1) Sadly, today, as I perused the back cover of Ulysses, I discovered that I--an english major--did not know that the band name "Erase Errata" refered to the repairing or removal of things done in error, rather than the suppression of the sexual impulse. What an ass.
2) Last night I went to bed at four and awoke at seven. This is something that I forgot I loved. When I wake up on so little sleep, I relish in the fact that I owe myself a favor. I ingest as much coffee as I wish and as soon as I wish it. I spend the rest of the day having accomplished things and running around with a sense of importance. My brain is much more awake by the time I get to my morning classes. And everything--everything--is six times as funny. In my Literature of War class, a girl began to speak of the German occupation of France, and I looked at her, remarking to myself how close together her eyes were, and started giggling: "wait, wait....I have to draw you..."
In four years I've run away from school several times.
Freshman Year Having no money and hating it here, I lied to the school and had them fly me out to a "conference." They flew me to Boston where I stayed with friends for a week. Then I didn't have so much as a ride to the airport.
Sophomore year I stayed for every day. With the exception of one saturday afternoon, when six of us took off in a toyota and stayed at my friend's derby farm in Kentucky. This would prove to be my sole exuberance-induced trip and I didn't skip any class.
Junior year was just an excuse to indulge myself in whatever the fuck I wanted to do. I went to Istanbul, Liverpool, Dublin, Paris, Prague, and London usually by hopping a train I hadn't paid for or with discount airline tickets that cost less than a single DVD. When I returned to Kenyon in the spring I ran away to Bard to see Ben and his comedy group.
Senior year Suddenly last week I realized I had no place to go. The best I could come up with when I needed to run away was Kentucky. But that would be so far away. I had missed enough classes. So I skipped seminar (last week) and got Indian food and saw The Magdalene Sisters in Columbus.
A note that requires the new Iron & Wine for a soundtrack.
I never checked up on this until today, but my friendster.com interests are hyperlinked. This would be great, except I only have listed. "Interests: You." The answer to which is pathetic and depressing.
Sometimes--and I can't take credit for this, I learned it from my mother--I buy Salt and Vinager flavored potato chips just because I don't like sharing.
For the past seventeen years I have been pondering a concept that I first discovered in Looney Tunes. In the episode where Sylvester chases Speedy Gonzales all the way to his pueblo, he catches him only to find that Speedy has been planning a surpride party for Sylvester all along. He starts crying, but explains that he's crying happy tears.
And I didn't understand that until today when my brother called to tell me that he had just bought a plane ticket to come and see me in Ohio this weekend.
The majority of the conscious energy in my brain gets spent rendering narration to my current novel project, and, to keep sharp, various other stories I am working on, thinking of, or living. The scope of the project aspires to coexist in the literary world. Which is why nothing upsets me more than watching my life devolve into a soap opera. Things happen to me and when I try to relate them to others, I feel as though I am explaining well-worn territory, with details that make people cringe without telling you they're cringing. It's like I'm trying to explain a personally meaningful strip from Apartment 3G.
In addition to which, music, the soundtrack of my life, has betrayed me horribly. Music is not supposed to be about plot narration (see VH1 comment below), but about mood and emotion. Which is why the lyrics to my summer's anthem--Wyclef's "Anything Can Happen"--now mock me.
For the past week, I have successfully not written/editted/spellchecked the final draft. I am a mere read-over from being done. And yet I just haven't.
Instead, today I ran way to Columbus and thought about a good soundtrack:
Chapter three, brother makes me promise that I'll go to college: "New Slang (When You Notice The Stripes)" The Shins
Chapter four, going to see a show in Milwaukee: "Anything can happen," Wyclef.
Chapter five, there's a band on stage, they will be The Faint and they'll sing "Worked Up So Sexual." (only not really, I don't mention band names, book titles--I refer to them as concepts)
Chapter six, driving through gray, flat-ass Illinios: "Cross Road Blues" Robert Johnson
Chapter seven, back in time, summer camp when I was young enough to get fucked up from a ghost story: "Summer of '69" Bryan Adams
Chapter eight, I sit in the backseat because I'm fucking sick of "Scott Hampshire" and watch montana blow by: either "Folsom Prison Blues" or "When the Man Comes Around" both by Johnny Cash
Chapter nine, there's a party in Seattle, the song played will be: "Fuck the Pain Away" by Peaches
Chapter ten, a lengthy reference to youthful poverty involving driving around, eating shift-meal pizzas, and renting the free movies at Blockbuster: "Juicy" Biggie
Chapter eleven, I get thrown out of a casino in vegas and can't find hampshire, freak out: The scene calls for "Long Dark" by Electrelane; but I would have to have in "You're Nobody ('till somebody loves you)" by Frank Sinatra.
Chapter twelve, driving through the desert. Everyone loves this. It's not that great: "Melodrama" The Moving Units.
Chapter thirteen, I drive for 28 hours straight (four corners to little rock) and get all melancholy and shit. "Open up your heart" The Rapture.
Chapter fourteen, we go to Memphis, to graceland. I honestly have no idea what to put here. It can't be Paul Simon's "Graceland" because this isn't appearing on VH1. And it can't really be an Elvis song. Maybe an original recording of Chuck Berry doing a song Elvis later would?
Chapter fifteen, on a farm in Kentucky, I talk to a girl, a specific girl, a reader of this very website, and one of the few people who actually are themselves. "I go out walking (After Midnight)" Patsy Cline.
Chapter twenty, Virginia Beach, surfing: was going to be "The Way We Get By" by Spoon, but then they played it on the O.C. last week.
