tangled up in blue

Finished And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks. First book of many I want to read this summer. Pretty decently written. Kerouac and Burroughs are basically awesome. Makes me really want to write a book where almost nothing is accomplished. Just a telling of a few weeks in someone's life, or multiple someone's lives.

On to Post Office by Charles Bukowski.

An Ode To Mistaken Identity

Don't you dare speak for someone you don't know.
They'll feel it in the back of their throat.
We know I can't construct a poem
Cause words like girls get bored and run
C'est la vie, I say "I've got so many better things"
I've got nothing, you should see me,
I smoke myself to sleep.

And blame postmodern things I can't relate,
Like summer camp and coastal states.
Like alcohol and coffee beans.
Dance floors and magazines.
I think its safe to say I've only got myself to blame
But boys in swooping haircuts are bringing me down,
Taking pictures of themselves.

And so I walk the web in search of love,
But always seem to end up stuck.
I'm finding flaws in everyone.
I've reached the point where all I want,
Is to sleep around in hopes that I will catch back up.
We are parallel lines we’re running in circles,
We're never meant to cross.

I'm at a loss, you were my tangerine,
My pussycat, my trampoline.
Now alls I get are wincing cheeks,
And dog problems, I signed a lease.
Thinking my heart belonged at 93rd and park.
Instead I broke a girl’s heart,
And flew back to Phoenix to finish the year as it started.

Can you hear me?
Are you listening?
This is the sound of my heart breaking.
And I hope it's entertaining,
Cause for me it’s a bitch.
Was it worth it?
When you slept with him?
Did you get it all out of your system?

I am a man
Holding it all
I couldn’t breath
Coming across
I didn’t know
I couldn’t give up

B is for believing you'd always be here for me.
E is for everything, even when we see it though.
C, c is for seeing through you, you are a fake, which brings me to
A because, because, you always run away.

I never finish phrases, I misspell.
Open arms are prison cells.
When I said, "I hate what I've become"
I lied, I hated who I was.
So when you start to wonder 'bout the pain in my throat,
Then don't you ever, no never, ever, speak for someone you don't know.

how does it feel?

Is there, at the end of this long, cold nuclear winter, some sort of karmic uprising? one designed to right the axis of the slowly turning ball of clay we call home?

Am I mistaking charisma for sociopathy?

Am I squandering a gift?

Who am I? Where is here?

Letters to you.

In response to your response:

I didn't say the tweed jacket was bad (I, personally, own one or two). I just think there's a lot to be said - ironically enough - for using fewer words. Like a Hemingway esque style (maybe not so sparse). Honestly, there are times in G.E. where I'm sitting there going.. okay, there are a lot of words, but he's not really saying ANYTHING here. He could cut these two pages down to two paragraphs, and have the same effect. Well, it wouldn't be DICKENS, but it'd be better -- in my opinion - and easier to read, and easier to take lightly.

a lot of people think shakespeare is so complicated because the linguistic structure of the Elizabethan age differs so greatly from our own. Even the words themselves were different, and that takes a lot of people aback. AT least in G.E., dickens was using "real" words. It was just his sentence structure, and conversation styles that were difficult to wade through.

And its not the difficulty that ruins most classics for me. I'm extremely interested in Modernist and Post-Modernist works, which - in most cases - are inherently designed to confound the reader, and resist analysis or deeper reading of any kind. So its not difficulty that I'm having a problem with. its the lack of reward, i find, that kills it for me. To me (and i think its because i'm reading this a billion years after it was written), the story of a young orphan who goes from poor to rich just doesn't "do it" for me. there's no real excitement, and i don't get involved in the story. I can't engage with the characters and the settings and the events. It just doesn't sweep me up and take me along for the ride like later novels such as ON THE ROAD, or WHAT THE CROW SAID do.

For the most part, the reader isn't reading the text to analyze it fully, and to squeeze every last bit of meaning from it. Most people read to escape; most people read to enter into an alternate "world" to experience new things, or leave behind old experiences. I like to read fantasy for just that reason. The whole "Wheel of Time" series is just absolutely perfect for escapism (13 books so far, all at least 500 pages, sometimes 800). I just enjoy (especially for school) reading books that i can enter into, and live, while analysing. Entering to the text offers a different aspect or perspective of the author's intentions, the character's personalities, and the overall meaning of a text. And then, once you've entered into the text, you can pull back, and analyze formal elements, and other things.

I dunno, I guess I've just made a really good case for why I should continue to be an English Major, and not drop out and take a Mechanic course.

* * *

In other news... CLASSES ARE OVER! All I have left are two finals (Can Lit on the 24th, and Brit Lit on the 28th) and my university year (and probably career, for now) will be over. Then on the 28th (11 DAYS) I move into my new apartment! I'm so excited to not have a room mate's stuff EVERYWHERE, and have someone else's mess that I can't deal with and talk to them about.

Also, the whole debt thing is going rather smoothly, so far. I've paid of my tuition, and accidentally, though I'm not complaining, made an extra payment to my car loan, so my total for that is a little lower than expected (I can actually see the end now). And so begins another summer of paycheck-to-paycheck.

Its been a whole year, and I haven't changed anything, really. I still want to go home, I still can't go home, and I'm still essentially the same procrastinating person I was a year ago. I'm still obsessed with change, marking it, and analyzing it. I have learned some new things about Language and Philosophy, and I think I've made a few mistakes in the courses I've picked so far. But I realize that I'm probably going to have to expand my timeline for higher education (yet again) to possibly take about a decade. Hmm..

That's about all I have to say for now.

OH! except I have my reading list compiled for the summer. Its going to be so awesome. I'm even (nerdily enough) going to compose mini essays about each book:

1. Jack Kerouac & William S. Burroughs - And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks

2. Charles Bukowski - Post Office

3. Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master & Margarita

4. Leonard Cohen - The Beautiful Losers

5. Eoin Colfer - And Another Thing...

6. Charles Dickens - A Tale Of Two Cities (yeah, I know. I hate dickens, but I own this, so therefore I must read it)

7. Charles Dickens - Nicholas Nickleby (same deal as Tale. Except this is a HUUUUGE novel)

8. Fyodor Dostoyevski - Notes From Underground

9. Soren Kierkegaard - Either/Or

10. J.R.R. Tolkein - The Silmarrilion

And there you have it. My summer at a glance. You'll know how I'm doing by how many mini-essays I blog. :)

also, I've been including various essays from various classes in the "Where Else Can I Go?" section. I'm going to be re-naming it as "Academia Nuts" (get it?), so you should really check it out. ASAP. I duno how to allow comments on each page, but yeah, feel free to comment on a post about one of the essay (or both, cause I like feedback).

So it ends,

and,

So it begins.

**EDIT**

I'm also thinking of taking this whole blog business on the road to Xanga, because of the wider variety of page layouts. thoughts?

**END EDIT**

-- jr

Its alright for you

I did it. I'm done. Finally. stupid essay.

in other news, it can be viewed, along with my essay about Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ode to the West Wind in the "Where Else Can I Go?" section of the blog.

o'er yonder somewhere ---->

possibly in --> /\ that ish direction.