i'm writing this from work. i have striven to work through my routines in order (i actually tried to alternate "mental stuff" from "physical stuff" to maintain some sort of "balance" in my development)... but life sort of intervenes. particularly my wednesdays, when i put in a full day at my "day job" teaching special education students at an elementary school and then proceed to teach at the acupuncture school that evening. i don't even fully realize how tired i am until i literally start dropping off. yesterday (thursday), i basically came home, went to my parents' house to check on their rattling, dancing washing machine, and then returned, dropping off into a fitful sleep (backgrounded by my wife's viewings of the great british? bake-off and other miscellaneous noises of family life). i didn't get up until about 11 pm, and then, only to grab a bite to eat, before i collapsed upstairs.
...but in any case, i'm still driven to complete my tasks... sort of, i guess, the way my wife wants to close her rings. so i'm doing what i can in the few down times that i'm afforded. i had a no-show for my 11:30-12:30 distance learning session, and another no-show (mom texted and said that they were on the road) from 12:30-1:30. so i used the time to finish up my reading of 3 chapters... i'd read the last short story in otessa moshfegh's book, "homesick..."; then a short story in amy hemphill's collection; and finally, a chapter in tobias wolff's book "old school." all very different writers. although hemphill has a lot of acclaim, i can't truly "get" her stories. they at times feel too abstract- or perhaps "abstract" is the wrong word... i sense that she is too distanced or nuanced (appropriate?), and not direct. there definitely is a place for the oblique attack... to touch on issues indirectly... but i feel so misdirected that i don't see precisely what is the point. yes, people are rarely direct when describing pain, which can be a purposeful or unconscious blind spot... but if the story so obfuscates the pain that we don't know where to place it, or how destructive it has been, then i have a difficult time connecting to or sympathizing with it. that's how i feel, anyway. i think her most effective story, at least for me, was the one about knitting. i believe the woman in that story had had an abortion, and dealt with the trauma of that loss (while sort of living in parallel to another woman who was supported in raising her own child) through obsessive knitting. that one, i felt i got... her most famous story, "in the graveyard where ...", well, again, i just didn't get it. maybe upon subsequent readings or something, i might be able to access more of what the story was getting at. but right now, it stirs no memories or connections with me.
otessa moshfegh... her stories were all about "off" and dysfunctional tangles of lives. there was a sort of ugliness and futility in them that left a sort of bad taste in the mouth. and yet, that did have a particular flavor. and in some senses, the various and sundry ways that people tie their narrative storylines into effective nooses is... well, interesting. i also find her fascinating in her effortless skill in being a chameleon, changing her voice and setting and character completely from one story to another.
i suppose of all the "short story" writers i've read recently, i identify the most with tobias wolff. not only is he male, and writing a memoir of sorts (true?) of his experiences in an all boys' private school... but his narrative structure... i would say, the "flesh" of the prose... is resonant with me. somehow, at times, i feel that the author's job is to convey the solidity of a thing, and to do it with words- apt ones. at times i feel the absence, the "unsaid" of the women writers i've read... well, it can be artful, but i guess because i'm a stupid man, i need to feel that fucking fist hit me square in the jaw... one of the other things i like about "old school" is that it is precisely about writers and writing. it is about young boys aspiring to be writers, and their encounters with the great figures of their time: so far, robert frost and ayn rand (... i know, that latter... the fascination of ayn rand explains a lot of republican sentiments, actually... the "selfish" ideology).
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so again, i've used this down time to read. i'm now using some of this down time to write in my blog. i don't know who reads this, or why... but i think of late that this blog affords me an opportunity to compose a sort of "public journal." in a sense, it is me shitting my every day concerns out onto the screen, so i'm "empty" for more muse-like (muse-ish? amuseing?) or inspired thoughts to start to flit into my head. doesn't really work, really. my mind, dare i say it, is largely a repetition of patterned lusts, and patterned denials... patterns, really... and the absurd thing is that no matter how often i see those patterns, i never break away from them. in fact, perhaps life is the constant playing of the same game over and over and over again. you know there's no way to win, not really, but what else is there to do?
i feel lust is like an energy. at the moment, i appreciate it distantly, almost in the abstract. it's fascinating to watch its patterns. but i'm not on fire. and perhaps that's a good thing. perhaps that is the distance afforded by becoming an old man, that you can watch the fire on the mountain, and not discover that your own pants are on fire. you can study the shape of the flames in an almost aesthetic way... even feel the sunburn of it... but ...
---at this point, i was interrupted... a student of mine popped up in the google meet, and it was business as usual. after that meeting, i had a webex meeting about a virtual stem camp that a few teachers in the district are trying to organize and put together. unfortunately, we have very little buy-in, particularly from my own school, which is discouraging... but we still thought through a pretty good program, and this weekend, the intention is to test out our challenge, to see if it is even feasible... for adults.
i came home, and basically passed out... i had a somewhat restless sleep on the living room floor, surrounded by the sounds of life about me (hmm... sounds familiar?). and it is now 1:40. i know the kids are up, upstairs, likely chatting with their friends or playing computer games... i am very little a part of their lives at this stage... just this grumpy stranger who comes home to eat and collapse.
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