Wondering If I should become a pioneer in the study of Che Guevara and political violence. Decisions.

The prospect of doctoral study is immensely appealing. The excitement of crafting a new idea, of analyzing, disputing, combatting the forces of knowledge. It's essentially a path towards a lifetime of liberal arts study. Is it relevant? Does it matter? Would I better serve the world as a cog in the machinery of society? I guess when you phrase it like that...

There's something artistic that I'm hoping to capture in this life. I'm not a manager, I create. Details are not beyond me, rather they excite me when the larger picture is strikingly clear. Only if it's striking, though.

I guess simple utilitarian effectiveness isn't what I'm after. I want to be effective, but I'd rather make something perfect--the perfect song, the perfect book, the perfect picture. Truth is the highest form, the loftiest pursuit. Truth is where we transcend our humanness.

When Whitney Houston sings "One Moment in Time," it's not particularly sophisticated or deep, not incredible for its provocation; it's perfect. When Biggie bounces out how "I just speak my peice, keep my peice, n***** wit the jesus peice, wit my peeps..." it's perfect. It's tight, it means something, it matters. When Faulkner's preacher takes the pulpit perfection is in the rafters.

Perfection is finite, tied down, paralyzed; perfection is the antithesis to what it means to be human. Humanity is the process, the struggle, the motion. Perfection is still.

Perfection is why people smoke. The moment overtakes them, the future, the concerns, nothing matters. That's why artists are often drugged out--or at least tend that way.

So will a ph.d get me that? Or will it plunge me into a morass of semantic minutia?

There was a fall night when I pushed living as it's supposed to be pushed, when the wind and the rain meshed with my own sense of love, and wildness stirred in its contorted and disorienting fervor; wildness, wind, the pangs of existence and living pushed forward--the suffocating stench of rotten-rose life. Fuck it.

But it wasn't. And yet it was.

There was something there that was important. I don't know what it was.

Once caught her changin
the battery to her halo...

What is that far off look--that desperate, confident, defiant, dead look? Where is that place? Where does it live, where does it lay?

I don't know why I started a blog. I don't have anything to say. Truth is, though, there's something wonderful about defiance. It's interesting to think about as a person of authority. How does one promote disobedience and manage to promote anything at all? Truth is, I was never a real rule breaker. I just don't respect rules. But I don't respect them because I fear them. Truth is, nothing has power unless someone gives it power. Repression is what makes Russian lit great. Juxtaposition is what makes life great.

There's a great Gardner Taylor sermon...Enemy? Victory! Cross? Crown! The juxtaposition of the kingdom!

What do people expect from this life? Can we be comfortable when we're dead? Ruminations from the original watermelon eater...

Hey...Dr. Jay...where you got those moves?
Was it gettin high in the school? Can it be the shoes?

It's the politics of the sneaker pimps

Some days your mind clears and things feel good. What is this crazy-ass thing called motivation? It's a shame that there aren't deeper questions on my mind.

McCarthy (Cormac, not Eugene) talks about the slaughter of thousands for a flowerblossom. White Tiger writerman says people are slaves when they can't see life's beauty.
I say, what beauty?
Life is life: powerful and often less than expected. Some days I like to pretend that a moral code keeps my profession geared to good and my MN geared to nice. The truth is, for this--all this--I was programmed. Nothing more, nothingless, nothing less.

Sometimes I'm proud. Programmed.

There are those fleeting instances when the lights shine down, the air is clear, and the night is new. Sirens; muffled discontent: nothing is certian. People we care about die, approach death. We approach it too, insodoing approach life.

Politics.

I don't get addicted to much, but one of these days I gotta get hooked on living. Or at least something that isn't the internet.

Institutionalist

Good column here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/opinion/27brooks.html?hp

Who are the institutionalists? I see them at work, in various functions. There is something impressive about them. They seek to fill a role, to be someone--despite the fact that that someone has already existed.

This relates to Plato's forms: the idea that there is an essential essence to everything: for every woman an ideal woman, for every table, a perfect table. These forms, of course, limit themselves to the realm of mind. There is no ideal table, or basketball player, or woman for that matter. Yet the institutionalist can see the ideal. World record holding runners see it. Overachieving teachers see it.

The existential path is more immediately attractive. What is the purpose of seeking an ideal when meaning only exists where you make it? If you can't find your own bearings in this world, what use is there in finding excellence in the bearings of others?

Brooks is too smart to be republican.

Did the G-train kill Gotham?

I lie puzzled as I backtrack to earlier times
nothing's equivalent
to the New York state of mind

It is a state of mind: the rattle beneath the corner store, C train commotion, yells and gusts, clocktower--skybeam--sunset, the burned out buildingfront on top of the park. The fear and excitement, the purple hightops, big glasses and scarves. It is the bigness and the badness, the madness and the sadness.

The mind-state: why gentrification matters, the loss of that impervious grit. And yet, poverty is still real, class-clown favorites stabbed on the block: the grit lives on. "You know he'll call ACS, that's why I don't say shit," paranoia, etc: the grit lives, never what it seems. Perceptions are what change, mind-states might die. Flashes of crazy, flashes of love: mind-state. But, then, nothing is really any different except that you thought it was.

Back to the old days, but mind-states live there too because what was remembered is different than what was. 4th ave bustle, the app now, down 32nd, townhouses falling to peices, California...knows how to party, even if we'd never been there: different than what was.

Life is what gets in the way. New York is a place where you just want to be.

Taxidermy

I'd like to go back to when we played as kids.
Things change.
That's just the way it is.

Something beautiful in the unfulfilled: the potential of every moment to be great or terrible or never to happen at all.

Life is made up of these fleeting connections, ephemeral relationships that would be worthless were they permanent. And yet that's what gives life meaning. Of course longevity is valuable in itself, but things are in constant flux. People from the past lose significance in the present, only to regain it in the future. The necessities of the person you are today, different than who you were yesterday, create new connections and destroy old, and then you fucking die.

This is starting to sound really positive.

Can you imagine being Obama? Every friendship you develop as president is colored by the fact that everyone you meet has wrapped your face up in the threads of an historical narrative. Every friendship you developed before you were president is locked into the state it was before it became colored by the arc of history. What happens if you're one of the people rotating into the whitehouse to keep Obama company--one of his friends--and you realize that you and Obama really aren't that close? I guess you shut up.

David Brooks has me worried about the stumulus package. Krugman says it's not enough money. Brooks says it's too much money to spend effectively. It seems both might be right. The republicans are wrong: buisiness tax cuts won't stimulate employment in this environment. What about bailing out state governments? What about bailing out Halliburton? Can we still do that?