Watering Hole
It's tiring scraping every key point from an exploding paper rose smeared with my idiosynctratic text sitting on the table in front of you. It gets frustrating, especially when a careless fellow patron knocks the corner of the table and spills your coffee onto some of those papers, such that the sickly blue ink becomes smeared into a scatological brown stain over the crux of some argument/opinion/presuasion by Fodor or bentham or Goldman-Rakic. It doesn't matter. So why do it? Is this knowledge elevating anyone? Or are we being trained to skillfully manage the thornfields of reticulated technological systems whose future belligerent interactions will require the finest minds to keep on the down-low? And what is that point? Where do we throw in the towel, realizing the vague--almost spiritual--longing awakened by higher education is unattainable on the institutional level? Where in this world do equivocal syntheses of theories and positions get grants and funding? Why is reinventing the wheel in every specialized discipline so fashionable? Simple: because that way more academics get to make their careers on the same facts. Like animal herds swarming to a watering hole in the desert while the enterprising ones who are looking for new watering holes mostly die off--save for the few lucky ones. Not that I'm even close to getting out and discovering anything. At every stage of education you realize just how much of a baby you are, and just as you're becoming a very efficient baby, they throw you out.
But it'll all be over when you're dead.
Angry old Ludwig von blasts at me. He's telling me that we can still ennoble ourselves through tragedy. But is that true? Or is the universe an uncaring, absent-minded sadist? One has to ask: whose mind is absent? He's telling me an individual can still send the walls of some ancient fortress crumbling down with but a gesture. But this is a promise: just a promise at the moment. Time will tell how many buildings will fall, rise, split, burn, topple, move or crumble at my behest. Can one really dangerous idea do all these things? Now if only I had this idea. In the meantime, back to the frigtening papers.
At least it'll all be over when I'm dead.
No more caffeine rushes, but no more caffeine crashes. No more freezing extremities, but no more implusive tobogganing excursions. No more glares of city lights, but no more strobes to dance on the sidewalks by. No more tossing and turning, but no more remembered dreams. No more being cut off on the sidewalk, but no more wonderful feelings when rounding a corner and feeling a gust of the freshest fucking wind blow through every layer of clothes you have! No more ignorant mules of lederly peopl,e but no more recitations of life stories by fireside as the raccoon pelts hang ripe for the smoking. No more cancerous tobacco smoke, but no more iron cocaine powders ripe for insufflation. No more rooftop lonelinesses, but no more circles of confession and accusation in the bleakest of hotel rooms.
It'll all be over when I'm dead.
Consider: "It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey."
But it'll all be over when you're dead.
Angry old Ludwig von blasts at me. He's telling me that we can still ennoble ourselves through tragedy. But is that true? Or is the universe an uncaring, absent-minded sadist? One has to ask: whose mind is absent? He's telling me an individual can still send the walls of some ancient fortress crumbling down with but a gesture. But this is a promise: just a promise at the moment. Time will tell how many buildings will fall, rise, split, burn, topple, move or crumble at my behest. Can one really dangerous idea do all these things? Now if only I had this idea. In the meantime, back to the frigtening papers.
At least it'll all be over when I'm dead.
No more caffeine rushes, but no more caffeine crashes. No more freezing extremities, but no more implusive tobogganing excursions. No more glares of city lights, but no more strobes to dance on the sidewalks by. No more tossing and turning, but no more remembered dreams. No more being cut off on the sidewalk, but no more wonderful feelings when rounding a corner and feeling a gust of the freshest fucking wind blow through every layer of clothes you have! No more ignorant mules of lederly peopl,e but no more recitations of life stories by fireside as the raccoon pelts hang ripe for the smoking. No more cancerous tobacco smoke, but no more iron cocaine powders ripe for insufflation. No more rooftop lonelinesses, but no more circles of confession and accusation in the bleakest of hotel rooms.
It'll all be over when I'm dead.
Consider: "It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey."
posted by A. D. at 10:59 PM
2 Comments:
i'd like to spend years writing something really significant and detailed and then take it to a fountain and watch the ink drain from it completely. the only copy, of course. maybe i would save the ink.
It's an admirable thought. But good luck doing that in a world of auto-archives, e-mail forwards and the sad, sad torrent of internet text, including this. Have we lost our ability to destroy something beautiful? And if we lose that, how else do we lay claim to what we have created.
Just a thought a propos of nothing.
Cheers!
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