Rene Magritte, The Human ConditionIs it possible to plagiarize yourself? If so, we’re probably doing it constantly. I know I am...imitating myself, as well as being highly critical of what are often shoddy, dissolute, unconvincing performances. I am not, I’m afraid, anything like my own Tina Fey. Then, isn’t much of life little more than bad acting? And isn’t that understandable, with such nonsensical scripts? Like Liam Neeson playing a Jedi knight with a mullet more appropriate for a monster truck rally than inter-galactic combat, aren’t we simply working with what we’re given? People talk a lot about the importance of being yourself—from Polonius’ to thine own self be true to Mr. Rogers’ you’re special! to Monty Python’s “You’re all individuals!” “Yes! We’re all individuals!” to those lame-ass red and white Be You t-shirts for sale at the Boston University bookstore when I went there....so, whoever the hell you are, it’s obviously pretty damn important. I will not speak lightly of it. Trust me.
I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some people are terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.
Bob Dylan
A sudden death in the family is upsetting for lots of reasons, of course—a lot more than I’m about to go into here, and, anyway, to communicate any fraction of them effectively would be to tell the complete life stories of all involved, and even then there’d be countless unfillable holes in the plot...the conclusion in particular not making one lick of discernible sense...like if Moby Dick had ended while they were right in the midst of chasing the whale, or the closing credits started running on Gilligan’s Island while it still seemed like they might get off the island this week....All in all, it’s difficult to shake the idea that life isn’t a novel or sitcom, or anything else that might have any chance of obeying the narrative rules we try so hard to lay down....There are a lot of ends, but few satisfying conclusions, and more perfect comebacks are spoken in a single Oscar Wilde play than you’re likely to manage in your entire life....
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; 
It was back in the summer of 1990, I believe, though it could possibly have been '91, while I was embarrassing my parents living the life of a slacker out in Boulder, a year out of college, no prospects for or particular interest in a promising career of any kind, and, when not wandering in the mountains or otherwise sacrificing brain cells to unknown gods, attending a free Zen meditation class at the Naropa Institute, which was also attended, at least once or twice, by Ginsberg, who one Saturday (I think), as part of a benefit for something or other, along with some other poets, did this thing—basically, you stood in line, paid a few or maybe five bucks, and a famous poet would ask you a few questions, then write an instant haiku on the spot....I told Ginsberg I was just wandering, kind of a bum—apparently thinking maybe he’d be impressed and tell me I reminded him of Kerouac or something (he wasn’t, and didn’t)—I also told him I’d gone to a poetry reading the night before, and now, in the morning, was hung over...and so ended up with a piece of rag paper, with this poem, a little drawing of a flower and what looks like a snake, and Ginsberg’s signature on it. I’ve still got it, though in the midst of a long summer living in my van, something apparently got spilled on it, staining and smudging it badly, particularly the signature, though you can still read it...kinda.....
....just biked home in the dark from seeing Religulous, in which Bill Maher rips on Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, Judaism, Scientology, and belief in general in an incredibly offensive and utterly unrelenting fashion—I fucking loooved it—to find that my new neighbors are seriously smoking up some very pungent ganja to the point that I can’t help smelling it...in my apartment, not just the hallway—again—which, I can report, brings on some nostalgic feelings...put on some Hendrix...but no particular desire to go and join them...seriously, the last time I smoked I thought, man, I’d rather be doing yoga...but, no, in case you’re wondering, the word hypocrite perhaps, quite understandably, blooming on your lips, I wouldn’t have minded if the movie ripped on yoga, too...hell, if you’ve read this blog at all, you know I do it all the time...was kinda disappointed, in fact, that the movie left the whole Eastern spiritual spectrum alone...and I say that with a big namasmotherfuckingte to everyone...and the view, held at least momentarily, that all of our beliefs and practices are pretty ridiculous when you think about it...or, at least, when I think about it...not bad, necessarily, or good, necessarily, just ridiculous...and if we could realize that we might have a whole hell of a lot less to kill each other for...or, maybe not, as that would be a far too logical conclusion for such a ridiculous species as we....
There’s this place at the top of my back—right in the center—a diamond, some yoga types might say—though a big stiff diamond—guess maybe that metaphor works—petrified organic matter, hardened to the point that it’s really difficult to move it—an incredibly hard rock embedded at the top of my spine—the base of my neck, causing pain and stiffness to radiate upward from it—where’s that come from? I think from stooping over. Sure, biking doesn’t help, that bending over the handle bars thing, but it’s more than that...it’s being stooped over, like a fetus, like a turtle...what’s that blues song Janis Joplin sang? I’m just like a turtle underneath my horny shell? Okay, maybe there’s a double meaning there that’s not exactly what I mean—but anyway, it’s about the constant sense of being under siege, needed to curl in for protection, escape inside the shell, not face forward, not engage but retreat....so, this brings me back to that last post—about Paul Newman but more particularly the role he played in Cool Hand Luke, the fight scene—where he gets the shit beaten out of him—doesn’t sound much like a hero, but he is, because every time he gets knocked down he gets back up—again and again, with everybody telling him to stay down, telling him he’s beat, he gets back up takes more punches, cool, completely, undeterred, unbowed, unwilling to stay down, unwilling to curl under, not even thinking about it most likely—and that scene, of course, is a microcosm of the entire film—yeah, there’s a kind of overbearing Christ imagery to it, but I’m not getting into that any more than the horny shell thing—so forget about that Judas Iscariot crap, the point is being calm, the point is being undefeated even in constant and brutal defeat, the point is stepping forward not curling inward, the point is not particularly caring about being hit because what’s being hit isn’t what matters, because what does matter isn’t being hit at all even if it feels like it....
