8:07 p.m. - May 11, 2002
Tumble jumble tangent argument
Enough to write about: Spec, the textbook, moving, inflammatory emails, summer plans, seeking employment yet not responding diligently when potential employers contact me. It's not only my friends I ignore, it's my future, eh?
Grandstanding isn't attractive.
Holed up with the ringer off and the computer glowing and I'm making progress but am floating on the wake of both the tortoise and the hare and I recall the story was land-based and not a naval voyage like the Kon-Tiki and how appropriate to be confused about the firmament since my diluvian days have arrived. Better to leave anthropomorphic descriptions behind and assume literary pretension and proclaim I'm a Raskolnikovian textbook writer, desiring to expiate the sin of broken contracts but unable to divorce myself from both thought and action and thus am amuddle.
I am these textbooks, too much of me keyed into grammar and syntax and tense and vocabulary and culture and when I look at the covers I cringe, not out of embarrassment but more out of pain, as if the textbook title is a klaxon and only I hear it and wish to turn away. It's odd, how events conspire to overcome their genesis and move beyond what was intended, seizing the laws of physics and determinism to transmute into a slave driver, whip in hand, with the creator shackled and driven to produce only because he has no choice.
So I work. I plod. I write. Writing is never sheltering, it spins quiet song like the Sirens and traps the writer under the strong light of readers' expectations and why, why now think of Greek mythology after thinking of linguistics and language and techniques to enhance language acquisition drawing upon the ubiquitious Krashen and Chomsky as references when I'm becoming an expert of sorts in a field I never intended to touch and I can't pick enough to satisfy demand. And now Portia my favorite comes to mind bearing mercy in her hands and I quaff sand. Sand! Kobo Abe, begone.
My head hurts and yes, I hear the yip yip of a chihuahua beckoning, Yo Quiero Taco Bell, Si Senor Y Andale Andale and once again wish I was telekinetic and take possession of a chicken soft taco at my doorstep. Fire hot sauce, of course.
And Bathsheba, you are a misnomer. You more accurately are the bearer of stakes to pierce defenses akin to Yael, if you forget the reference turn to page 60 in that little poetry book of mine but there, I think it's Jael and that's okay and now I'm tasting nostalgia, that was a fun project even if there are four spelling errors to remind me that perfection was close, but not quite. Yes, I need to treat my friends better and yes squared, I make decisions based not on logic and common sense but out of fear but how does that apply to you? Be explicit in what you want and leave no room for misinterpretation and I'll see what I can do.
Another strike of the tangent. Friday, yesterday, I met a man who had literally once been blind but who now sees thanks to macular regeneration of the stem cell type. He was the keynote speaker at the conference and absolutely riveting and caused a stir when he said if he could, he would prefer to be blind again, Why He Said, "Because when you can't see you see so much, and when you can you see so little worth seeing."
Isn't that something to ponder.
