Del Tufo said the college's actions have contradicted its overall message.

"What frustrates me is that the college's (public relations) is all about community building," Del Tufo said, " ... and we're a community that has a lot of vitality and we're also a community that has a lot of needs and problems. And it's a typical 'Ivory Tower' approach to problem solving when you look in Darfur (Sudan), but you don't look in your own backyard."

She added that the genocide in Darfur is a huge problem that deserves attention.

The committee's main argument is that the college makes up 14.7 percent of North Bennington land, or 212 of 1,441 acres, 36 percent of its population, 760 out of 2,094 people (including students) and equals the rest of the village's property value, yet contributes nothing financially. "We'd be a much stronger community financially if it weren't a college," Patterson said.

He added that the college has contributed to the community by providing jobs and hosting cultural events.

Patterson said the relationship between the village and college has been "one-sided" in recent years. The village changed zoning for the college and expanded and upgraded its water system to accommodate the college's new dormitory and signed off on a $10 million Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA) low-interest loan, reserved for municipalities, unless they defer it to a local not-for-profit organization, he said.

The loan saved the college $3 million, according to Patterson, a number he says the college is now contesting. He said if the college wants another VEDA loan, "(it) would be an interesting discussion."

In return, the college reneged on promises to improve Prospect Street, a road leading to the college, and removed a historical stone wall without consulting the village. He said students have become more isolated in general, which he believes has come from the college.

"I think it's the culture of elitism that has gotten much stronger at the college over time," Patterson said. "Students used to hang out at The Villager (now Kevin's at Mike's Place). It used to be a college bar."

Del Tufo agreed. "I know students on campus who want to do things in the community," she said, "but they're guided in certain directions, not others."

Del Tufo said she was kicked off campus by college security when she was cross-country skiing there over winter break.

Although not a given, some colleges do voluntarily pay their home communities yearly stipends.

Tufts University, for instance, pays $135,582, according to the committee. Williams College does not pay Williamstown, Mass., a set amount per year but helps to fund certain municipal projects, like a new elementary school in 2004.

Committee members said they realize Bennington College is smaller and receives less funding than these schools.

Members also said that, if an agreement cannot be reached, they believe the village could tax the college's for-profit ventures — faculty housing, the bookstore, snack shop — after going to court.

"(If) they don't want to make a contribution to the community," Del Tufo said. " ... then we end up getting into this position where we start looking at taxing property on campus."

She said the village faces a critical time, with public school costs rising and property taxes getting higher each year.

The committee plans to meet next week to discuss additional strategies, including contacting college trustees and reaching out to students, and with the college in the near future.

Patterson said any funds could help offset taxes or might be put in a dedicated fund. He said it is not a new issue; it has just never gotten to this level.

"It's been an issue of contention, off-and-on, for many, many years," he said.

Bennington College's campus is divided between the village of North Bennington and the town of Bennington.

So I wrote a letter to the editor (my first):

In response to the Friday, March 20th article in the Bennington Banner entitled, “Village to Bennington College: ‘Pay up’,” as a student here at Bennington College and as an involved community member, I take issue with the pervasive ‘us versus them’ tone of the article. This tone has lowered the bar for public discourse in our community.

In times of crisis we look for someone to blame for the situation in which we find ourselves. The situation, however, is almost always more complicated than a simple story of good guys standing up against bad guys. This article is written as such a narrative, uniting ‘us’ and ‘good’ under the village and ‘them’ and ‘bad’ under the college. The product of this narrative is the story of an elitist, “Ivory Tower” institution that parasitically feeds off a community to which it doesn’t belong.

The point of the formerly private meetings taking place between the committee and the college was to find a way to work together as one community to overcome this latest national crisis. The article subverts this goal and insists instead on pointing fingers and inventing scapegoats.

I do not assume that with every story there is an equal balance of opinion. I do contend, however, that the news can be presented in a mature and responsible way that contributes to the public discourse. “Village to Bennington College: ‘Pay up’” adds to the polarization of, rather than to the informing of, our community. We – the village of North Bennington and Bennington College – deserve better.

But I wanted to write more. My first draft was much longer:

The Friday, March 20th article in the Bennington Banner entitled, “Village to Bennington College: ‘Pay up’” lowered the bar for public discourse in our community. The degree of factual accuracy is a qualm that has been taken up by the Bennington College administration and will be further contested. What is much more important to me, as a student here at Bennington College and as an involved community member in both my local community (Rensselaer County, New York) and my adopted one here, is the pervasive ‘Us versus Them’ tone of the article.

