#255

Finished Waiting For Godot. It was fucking good. Then I read this book Hunted by a man named William W. Johnstone. It was fucking terrible. I found my copy of Waiting For Godot in a free library. My grandfather-in-law gave me Hunted and its sequel, Prey, to borrow.

Suppose I were the sort of man who would think Waiting For Godot was terrible, and Hunted good. I might not be that different of a man, all things considered. I think that is probably likely. But the aesthetics of me would probably be radically different, so different as to create a real difference, a gap, between this imaginary me and myself. And certainly, this gap might be very notable, even multiplied in aspect, when it comes to this blog. Different books, different stories, a variant set of purposes in mind, no doubt. It's something of a thought.

By which I partially mean of course that Hunted was fairly outside of my usual fare in a couple of key ways. I suppose my power fantasies trend differently.

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Reading Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat and Samuel Beckett's collected poems in English and French as a breather before I read Prey. Yes, I thought Hunted sucked, even to the point of anger and disgust, but that doesn't mean I didn't find much that was valuable, humorous, and interesting within its pages. Also there is so much to learn from bad writing and opinions diametrically opposed to your own. Also I gotta tell the old man what I think because that's just how I am, I guess, which also means I gotta read both books and think about them honestly. 

After that, who knows?

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Took a promotion at my job. Salary! Wow. My income has doubled, which is significant with the added bonus of creating absolutely zero class guilt. It's about as small as salaries get. Slightly less than the lower end of what a teacher makes.

Indeed, eating food that won't poison you and the shaping of young minds. Menial shit. Hey, at least we make twice what the janitors and dishwashers make, or even a shade more. So that's awesome, because our jobs are impossible without them. 

I want to be clear about my tone. These facts upset me.

Still. Movin' on up, they say. I don't disagree. T'was good to just go to the fancy supermarket and get what I wanted without feeling tightness in my chest.

--JL

#254

The main problem of a public diarist, or at any rate, this public diarist (me) is that the past is more vital and pressing than the present in many ways, but we all know it does little good to dwell on the past. Nevertheless, I do anyway, and suffer from hemorrhoids accordingly. We all have our personal regrettable effects with implacable causes. However, I try not to focus on the past as much as wont, so often prefer to write about something relevant, if not topical. 

Another snag in the execution of this succession of formerly blank text fields is that one is supposed to write about oneself. Perhaps this seems easily resolved by pointing out that one writes about oneself even if one is simply setting out to describe the weather, just as it is impossible for a painter not to tell you a certain amount about themselves from the way they execute a portrait, or choose colors for a meadow. Not so fast! It is also very possible to lie about oneself this way, and be believed, even internally--oh, how many times has the actor confused qualities illustrated through the subject with qualities they possess!

Of course, art is always in a sense striving past the creator and subject into something that transcends and compasses both. We can very well become the lies we tell, which may be an excellent thing or a very sad.

At any rate, in brief, it is a complicated, toilsome thing to be honest. It is difficult to talk about oneself completely and honestly, even trivially and honesty. I try to be honest in this space, which sometimes means even my most flippant, errant, ridiculous play-nonsense costs a certain emotional toil and is produced under conditions of rigor.

Did I mention I suffer from hemorrhoids? 

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So, often, as a crutch, I resort to what I've been reading. What I have read, and what I mean to read. 

Well, it's happening again, right the fuck now. Strap in.

Finished The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann. Once again the universe has been metered and just in saving me for a book until precisely when I am prepared to come to it. This book would have done me absolutely no good at all on the first readthrough even last year. War and Peace had to come first, as well as living through the last six years even up to this present moment. Even watching through Downton Abbey recently as I neared the book's conclusion--all part of a clockwork universe's planned and destined rollout, at least from my reading perspective. 

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Ok gotta go peace

--JL

edit: I really did have to sprint out just before I was really ready to finish. All there was to say is that I have begun to read Waiting For Godot, by Thomas Beckett.