Introduction

So…my name is Andrew J. Rostan. An ordinary man with slightly out-of-the-ordinary hopes and dreams, partially influenced by earning two degrees in subjects which have no immediate useful application to the world. I live in Chicago, Illinois where I have a plethora of amazing friends and a significant other more wonderful than I deserve. And when I'm not either a) working hard or b) curled up with a good book and a glass of wine, I love to write.

 

I kept two different blogs from 2007 to 2009, the ashes of which are still clinging to the silken threads of the World Wide Web. I got a thrill out of producing entries, and only abandoned them because of graduate school (the first because of the application process taking over my life, the second because of the actual studying taking over my life). But now school is over for good (probably), stress relief is a necessity, and my obsession with biography (which is part of the hopes and dreams) has given me a new interest in the art of posterity.

 

Therefore, I am mounting the third, and idiomatically charming, try. "Andrew J. Rostan's 'The Magnificent Seven.'" Why did I name the blog this? Three reasons.

 

1. As my dear friend The Minstrel* has told me on many occasions, while I don't think my life is that magnificent, he does, and he believes the rest of the world does, too.
   
2. I want to make sure I write something EVERY DAY, so sometime after sunset in Chicago, I shall type seven lines, minimum, about something I thought about today or something amazing I did. It will probably go longer most days, but I know that I can write seven lines at the end of the day even if I'm brain-dead or slightly tipsy. And by lines, I mean "full-across-the-page" lines on Microsoft Word's Blog Post feature. The subject matter of those lines? It could be a book I'm reading, a movie I saw, a record I heard, a fun event I went to, a comment on an article from Arts & Letters Daily or The Economist or Vanity Fair (my three big news sources), a meditation on God (I am a devout Episcopalian), or just some random thought blowing across my mind. But I promise I shall always try to make these thoughts interesting…and brief, so you can come for a minute or two, read, enjoy, and move on…but maybe be a little inspired, or with a sudden urge to try a new recipe or cultural artifact. That would be nice.
   
3. It gives me a reason to keep Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen in my background.
   

 

So…come by every day for one new glimpse into my world. It may not always be done well, but I take a little satisfaction that I can do it at all.

 

*Just so you all know, while I shall always take credit for my opinions and occasional idiocy, my friends are so great that I don't want to write anything which will embarrass them for potential employers and career partners. Therefore, with the exception of me, Mommy, and Daddy, everybody will get an appropriate alias…and believe me, coming up with that part will be half the fun ;)

 

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.

Revelations and Celebrations...and Happy Halloween!

So, now I’m 25. And my birthday was one of the greatest I ever had, despite, or maybe because of, the teaching of a moral lesson. In the constant, unplanned fluttering from place to place, I somehow lost my camera. Either it fell out or got stolen. This did not bother me. I was annoyed, yes, but of all my possessions it was my least favorite, least essential one. My mom and Marc love to take pictures. Not me. It’s sort of like how I don’t want to see the Harry Potter movies…when I read a book, when I read what I write, as I do in this new diary, the memory rushes back to my head with pristine sharpness. When I have a picture to look at, the memory is blurred. For instance, yes, I am very glad I have pictures of my two trips to Italy and Europe, but the scenes I have documented evidence of are not as clear as the memories which go with them. I do not have pictures of the sun setting in a near-purple sky over Pompeii or the zigzagging lights of the walk to Sorrento’s beach, or another sunset over Perugia, or the texture of the fried fish I ate in Venice, or the stark poetic echoes of Scott, James, Mark, and I walking through Santa Croce square in a near-deserted state…or, for that matter, Carlee Tressel in black on the boat on Lake Michigan. But do I forget these things? I remember them better, sad to say, than the Thanksgiving week in Rome we have so many pictures of. That proves something…

