A Fifth of November to Remember...

November 1, 2009
Went to bed almost exactly at 3 and woke up exactly at 8, feeling a very round stomach and a very cold sobriety. The latter increased after surveying the damages and having just the right breakfast: banana, granola, two glasses of cold water, and The Economist’s report on worldwide fertility. Then came clean-up time. Slightly put off by Drew, Julie, and Liz clearing out early, I decided for my own satisfaction to have the residence as spic-and-span as possible before noon. Thus I scrubbed, I moved furniture, I carefully packed up everything, I washed my vomitorious towels, and I ran the sweeper. Karen helped with the latter when the battery died. And at noon, there was nothing to do but drink a few mimosas with the guys and accept the praises of Julie and Liz for my labors once we’d dumped the keg.
The night was excellent. We returned to Mandel Hall, at least I did, for the Pacifica Quartet’s gorgeous performance of Mendelssohn, Crumb (the alluring strings/wineglass/maracas/gong/chant piece Black Angels) and Schubert’s quintet with extra cello. The first was wonderfully romantic, the last a haunting piece of joy and loss I could certainly get behind. The post-concert talk, however, was disappointing, as David began by stating we had limited time…and proceeded to stumble over questions like a fanboy…or me when I’m gibbering.
Dined at Noodles, Etc., finally! Had a delicious Filipino dish call canpic, I think, have to check the spelling, with pork and broccoli and such. Dined in excellent company as well, with Alex, Jess, Ashley, Erik, Peter, Kaelin, and Amanda, who lived in Italy once doing research for Rick Steves and knew about Ricci! We traded stories, and I gained a bit of good advice from Kaelin…she suggested that right now our demands are so pressing that she has no time for a relationship. Made me reconsider my own attempts to try to find people these days. Maybe with someone outside the program…I don’t know.
I couldn’t go to church, but after writing a paper on Inkerman, I had my own All Saints’ Day service, listening to A Love Supreme while reading Marcus J. Borg’s essays on faith and the Bible, surrendering to complete meditation during “Psalm.” John Coltrane knew how to play the saxophone…and write religious music on the same level as anyone who ever lived…God bless and praise him.
Two quotes to end this entry.
“God will wash away all our tears…he always has…” John Coltrane
“In reality, obviousness and comfort have very little to do with poetry. It is not the nature of poetry to be what anyone expects; on the contrary, it is its nature to be surprising, to be disturbing, to be impossible.” Lytton Strachey, from his 1925 Leslie Stephen lecture on Alexander Pope, from Holroyd’s incredible compilation of essays.


November 2, 2009
The day was a good one. Stacy wants me to preach on the 15th. Casey, her dog, is being put to sleep…God rest a faithful soul. And I found out I am going to the theatre on the 14th, so I shall be free to celebrate Karen’s birthday on the 13th if she makes any big plans, and a cake will be prepared in the crock-pot. Mmmm-hmmm! Also talked to Mom and Dad, who were so happy to hear my happiness today, which in part stemmed from a long talk with Dr. Klaiman where I shared my ruminations from Halloween and we made some progress.
Most of today was spent reading, although I also learned a valuable lesson to stay away from the MAPH office on Mondays if I can help it…I ate far too many crackers. Theodor Adorno’s essays on music were beautifully stirring and thought-provoking, and I recognized the presence of Saint-Saens’s 3rd and Mahler’s 1st in his analysis. Louis Althusser is the polar extreme of his contemporary Lacan: lucid, clear, and carefully documenting his evidence. The material quality of ideology and are inability to escape at should be a suitably haunting subject.
Looking forward to Trivia Night tomorrow!

November 3, 2009
Writing a rapid-fire chronicle tonight…I think I should use the word “annals,” that would be fun…because I just finished a glass of Carlsberg in the Ida Noyes Pub. Consumption today was problematic. I feel like I have been gaining weight rapidly since Halloween, although tomorrow I’ll take some steps to remedy that. And something, either the milk I pitched just now or the Progresso vegetable noodle soup or that new cereal with the high fiber content, gave my stomach a turn today. Thankfully, I had an excellent dinner with Peter, Alex, Erik, and Jess at Medici, again splitting a Mediterranean pizza, and all of us sans the sadly underage Erik (one more month) went to the Pub with Karen, Adam, and Eric for Trivia Night. We scored 31 points out of a possible 48 and finished second, with yours truly pocketing fifteen bucks! One more point would have done it…but I wasn’t assertive enough…but I DO have a great team. Again. Scratching at horrible scabies-like itch on my arm.
I saw a guy today with a t-shirt bearing the snake who swallowed the elephant in The Little Prince. Awesome.
David’s lecture on Adorno was good, and ended with the same sense of hope I caught in the original essay’s conclusion, and I smiled a little inside when he brought up Mahler’s 1st at the end…should try to listen to that Thursday. And Elaine had some non-specific but nice things to say about my intervention! Sadly, I somehow neglected to read an essay which was NOT on the syllabus, but all of Thursday’s reading is over and done.
Lesley and CAPS’s presentation on the gap year, of which Dustin spoke as part of the panel, was very well-considered and inspired me to seek out jobs for the year here or at Emerson. I shall write to Professor Dulgarian during the break in three weeks…three weeks to write the Montale paper, sheesh…and I wish the panel had at least one non-mentor on it, but what can you do?
In between dinner and Truffaut tomorrow, I must pick up the Zizek and indulge in some birthday discretionary spending, as well as call the post office in the morning to get my poetry delivered. Why does Amazon choose not to deliver this box in particular?
97.1’s A to Z week is great.

