Me and Mr. Jones

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

“The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen.”–Milan Kundera

What really connects words and things?

“His mother was sitting at the kitchen table when Geryon opened the screen door.

He had taken the local bus from Hades. Seven-hour trip. He wept most of the way.

Wanted to go straight to his room.

and shut the door but when he saw her he sat down. Hands in his jacket.

She smoked in silence a moment

then rested her chin against her hand. Eyes on his chest. Nice T-shirt, she said.

It was a red singlet with white letters

that read TENDER

LOIN. Herakles gave it–and here Geryon had meant

to slide past the name coolly

but such a cloud of agony poured up his soul he couldn’t remember

what he was saying.

He sat forward. She exhaled. She was watching his hands so he unclenched them

from the edge

of the table and began spinning the fruit bowl slowly. He spun it clockwise.

Counterclockwise. Clockwise.

Why is this fruit bowl always here? He stopped and held it by the rims.

It’s always here and it never

has any fruit in it. Been here all my life never had fruit in it yet. Doesn’t

that bother you? How do we even

know it’s a fruit bowl?She regarded him through smoke. How do you think it feels

growing up in a house full

of empty fruit bowls?His voice was high. His eyes met hers and they began

to laugh. They laughed

until tears ran down. Then they sat quiet. Drifted back

to opposite walls.

They spoke of a number of things, laundry, Geryon’s brother doing drugs,

the light in the bathroom.

At one point she took out a cigarette, looked at it, put it back. Geryon laid

his head on his arms on the table.

He was very sleepy. Finally they rose and went their ways. The fruit bowl

stayed there. Yes empty.”

I am watching television (again) and there is a crazy person acting, or rather, a person acting like a crazy person. I often act like a crazy person, or I think some people think that I do. The crazy person on the television killed someone and stole her baby because she needed a baby to keep her husband from divorcing her. I have not done any of these things. But I do sometimes talk to myself, loudly, and laugh when I think of things that strike me as funny. So do I have anything to worry about? Hopefully not. But most importantly we should ask ourselves, “What does this have to do with Neil Diamond?” Nothing…thankfully.

Um, I have this painful need to expose my painfully embarrassing aspects. And in that spirit, I just thought you should know that I am sitting on the couch (not alone!!!) and watching…The View. Ugh. Well, I am. And guess who is today’s musical guest? Yep–Neil Diamond. He is singing two songs from his new album, the one I stayed awake to listen to last night. And, prophetically, it is the two songs I selected as my favorite, as the ones that speak so intimately to my own world. First he played “We” which is basically a cheesy/sappy lovesong which says that love is about two people (ie “We”) together. And then, he closed with the song I felt deeply last night. Called, “Men are so easy.” Yeah, it can be taken to be about something more interesting than it is. It actually says that Men are just Boys disguised, simple and innocent and not intentionally troublesome if you “…love them and let them be free.” which I thought I needed to remember in my own life in my bed alone.

But now it is all just horrible because the ladies on The View are talking about how they love those songs and how his new album is amazing and I have to confront that fact that at my core I may be a cheesy 40-something year-old woman with not so refined tastes. Ugh.

“Neither one of us trying to hold it down,
Neither one of us taking the middle ground,
Wasn’t how to make sense we were thinking of,
Just the two of us bent on delirious love…”

Okay, pause action. Stop and look around. How did you get here?

You are laying in a bed, the bed you share although you are alone, plugged in to your iPod, and intently listening to the new Neil Diamond album. You had hoped to fall asleep so as to rest up for your big day tomorrow when you are going to the school you work at and moving around the books on the shelves in the room you call a library.

How to unpack a moment?

First off, the Neil Diamond. Sure, your mommy used to play “Forever in Blue Jeans” on the stereo and you eventually learned the words and sang along. But you buried those tastes during middle school, didn’t you? What, are you going to tell me it isn’t a choice? Were you made to listen to the rhine-stoned jewish Elvis by your genetics?

Now what of the library? Well there was that day almost two years ago you were visiting your boyfriend in Boston and thought that perhaps it might be fun to go to library school. Remember how you were out walking (probably for coffee) and then happened upon that brick building with the colorful banner advertising your nerdy degree? Well you managed to make that work and now you are officially a professional library-mediaspecialist-prepteacher and you are invested in your job despite the fact you aren’t working very hard at it. That’s why you have tomorrow to get caught up.

Are you still alone in the bed?

Well, sometimes alone isn’t bad. And other times you understand that others feel that way and you make due with your iPod because truth-be-told you could happily pass a day listening to music. Especially your new CD.

What is the quote you typed at the beginning of this post?

Um, it’s one of Mr. Diamond’s new songs. It seemed to resonate because I really want that moment he describes. Want it more than most anything else.

Yeah, I noticed you seem to focus a lot of your pictures and words on sex lately.

That’s not really connected. I think partly it is just easy to tap into the more intense emotions with certain subjects. Or maybe it is just easy. And when I get bored my mind seems to wander in those directions. I know I don’t have excuses to be bored but it does happen a lot lately. I’m working on it.

Are you a man of faith?

Hell no! I’d rather vote Republican.

Are you optimistic?

Yeah, I always have been. Not sure what drives it, but I am fairly convinced it will all be okay.

Don’t you think it is time for bed?

I’m not really sure what I think at the moment.

Sex is our deepest form of consciousness. It is utterly non-ideal, non-mental. It is pure blood-consciousness…. It is the consciousness of the night, when the soul is almost asleep.

It is almost noon. I am on the couch, listening to the sound of the dishwasher, occasionally chit-chatting with the man on the couch next to me. Although he must remain nameless, he is far from peripheral. In fact, he is often the reason that I smile.

It is Sunday, although I really wish it weren’t. If today were Saturday then I would feel very little guilt about the work I have put off. But somehow I allowed an entire day to slip by and managed to cross nothing off of my list of tasks I should complete.

I have not yet looked outside because our window blinds are closed. However, I have a sense that it is overcast and bland. It seems to be far too similar to the mood in which I find myself.

I have much to say, and too much that I have said already.

Something needs to happen.

Behold, I bring you just a few more snippets of the enemy’s own words and why I feel he needs to be destroyed:

“i have this professor (literature, the worst kind) who
circles and underlines phrases and things that maybe do backflips
in a little academic paper but so what
i thought writing was supposed to be original like
Charlie Parker and a shiny new dime
dropped by that baldy Jason Williams but no…“

I want you to note that in the above excerpt, the enemy references jazz-great Charlie Parker. He then wrote this poem:

“I wonder if we somehow could just
round up every poet who’s stood in front
of a college crowd citing Jazz as
one of their major influences and stuff
them in a bus and lock the goddamn doors

let them rattle their empty
little heads together while singing words like
improvisation and Miles and

Coletrain oh yeah, also
movement

driving to the cliff set high
on pompousness, gravity showing
those poets a thing or two about
the real meaning , as such, of
improvisation.“

So besides the mispellings of certain names, I would like to point out that in this poem he actually calls for his own death, as he was one who name-drops and is filled with “pompousness”. Die, die, die enemy!!!!