My time is running out and I still have said nothing about my actual birthday. Peter, Erik, Jessica, Ashley, and I went to the Field Museum, which is an architectural copy of the British Museum, and we saw more mummies than I’ve ever witnessed assembled in one place in my life, diamonds which took five years to carve and a 6,000-carat topaz, and dinosaurs. Lots of them. Which inspired serious quoting from Jurassic Park. Then I introduced everyone to the Jazz Record Mart, where I acquired some Art Tatum and Fred Hersch, Erik got the most hilarious Isaac Hayes album ever (just for the cover…Juicy Fruit (Disco Freak)), and Karen and Bill met us…Karen was afraid of overspending. A last-minute rearranging of plans led us to dinner at Ed Debevic’s, where Bill wrote me a poem, the waitress was as sassy as ever, and I ate a gravy-smothered meat loaf and mashed potatoes of pure American goodness…I had not consumed meat loaf since time out of mind, and I had Oreo shakes and the world’s smallest sundae. And I celebrated with eight wonderful people after Alex and Julie got there. And I saw all of Chicago. And I was happy to be alive. (And Cleo From 5 to 7 was charming.)



October 27, 2009

Today began as a most unusual day. Prompted by strange dreams, possibly inspired by a very productive therapy session with Dr. Klaiman, I awoke in a fit of frenzy but still was willing and able to have a great workout…and to pass the morning with no worries about Marx. And further note to self…I shall never be drinking straight Starbucks again. Never. We went through Culture of Victorian War with Elaine playing a dirty trick on us, revealing that some of the letters by an “Ensign Pepper” were actually the products of a clever female novelist who also wrote East Lynne. Then came Core, where people kept materializing at various times and all the Jewish or classical-looking women looked the same with their hair tied up in buns, i.e. Mika and Abigail, still in black from the funeral she went to…I imagine…and looking strangely tragic. Jennifer Wild lectured on Cleo From 5 to 7 and was nice enough, but about 25 times she brought up a topic and then said she didn’t have time to cover it. Consequently, we ran out of time.

Jess and Ashley gave me a handsome recipe book, and then we walked to the Classics office where I received a birthday present which more than made up for the lost camera: my lack of nervousness, dedication, and positive thinking paid off in a B/B+.

I did it!

And the only comment Abigail wrote that I’ve looked at already is that this was great progress over the last paper. I am on my way as a master’s student, all thanks to Marx and two redheads. Thus I celebrated long and loud tonight at Karen and Stuart’s, where I ended up with….three birthday cakes. I had consumed protein and vegetables in healthy but low quantities before, so I was ready for Karen and her friend Rachel (who dates Russell, who reminds me of the saintly Mr. Tabb, and Rachel looks like a female Michael, so they are obviously a match made in Heaven, just like Karen and Stuart, and God do I wish Karen had a clone or a younger sister) and their chocolate candy corn cake and pumpkin cake, and Mike’s apple cake, all topped with homemade vanilla ice cream from Adam, and Mika and the other Adam (Snyder) were there as well…how was I blessed with so many friends like Karen who thanks ME for coming to her apartment, and Bill who comes out on Monday even though he has the flu? I ate four slices of cake but I didn’t care…I could not have asked for a better birthday, especially a two-day celebration ending in Celebrity and Telephone Oracle, the latter of which saw me expunge my high school fantasy and sent Stuart and I on the road to hell as a result.

So last big bit of news. Saturday Peter, Karen, and I will host the MAPH Halloween Party. Our apartment will be the dance floor and keg, hers the wine and quiet. Julie was very grateful. And I followed that meeting with an extraordinary essay by Elaine Scarry which is going to give me a lot to chew on come the morrow. But for now, six hours of sleep, compensating with nearly eight tomorrow.



October 28, 2009

So much has happened the last few days which I need to add…

Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South was a disappointment. Certainly ambitious and sincere, but on the one hand, she is not prepared for a full-scale assault on capitalist rhetoric, and on the other hand, Volume Two, which goes on for over two hundred pages, would have sent Kal-El Bogdanove screaming for the hills of San Fernando as the love plot turns on a simple misunderstanding which could have been cleared up in one word. Maybe Mary Barton or Wives and Daughters would have been better. Otherwise, I could see myself interested in this if I had to read it. Pleasure, blah.