In times of crisis we turn inwards and shun those apparently unlike ourselves. Allow me a geek moment here. In the old Twilight Zone episode; “The Monsters are due on Maple Street (and here’s your spoiler alert) what appears to be a UFO lands somewhere near Maple Street. In the ensuing chaos the residents of Maple Street turn against one another for arbitrary reasons that would have been overlooked or faced as a community in another context. The moral of the story is that the monsters of Maple Street are not the alien invaders, but rather the residents who turned on their neighbors out of fear.

I’d like to be clear here that I am not accusing the committee members of the village trustees or the Bennington Banner of being the monsters on Maple Street. I wish, however, to make explicit the adversarial tone of the March 20th article so that we can avoid it in the future. Instead of talking in terms of ‘We’ the village want ‘Them’ the college to pay up, we together can work towards common solutions to our common problems.

The structure of this piece begins as a news article and rapidly descends into a narrative of the ‘We’ against the ‘Them’. John Waller, the author of this piece and a person just doing his job, portrays the committee primarily through their own words, giving them a sympathetic human face and letting them define the ‘them’. The committee is Robert Howe, Matt Patterson, David Monks, and Alisa Del Tufo. The product of this narrative is the story of an elitist, “Ivory Tower” institution that parasitically feeds off the community. With the quotations from the committee members Waller creates an ‘other’, a scapegoat, an object of collective hate that we can blame for our financial woes.

The ‘We’ of the article is the committee made up of village trustees, whose voices are liberally quoted in the body of the article. However, the ‘We’ of the committee and the ‘We’ of the village of North Bennington are treated as the same when Robert Howe is quoted as having said, “They’ve [Bennington College] been here 76 years, and, as far as we can tell, they’ve never really paid anything to the village.” The ‘We’ of the committee is therefore speaking for, or in the interests of, the ‘We’ of the village. ‘We’ are best defined against ‘Them’. And who are ‘they’? ‘They’ are defined through the words of the committee members. ‘Their’ actions are described by the committee members.

This so called article is in fact more of a summary of an interview with four individuals than a news story. I do not assume that with every story there is an equal balance of opinion. I do contend, however, that the news can be presented in a mature and responsible way that contributes to the public discourse. “Village to Bennington College: ‘Pay up’” adds to the polarization of, rather than to the informing of, our community. We – the village of North Bennington and Bennington College – deserve better.

And now I want to write a book. But I won't. Yet. Because I have two theses and an advanced project to finish, then a bookstore to open first.

Schizophrenia continued

I’m sick again. I hate being sick. My mind gets all fuzzy and I can never think as accurately as I need to. I already have issues with being as on top of things as I should be, and now I’m stuck moving in slow motion and seeing through a thick film. Nothing feels as real as it should feel. And this is the second time in as many weeks that I am like this.

This will be a short post because I need to go to sleep. I spent half of the night last night trying to sleep and the other half being kept awake by evil cats. These cats wanted nothing to do with my sleep. They hated the idea of me sleeping. They wanted my sleep dead. Thank god I’m back in my dorm room. Glaring white walls, rubber-plastic blended mattress, somewhat soundproofed walls… that’s what I call home. Or at least it is what I call one of my many homes. I seem to collect them as I go.

I fervently hope, with all of my heart, that we do not have a fire drill tonight. However, because I am sick and in no position to be tramping outside at two in the morning, I imagine that tonight will be the night. So I will leave my coat within reach when I go to sleep. I would prefer the cats to a fire alarm.

Lately I’ve wanted to spend an entire day doing nothing. Just lie in bed and watch movies. Friends optional and preferred. I think that the next time I will get to do that will be on June 8th. Two days after graduation. I think I’ll need a few weeks of detox before I throw myself into the bookstore. I shouldn’t be this sick.

I’ve had a phrase going through my head all weekend. “Sobre Ebriedad.” It’s the title of an essay in Spanish by a fellow that has some very progressive ideas about the relationship of the state and drugs. It means “On Sobriety” or something like that. There’s a double entendre in there that I can’t quite make out in my semi-conscious state (because the word for sobriety is sobriedad). If you’re interested and can speak Spanish: http://www.escohotado.com/articles/sobreebriedad.htm. If not, so be it. I tend to be interested in things. I feel like a dog chasing every car that passes sometimes. Sure! I’ll do two theses! And another advanced project in educational policy? Why the fuck not?!

Anyway, I’m going to sleep. When I wake, I won’t need to take any more Sudafed. Or Asprin.

What's my age again?

I care about Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, I really do. I enjoyed learning about her. I love her poem Hombres Necios (Foolish Men). However, I cannot stand to read another line of her poem Primero Sueño.

Look, I know that it is important. I know that it was groundbreaking. I know what it is about. But what person can in good conscious ask me to read nineteen pages of late XVII century poetry when it has nothing to do with what I’m working on.