Chapter twenty-one, sad ending, late at night, the night we sleep in the garden section of Walmart. "Champaign from a Paper Cup" Death Cab for Cutie or the Iron and Wine version of "Such Great Heights."
Ever since I wrote the last chapter of my novel-project, I've been searching for the perfect openning sentence. To make it easier on myself, I've arranged for a few ground rules:
1) It can't start with the word 'I.' Or for that matter, directly refer to me. The biggest pet-peave of most readers is a first person account that never leaves the narrator. I really don't care that I bother people, but if I do so in a way that bothers me too, then I'm just an asshole.
2) It can't use the verb "to be." These are both creative-writing-class bullshit rules that people pull when they don't have anything else to say about your piece. But I intend to entertain and regail.
"Call me Ishmael, I am an orphan." therefore would be out. As would "This is the eve of our discontent." "I am invisible." "I was born in the city of Bombay...once upon a time." "I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in lvoe with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain of disruption it would bring with it."
I decided on the above sentence last wednesday, but I will most certainly no longer need it by friday.
This week the iPod people came out with a new 40 GB version that costs as much as the old 30. If that news escaped you or otherwise does not interest you, then you are obviously not Ben, a man I have been trying to reach by telephone since August 26th.
Since that time, we have both impersonated experienced servers to get waitering jobs at fancy restaurants. We've both grown more perplexed and confused by various girls, and we are both saving for an ipod in a manner that others would find unhealthy. There are also countless bands that we have yet to discuss and assess.
I know this because he calls me everyday, I think in the car on the way to work. I would do the same, but I only work a few days a week, and I spend the entire car ride listening to his messages.
Has anyone ever written a song about songs? They should, because you're great. I know I don't say this enough, but you've always been there for me, for all of us, and I don't know what I'd listen to without you. You remind me of things I've forgotten. Girls I used to like, car crashes that almost killed people I know, the things I don't work to hard to remember.
Also, I am really sorry that I have only acquired my first pair of full-ear headphones this year ("ear goggles" for you sure shot fans). In many ways I'm only growing to understand you now. Which is why we are made for eachother. For example, not three minutes ago I shut my door to avoid something, and now that I have The Shins taking care of me, I've already forgotten what it was. A friend called me today to say that his new job is going well, but that he won't move into an apartment until he can afford an iPod. And I think that is the most level headed decision I've heard all week. After I started my new job yesterday I made a similar promise to myself, only since I have a dorm room, I am going to let my cavity drill itself for a little while longer.
When I reread that sentence I may be acting unreasonably, but then "Harlot" by Felix came on the headphones.
My new favorite part about spending so much goddam time writing is the amount of jargon and appropriate buzzwords I've amassed. When I talk to people I meet now, I find myself asking them alot of questions that i'm keeping track of in my mind. Usually I'm looking for a trajectory. Where did you go to school? What other jobs did you have before you had this job?
Yesterday I got a job at a fancy restaurant by pretending to be my brother, the chef at my last restaurant, and the bartender from that same place.
Right now I'm printing the editted draft of the novel-project-thing. It has been part demoralizing and part helpful to take the 21 chapters from their separate files (numbered 010.doc to 210.doc) and put them into one big file (001.doc) because to do so means cutting and pasting and reading your first line of every story right next to the last line of the one before. Turns out I think I'm a real smartass.
Lately I've noticed a growing public concern over whether or not I am happy. I say yes, but every now and then something creeps to the surface and quite suddenly something that has nothing to do with me, (say, a pack of man-men watching football on television with a vocal volume that belongs in the actual stadium in the room next to me) will piss me off to no end and for no reason.
To me, this is probably the greatest benefit to being a deeply repressive person. Happiness is inconsequestial and meaningless. Instead of moping, I find myself in a constant state of unrest. Musical selections rarely make it through the entire track without being skipped, reading assignments can only hold me for a chapter at a time, that kind of thing.
Desprate for money I found myself in a booth at Ruby Tuesday's in Mount Vernon Ohio, in employee training. Everyone else there looks like seventeen-year-old twenty-one-year-olds. Kids who go to christian colleges always do. The one across from me has questions that no one else has. If I have two children, but I'm still a dependent on my parents taxes, do I get to fill in both on my tax forms?
I notice immediately that selling out ("taking the job") will supply me with cheap medical coverage, something I have sorely missed ever since high school. I think of teeth I can get filled and medicines I can have perscribed. After two hours of training from the head trainer, I am entirely fed up with this horrible place. It's taking so long because, in addition to leading orientation for ten people, he is waiting on four tables.
It then occurs to me that I have been meaning to call Ben, because painful things in his past will be hilarious in light of similar developements in my week. I have to call him while I'm still in Mount Vernon, because Ohio is a black hole. I park in front of The Alcove Restaurant in downtown, an area only recently recovering from a sudden exodus to the large parking lots of the surrounding strip. When he doesn't pick up, I walk inside and secure an interview as a server and promise myself I will never fill out forms for Ruby Tuesdays again.
"If there was a way of cheating, of circumnavigating the next bit -- getting Marie to sign some sort of affidavit which said I'd spent the night, for example -- I'd take it." -Nick Horby, High Fidelity
Because some people are either a) stupid enough to open a virus laden email ("re: movie auditions") or b) too stupid to run a fucking free virus program that the school has given us, we don't have the internet at school. They won't give it back until everyone in each network hub runs the program. It feels so pre-modern. It's like living in the early nineties.