“The Structure of War” is fascinating as for the first time ever suggesting a plausible alternative to conflict besides inflicting irreversible pain on bodies which represent the real version of an immaterial, false construct. Scarry’s opening, which I must read again tomorrow morning before class, makes so much more sense.

And I am very proud, very proud, of my work on the paper…it is one of the greatest breakthroughs of my intellectual life. To take the new methods of learning I have devised and reshape them for my usual style is a victory I shall not be forgetting the lesson of any time soon.



The air is disconcerting. I don’t like that it isn’t November and I already require a winter coat. Even with some extra meat on the bones, this is a sad state to be in.

Today was passed in quiet. After a lot of time with many friends, I was rather solitary and spent my time studying and trying to study around the Milosz lecture. Milosz was a fine poet, but I found that Kat’s great complaint about me applies to literary analysis as well. Milosz can be so achingly sincere that when he turns ironic, I am still taking him at face value.

Ate very little today after last night’s gluttony dessert festival. I’m typing this while listening to Peter read Brecht aloud…or is it Benjamin? I can’t tell.

French cinema. I didn’t get specific about Cleo From 5 to 7 but it is a beautiful film about female self-identity…I can see why Lisa liked it. Achingly sweet, intertextual in very clever ways (Michel Legrand as the pianist), political, funny, very, very honest, and Corrine Marchand is superb as Cleo. Funny thing…surrounded by a crowd of women at lunch yesterday we were talking about Audrey Hepburn and no one noticed the presence of Villalonga. Film snob coming out here. Stolen Kisses was a different kind of film. Of the three other Truffauts, despite its location in the Doinel sequence it’s closest to Shoot the Piano Player, the romance being mixed with an offbeat take on private-eye movies. The scenes with the dentist and the conversation about Hitler are fantastic, and Claude Jade is adorable. (Can see why Truffaut settled down with her for a while.) Jean-Pierre Leaud looks like Jason Schwartzman and Truffaut mixed their DNA. Great comic actor.

I got the text for my presentation on Friday. Was rather annoyed by the lack of a copy machine in the Harper Commons. Well, life was not made to please me. Hopefully I can fit a bunch of stuff in the backpack tomorrow. Going to post on Cleo and dust off the old B.A. Took a lot of excellent notes for Friday around eating pizza and finding a brownie recipe to make for Karen. Pizza delicious. Body feels excellent. Made a CTI mix for the Halloween party. Did I write that already? I don’t remember, but I’m tired. Damn tired. Let’s get 7 ½ hours of sleep tonight and work tomorrow for play on the weekend. There’s a plan.



October 29, 2009

I love Abigail Zitin. Let me make sure I have that perfectly clear. I’m not in love with her, far from it…she might have been my type in alternate circumstances, but she has a boyfriend, and I’m not attracted to her by merit of our particular relationship alone. BUT, I realized today I love her the way I would love an older sister, a lesser degree of how I feel about Beth. Today, we met in Stuart Hall to talk about my presentation and ended up spending an hour of her challenging me, disorienting me, winning in an intellectual wrestling match I was proud to lose. She identified a continuing problem: I keep wanting to impose my own version of what is going on in the text on top of what is going on in the text, which is the MAIN POINT. My attitudes toward Marx, Lacan, and Kincaid were all colored by personal feelings and an inability to admit I just don’t know something, an inability Abigail basically is giving me permission to have. It’s weird. I know I shouldn’t be afraid, but I still think I’m not supposed to be wrong. All I wanted was to show I could grasp the material, but Abigail told me I don’t need to try so hard. If there was ever advice more antithetical to my nature, but it’s from her, so I’ll try.

