The alluded-to Hyde Park renaissance, as of three days in, hasn’t been terrifically dignified, but dignity, at least producing dignity at a positive deficit, isn’t really what i do, so well, prepare to hear about some undignified things. I half expected that the third, prophesied return to hyde park would run more like arriving in the provincial capital, but since i don’t have the internet and i keep leaving my phone at home, i have no idea if i’ve been summoned to the tax collector’s house for dinner, pear brandy, whist, &c.
:: The unquestioned first-quarter highlight was yesterday afternoon. I insinuated myself into having $15, went to jimmy’s, watched 30 minutes of browns-packers, excused myself minus the $15, and then went to the point, where i swam to the buoy drunk and then sat on a rock for a while feeling less than grand. i spent the next six hours napping in an extremely hot apartment with several pots of coffee and spot applications of scotch where i saw a need developing.
:: hyde park has apparently been invaded, or incursed, by mod rockers. except they seem to be wearing polo shirts and khakis (dress slacks!) where i would have gone with a skinny suit and or those giant royal navy coats with the fake fur hood trim. or anoraks or something. you know what kind of coat i am talking about, don’t use small quibbles to destroy my larger point. which was that i saw two people riding scooters and a third scooter parked, in a marketing capacity, outside of what appears to be a mod-themed business in the space underneath the 57th st. IC traxz. “once is a pattern,” as we have learned from our BQA readings.
:: i bought an electric typewriter that works extremely well for $1, in addition to a towel rack for $3. i predict one of these two things could be instrumental in me actually writing works of fiction, and then having to transcribe them from typed non-internet paper to internet paper.
:: talking about feelings is a Special Treat that i like to avoid, or have liked to try to avoid recently, but i will wallow in it here for a moment with you all. i don’t know who to credit with this analytic tool i am about to introduce, but i think it was andy martin; anyway, we’re all familiar with the idea of a formative nervous breakdown that provides direction for the rest of your life; i feel like i am waiting around for my nervous breakdown and it’s not coming, which means i can’t even get spots on my lungs that result in my magic mountain, i’m just waiting for my spots to be awarded, so i can worry about getting rid of them. also, i thought i already had my formative nervous breakdown? certainly i could have seen that there could be non-formative breakdowns out there.
:: Aesthetic triumph of baseball
Can’t really bring myself to give a shit about football anymore; you might try to blame that on some kind of obligation to root for a Trent Dilfer-centric team, but I think I am going to blame it on anomie or creeping terror. There’s an aesthetic side too though. I specifically hate people who try to say that baseball is a lasting and poignant expression of american poetic cliches because of its visual aspect. there’s nothing cosmically correct about a 45 degree wedge with irregular edging that has goateed men mincing around the narrow point of, nor does the visual action of baseball even remotely function as a metaphor for manifest destiny or white flight (well, maybe that) or the destruction of native peoples, or capitalism eating a wild mustang with hoisin sauce or something. What that was building towards was that baseball uniforms and players, despite being largely unattractive, are much less unattractive that a lot of things, including the other professional sports, and I have started wearing my shirts with the top button undone.
What i realized, when running through the practice-steps logic for my argument about baseball, is that i really just like the Indians and i vicariously receive religious ecstacies through their manhandling of Kansas City and other lesser gentlemen. I’m pretty clearly out to waste time here, so I have to go, but know the following things pilgrims:
:: I still work at a liquor store, where I do something like racial profiling to determine whether or not I should waste the energy/altivez/triforce involved in gross, undisguised retail warfare.
:: I don’t mind the retail warfare part that much, it’s mopping that gets me down in the mouth
:: Read hofrat hagen on how good books TV your shit up. I have been experiencing roughly what he speaks of with Nathanael West, and the first 30 pages of The Confidence-Man, the self-apparent goodness of which somehow took 95 years to actually, um, get noticed by anyone.
you should speak to former maroon editor y. salaverry in re the confidence man, which was the subject of his thesis.
swimming to the buoy drunk seems unsafe.
here are some more things that baseball is not a metaphor for/avatar of/general locus for talking about:
-republican motherhood/cult of domesticity
-democracy
-greek mythological themes such as justice, fate, or accidental killing of fathers
-“thinking man’s” anything
-good sportsmanship/strategic nuance
-shift to a multipolar structure for global politics
-pride in any specific city or metropolitan area
I think that covers it. I like the Indians and Red Sox and dislike the Yankees and Braves.
At the age of 26 I have already had two serious nervous breakdowns, and I don’t have the faintest fucking idea what I’m doing with my life.
On the plus side, I can speak Spanish now! Sort of.
i think i went ahead and caught a gear on having the breakdown, in that i quit/got fired from work yesterday and then blew the last paycheck on beers and a cab ride. dickie, are you back from espana yet?
No. Going to Madrid, then Barcelona, then Berlin, then London. I’ll probably come home after that. Maybe. Vamos a ver.
I don’t see why baseball can’t be a metaphor. Or what it means to a priori say that it is not a metaphor of. This is probably not a baseball-specific point.