Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Feeling a Little Wiggly

So said Maxwell yesterday upon awaking.

I'll post some wiggly photos of the recent tour avec Billy and the Wolf-Nutz when I can find them. The pictures, that is. For what it's worth, the photos I took with the Lomo fisheye turned out well. Shoot real close.

Wiggly-wise, Max was feeling physically wiggly--he moved his body not unlike a fish while standing in hid bed, which is where he was when he said this--while I am feeling brainly wiggly, on account of it being 50 degrees and raining here in Baltimore. But also because there's just too goddam much to do. Sleep is a waste of time, isn't it? I could easily work 20 hours a day. And spend 17 hours of that work doing nothing but staring out the window. That's work. Sometimes. I roto-tilled the whole side yard; was that work? It was so easy. Thinking about how to continue forth through the writing project on the table, having that span of time in which to empty my brain, that's work, that's hard if not impossible. Calling up the ghosts, that's hard. Also, there's this:

* * *

Andrew Lytle said the following in his essay THE HIND TIT :

"When we remember the high expectations held universally by the founders of the American Union for a more perfect order of society, and then consider the state of life in this country today, it is bound to appear to reasonable people that somehow the experiment has proved abortive, and that in some way the great commonwealth has gone wrong.

There are those among us who defend and rejoice in this miscarriage, saying we are more prosperous. They tell us---and we are ready to believe---that collectively we are possessed of enormous wealth and that this in itself is compensation for whatever has been lost. But when we, as individuals, set out to find and enjoy this wealth, it becomes elusive and its goods escape us. We then reflect, no matter how great it may be collectively, if individually we do not profit by it, we have lost by the exchange. This becomes more apparent with the realization that, as its benefits elude us, the labors and pains of its acquisitions multiply.

To be caught unwittingly in this unhappy condition is calamitous; but to make obeisance before it, after learning how barren is its rule, is to be eunuched."

But Lytle also talked a lot about "living in the world", saving a great deal of bile for those who choose to remove themselves from the ebb and flow of society. This is work, thinking about this stuff: There are no alternatives, are there? There is little choice but to dive in, no?

* * *

No comments:

Post a Comment