Only the Lonely

- "Only the Lonely" by Roy Orbison, from Black and White Night (1988)

Darklands

After my first day of Romantic poetry, I realize that unhappiness has always been en vogue, and that everyone else had this realization long ago.

Even the slowest boat eventually crosses the river.

- "Darklands" by The Jesus and Mary Chain, from Darklands (1987)

Making Peace

I found a copy of this poem shoved into one of my notebooks. I've no idea where it came from.

"Making Peace"

A voice from the dark called out,

             ‘The poets must give us

imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar

imagination of disaster. Peace, not only

the absence of war.’

                                   But peace, like a poem,

is not there ahead of itself,

can’t be imagined before it is made,

can’t be known except

in the words of its making,

grammar of justice,

syntax of mutual aid.

                                       A feeling towards it,

dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have

until we begin to utter its metaphors,

learning them as we speak.

                                              A line of peace might appear

if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,

revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,

questioned our needs, allowed

long pauses . . .

                        A cadence of peace might balance its weight

on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,

an energy field more intense than war,

might pulse then,

stanza by stanza into the world,

each act of living

one of its words, each word

a vibration of light—facets

of the forming crystal.

- by Denise Levertov, from Breathing the Water (1987)

Snowbound

We can't leave our house!

So I'm reading. Lots. I'm trying to finish up The Broom of the System, which venture is going rather slowly. It's hilarious and impressive, written as a senior thesis by a twenty-two-year-old David Foster Wallace (a fact on which I try not to focus at all as I create my own thesis project). By no means is it the best book I've ever written—it borrows heavily from Thomas Pynchon and sometimes feels overeager to be intelligent. But for a first novel, one written by a pimply kid barely out of puberty, it's got some darn good dialogue.

The basic, vague arc of the novel follows, so far as I can tell, a woman named Lenore Beadsman as she tries to track down her grandma, who disappeared from a nursing home in suburban Cleveland. In the following scene, Lenore meets Mr. Bloemker, the nursing home director, in a bar with a blow-up doll named Brenda:

“This area of the country, what are we to say of this area of the country, Ms. Beadsman?”
“Search me.”
“Both in the middle and on the fringe. The physical heart, and the cultural extremity. Corn, a steadily waning complex of heavy industry, and sports. What are we to say? We feed and stoke and supply a nation much of which doesn’t know we exist. A nation we tend to be decades behind, culturally and intellectually. What are we to say about it?”
“Well, you’re saying pretty good things, really; I sense some interest on Brenda’s part, too, I think.”
“This area makes for truly bizarre people. Troubled people. As past historians have noted and future historians will note.”
“Yup.”
“And when the people in question then become old, when they must not only come to terms with and recognize the implications of their consciousness of themselves as parts of this strange, occluded place...when they must incorporate and manage memory, as well, past perceptions and feelings. Perceptions of the past. Memories: things that both are and aren’t. The Midwest: a place that both is and isn’t. A volatile mixture.”

I don't necessarily agree that the Midwest is "culturally and intellectually" behind the coasts: that's the easy and reductive conceptualization of the Midwest. It's perhaps more fitting to make that generalization about rural places more specifically, and this part of the country has a lot more of those due to mere landmass.

Or maybe it's generally bad to make generalizations like that. But then how are we supposed to make sense of the world without creating even detailed brushstrokes of abstraction?

My back hurts.

Here are some photos from this morning, before the snow really started.

Beat City

We had it good with the '80's. Perms and hair gel included.

- "Beat City," by The Flower Pot Men, from The Janice Long Session (1987) and featured in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)