November 4, 2009
Writing this the day after. I had a sudden bit of inspiration for a post for Abigail right before printing out over 100 pages for Elaine and then going to see The Wild Child. By the time I was done, I was very, very tired…and I also was picking out a dessert to bake for Karen. Yesterday was also a great day to think about a lot of things. I’m abandoning Montale to write about Williams…the Williams book came yesterday and I started flipping through it and finding references to Cleveland and Pittsburgh and soon I was picking out poems at random and recognizing my thoughts, my ideas, but not in the general sense of Milosz which we talked about in RMP but the sense that you’ve found someone who articulates your deepest emotions and desires the way you wish you could. I arrived, finally, at a poem called “Friends” about the power of writing and memory and the memories you share with your friends and the fear of death and how you deal with it as you mature and how beautiful and wonderful it is to love somebody. And I NEEDED to write about it. So…
The Williams arrived in tandem with a card from Miss Tressel, who urged me to forget about my perceived obligations—a gentler variation and Abigail and Dr. Klaiman’s dictum not to try to hard—and just BE. Things are fusing…God bless you, Carlee. And I’ve been thinking about being…how I’m getting more and more interested in the idea of the individual subject in terms of narrative, and the unintentionality of cultural/ideological subversion through personality, and a possibility which hit me this morning of how the author is able to express him or herself best in the narrative…a possibility which might be worth exploring.
Subjects. The Wild Child is a film which might be about the disparity between our natural selves and our “civilized” selves, or the formation of a subject through Lacan/Core methodology, or maybe (since it was dedicated to Leaud) Truffaut’s little commentary on what it’s like to make movies (which would make Day For Night NOT really about movies), or maybe his recognition that after a decade of comedies and thrillers, love and death, he wanted to know what made people tick.
RMP was a wonderful exercise in thinking on my feet as, to quote Zagajewski, “life is more interesting when you move off the list.” We read Milosz poems like “Mittelbergheim” and “Elegy for N.N.” which talked about making a pause in the journey and the indifference of time, again in ways I recognized.
Stephen and I are playing phone tag. I move two thousand miles and nothing changes.
I bought Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and a mint chocolate chip milkshake. All is good except workout effects are getting harder. Either I’m out of shape or losing something. Neither seems likely. I should get some more sleep. Three weeks to write two major papers and finish research for the third. Until Thanksgiving, it’s crunch time.


November 5, 2009
Two conversations. Marc is suffering from vertigo but slowly recovering, and I wish him all the best as my sympathy flows in a distinctly non-Althusserian way straight up. He was happy to hear he no longer had to think about Montale. Sympathies also with my Mom, who four years after missing her first chance due to cancer had the “pleasure” (quotation marks referring to her) of seeing Bob Dylan tonight with Dad. Other conversation with Stephen…finally! He’s moved downtown and is happier than ever. I was happy, too, after adding up all the news in our talk and e-mails.
1) Stephen visited every major bookseller in America and Europe and promised them An Elegy for Amelia Johnson in April 2010. And they love the idea.
2) I have a new editor, Paul Morrissey (not the Paul Morrissey who made films for Warhol but the former editor of Pixar manga), who equally loves the book.
3) Dave is ostensibly 75% of the way there with the artwork. Ostensibly because he won’t show us anything. Stephen is concerned that Dave needs his hand held and thus has brought in Paul.
4) Stephen will be in Chicago soon for Thanksgiving with his family, and the day my final MAPH paper is turned in, he wants me to come up and dine with them. Repaying the favor.
Things are busting out like June. Because I am taking Abigail’s lessons to heart (Dr. Klaiman’s as well) and learning how to think on my feet. In CVW, I managed to pull some ideas off of the top of my head from Andres and Eric’s posts which really impressed Elaine. Meanwhile, Mark, suffering from illness, delivered a lecture on Althusser which elucidated further the already lucid (although Jess and Peter took umbrage with his scathing put downs of the system…anyone who’s read Victorian novels could poke holes in Althusser’s logic). Also met Professors Elizabeth Helsinger (a delightful woman who shared some advice and didn’t mind I misspoke about her past) and Jennifer Scappetone, who teaches the James course in the Spring. Also attended with Karen and Anna Maud Ellman’s lecture on modernity. She, the Irish Lit professor from Notre Dame, was a very sweet and encouraging woman, and she liked my little point about Henry James. Went home, ate pizza, made the big mistake which I must NEVER make again of drinking Ste. Michelle while reading 200 pages of Crimean War memoirs. Have another 125 to read this morning so tomorrow can be devoted to Williams.
I’m starting to love tofu. Hibbert’s history of the French Revolution reminded me just how complex the individual is…and left me more determined to try to work out my burgeoning ideas on the individual subject as narrator in ideological terms. I need to crack narratives. But you don’t always need to think about things like that…sometimes all you need is to listento Art Tatum’s flowing stride and Ben Webster’s beautiful, beautiful tone as they play the most beautiful jazz standards known to man. “My One and Only Love…”wow…
And I have wonderful friends. Just to reiterate.