I get that the poem is all about the soul trying to reach enlightenment through learning. I get that it is filled with classical symbolism, in part to contrast the primal nature of the soul with the more refined scientific methodology Juana uses. I get that she was a virtuoso. I with her on that, and if she was in any way related to my project I would be arguing for the necessity of everyone in the world to be reading Sor Juana.

But not today. Instead I’m complaining here about poor me and my overwhelming workload. Can I get a collective groan of sympathy from the audience please? Fuck applause, I just want everyone to feel sorry for me.

I went to the doctor today for fatigue and then fell asleep immediately after. I’m still at four (FOUR) pages in my Social Science thesis. The one I was supposed to have ten (TEN) done for last Friday.

Dun dun dun…

And thus continues my Tuesday.

My Obama '08 sign is falling off my wall

I feel like most good writers were drunks.

Or at least they abused something. Drugs, alcohol, women, men, life, whatever.

I’m finding it exceedingly difficult to type without errors at the moment. This is my first somewhat drunk post. I feel like this is on par with drunk dials or the slightly newer drunk texts.

I recently watched Deconstructing Harry – my favorite Woody Allen film for all of its faults. It seems to me the one with the least pretense. My friend told me that his parents told him that it was not something he’d like. Usually that means that I too would dislike it. Instead, this time, it just means that I have a tougher time getting other people to watch it with me. His folks usually have pretty good judgment at least as far as movies are concerned.

Regardless, I love this movie. It’s both a good story and an excellent way to tell one. Way to go Woody Allen. It’s about an author who has pretty much wasted his life fucking his way around the alphabet and drinking – primarily whisky which is how I connect to this character. I tend not to sleep around. I, however, love whisky like someone stuck in the midst of a sandstorm in the Sahara loves water. I don’t know why. I didn’t even see a Bogart movie until after I found I had this affinity.

Bottom line, Harry, the protagonist in this flick, played by Woody Allen (of course), is awful. The entire movie culminates (in my opinion) when he (spoiler alert) has a discussion with the devil about who has fucked who while trying to re-kidnap his lover.

Way to go, says I.

I don’t mess around much, but I can understand those who do. It’s all about context in my opinion. I tend to care about my own opinion more after most of my flask is gone. Point is: In this, as in most things, context is king. So what if a fellow or lady has been to bed with more folk than they can easily count on their appendages – so long as there is context for all. Sex takes place in the moment. So why does criticism about sex take place outside of that moment? If no regrets are in play, by all means, enjoy.

And so on.

One of my favorite episodes of The West Wing – my all-time favorite TV show – is called, “dead Irish writers”. The episode involved a fight between the Communications Director (Toby) and the British Ambassador (Lord John Marbury) about a spokesman for the IRA (Brendan McGann). What follows is one of my favorite pieces of dialogue written for television:

MARBURY
Toby, you were the author, were you not, of the President's speech at the General Assembly?

TOBY
There were many authors.

MARBURY
Of which you were one. Two days ago, the IRA formally backed out of its promise to put its weapons beyond use...

TOBY
I--

MARBURY
...as agreed to in the Good Friday Peace Accord. True/False: Until it disarms the IRA and its political representatives in Sinn Fein are a terrorist group.

TOBY
True.

MARBURY
When did it become policy of the United States to negotiate with terrorists?

TOBY
We've had Arafat here, John.

MARBURY
And, my heaven, isn't that paying bloody dividends.

TOBY
It wasn't worth trying?

MARBURY
You're making the mistake of youth.

TOBY
The President's not a kid.

MARBURY
Your country is. You're involving yourself in a centuries-old conflict without sufficient regard for history. Listen to the warning of old friends. It was Kipling who warned to expect "the blame of those ye better, and the hate of those ye guard."

TOBY
And wasn't it James Joyce who said, "History is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake."

MARBURY
Yes, but it was your own great Irish master, Eugene O'Neill who said, "There is no present or future, only the past happening over and over again -- now."

TOBY
You're saying we should butt out of Ireland until we know what we're doing?

MARBURY
I'm saying Brendan McGann cannot come to the White House.

TOBY
[pause] Say, speaking of dead Irish writers...

MARBURY
Yes. Another drink.

(http://communicationsoffice.tripod.com/3-15.txt)

See what I mean?

I feel like it is somewhat necessary at the moment to add a disclaimer - in case my family or some of my less close friends end up finding this blog. I am not a drunk. My grandmother was once a drunk, from what I hear, as was my grandfather for a time. I am not in the habit of getting drunk often or regularly. I do, however, enjoy the occasional recreational half a bottle of whisky or so.

The point of this post, if one can be ferreted from among the muck and drivel of my various trains of thought that seem to have crashed and spilled their contents all over this blog, is that there seems to be a correlation between those who are prone to addiction and early greatness (usually followed by a period gently referred to as "crash and fucking burn"). So, well done Woody Allen!

I loved that movie.