November 6, 2009
Today was a day where half of it was passed in ascetic scholarship and half in total debauchery.
In the morning, I sat down, ate a very light breakfast, almost put aside Adam Nicolosn’s Quarrel With the King, re-read a chapter more carefully and realized I should keep reading, and then read Crimean War literature for three hours straight. I’m torn. Half of me would be delighted to never read another book about the Crimean War again and the other half thinks I could keep going forever. At least Alexis Soyer offers up a mean bouillabaisse recipe…and I can’t believe in my present state I spelled that word right.
After a vegan steak wrap and some serious Adorno and Althusser reading, I continued my ascetic scholarship right up until precept group began. Then, in the midst of Peter N. (who looks like Nicholson as O’Neill with that moustache) and Rick’s excellent “Why Chamber Music?” presentation, things broke down. Delightfully.
Except when I called Mom and I was suddenly, briefly terrified that I was going to give in and get horridly out-of-control. Thing is, it’s an everything-in-moderation week this week, and I feel great, and we went from screaming at each other to telling each other how deeply we care in twenty minutes. Because I told her my good news from Stephen. And I told Dad. And everyone else here. Everyone else was way more excited for me than I was, Raff even saying I am the coolest guy he knows (and expressing astonishment I am still a virgin sans girlfriend…his friend Rick suggested I need to dress differently). And Abigail and I actually talked for once without referencing school. And somehow every woman yesterday looked amazingly, blindingly beautiful, so beautiful I wanted to write a giant epic poem then and there about all of them. (Jess, Ashley, Chelsie, Karen with her black skirt and boots, Bailey, Georgia in the green dress, Mika, Melissa, Karen as good as another man’s wife can ever look to a respectful man and begging me to bake her another pie on Tuesday, Bryan’s girlfriend, Bailey’s friend Leslie, Valencia, Kaelin who needs to have a big-eye-staring contest with Ashley, Alise)
So when Chelsie baked cake for Dacia’s birthday, and they brought back my favorite crackers at Social Hour, and Jess made meat loaf with brown sugar and oatmeal, and Karen provided two bottles of sparkling wine and a friend of hers made awesome chickpeas…
I went on total unbridled consumption. I was happy. I even spilled hot tea down my clothes while watching the rape/murder scene from Deliverance and got into an argument with Tom about Grindhouse and saw Bill without a shirt showing us his tattoos, and I was delightfully happy all night until I got really, really tired at 12:30 having been awake for eighteen and a half hours.
Work all day. Play all night. Ain’t no love in the heart of the city. Have to find it on the South Side.

November 7, 2009
I woke up this morning and everything felt extraordinary…and it stayed extraordinary all day. Dare I say that, like Florence/Cleo, I seem to be happy? I worked hard, played hard, felt a little down three times, and only temporarily.
Anyway. Today at work, I began compiling research on C. K. Williams’s poem “Friends” and read “With Ignorance” and “A Day for Anne Frank” in the process. Wow. There is something so beautiful about walking outside on a sunny November day with thoughts like that playing in the back of your mind. What a privilege to get to write fifteen pages on Williams. The sad thing is I have almost no interest in reading the assigned poems. I love the discovery. And I read Zizek’s introduction and one page, and a light bulb went over my head. Tomorrow will be total Zizek. I think it should be interesting. (Other thing to do tomorrow…keep my pajamas on until 11:30 when I shower. I think I can do it.)
I used a little birthday money to buy Bill Simmons’s 700 page take on the NBA, The Book of Basketball, which will hopefully keep me sane during the next two and a half weeks along with rereading Hibbert on the Medici, one of my favorite non-fiction books of all time…came to the conclusion today that Nicolson’s book is just not that good…he has all this fiery material and refuses to light the match. Cooked panko tilapia, harvest grains, and vegetables from Trader Joe’s along with an excellent bottle of Jeremiah Drinkwell’s Meritage and consumed all of the above with popcorn and cookies in the company of Peter, Jess, Ashley, and Adam. We watched Doctor Zhivago, which only I had seen…hokey, yes, but the sentimental pick in my all-time top ten. Lots of jokes about Omar Sharif’s moustache and Geraldine Chaplin’s prissiness, a post-movie talk on Gone With the Wind and registration, delight that Peter knew about Klaus Kinski (Isn’t it so amazing he gives a Kinski performance right in the middle of a David Lean movie?), and we went home happy. I shared the staring contest idea with Ashley, and she THANKED me for reasons unknown.
Hopefully, tomorrow, I shall cook a quadruple batch of chili and two pies to the best of specifications. And discover the sublime object of ideology.