Funny thing: Mark Hopwood came up to us out of the blue and apologized to me for our falling out of touch. He IS a heck of a guy. I tried to call Mr. Lariccia but failed. Owe him one, and Kal, and Jonathan, and Lisa, and Matt, and Pat…damn my workload sometimes!

Today I ate too much. After the party, it will be time to kick-start the pre-Thanksgiving mindfulness. But after a lunch where I sat outside and ate a cold sandwich, culminating in the shivers, Peter and I tore through an entire chicken with potatoes, peppers, and a miniature cranberry sauce can. And we spent the whole night in great conversation about Shakespeare, German theorists, and Sidney Lumet. The Germans were much drier than David, but he tried to illustrate Barthes with a long example drawn from August Wilson which kinda-sorta didn’t prove anything. Barthes, on the other hand, would have been proud.

I wrote a fine little post on the intertextuality of Cleo From 5 to 7, did some nice work on the presentation for tomorrow after my talk with Abigail, contributed to a rousing discussion on Russell by way of Scarry in the narrative of wartime suffering (none of this in order, by the way), and read Strachey on Shakespeare, proving that reading Strachey on anything is always the way to go. Have to rest up so I can fine-tune the Barthes tomorrow…and be ready for Saturday’s haunted little children.



October 30, 2009


I had a nice healthy breakfast and lunch sandwiched around me balancing out all of my classwork, the Barthes getting fine-tuned after reading everybody’s posts and some extra research accomplished for my two other papers. Then came the actual presentation. My goal was to lay a bunch of groundwork and then get to the point where I could say, satisfying Abigail, that I knew nothing. I never got there because my early questions raised so many talking points and comments from Abigail that much of my talk was done haphazardly. I felt a little sad, and very tired, but Abigail praised my work as finely pedagogical. She even accepted a compliment from me along yesterday’s entry’s lines! Then during social hour, I stayed away from cheese and obviously fatty foods, enjoyed some wine…

Peter complained last night that his arm hurt. When he woke up with tremendous pain, he went to the medical center and was thankfully diagnosed with a sprain, so they gave him vicodin. He needed more. Alex suggested we pick it up and go to dinner. Erik, Ashley, and I came along, even though I really wanted to go home to drop off my bags and I was still talking to everyone. Then things began to get amended. I picked up some milk and soda to take home, thinking we would catch the bus. I thought wrong. So now I felt somewhat tipsy, very tired in the middle of a long, long week, and ultimately I walked home six blocks in the wind alone carrying everything. I didn’t have any fun and I didn’t get as much work done as I could have and I ate even though I wasn’t hungry…I feel guilty, too, because I weigh less than I did when I left home.

But I got halfway through an essay for Victorian War, a long one, before deciding to go to bed and finish tomorrow, and I realized…I was happy again. I had a great weekend ahead of me. I am succeeding here and I am proving my maturity, but I refuse to believe it.

God forgive me.

And grant me the serenity to change what I can and accept what I cannot.



October 31, 2009

Halloween…and God, working in mysterious ways, answered my prayer.

I went on a very long route of logic as to why I get so depressed, in this case, and every case, and something hit me…I want to be considered mature and successful, and my role models for that are my parents. They always seemed to be in control of every given scenario (to quote Watterson) and I have tried to live a life where I can plan out things and be ready for contingencies, make things happen the way I think they should. But life being what it is, there are always bumps, gaps, Barthesian edges, which we never expect. However, because I didn’t count on them and can’t always think on my feet well enough—or simply don’t understand how I could have been wrong—I feel like any disturbances in the order are my fault. Any failure to live up to my standards is entirely on me.

And since I never give anyone more credit than I give myself…since I look up to people and consider them my betters…I feel everything which happens is not only my fault, but they know it, and I am hurting them or causing them to blame me, so my life sinks into tailspin.

Dad is frustrated with me. How is it, he asks, that everyone in the world sees what a fine person I’ve become and I don’t?

It’s time for me to start trying to get around this. I am lucky to have some wonderful friends who truly care about me.

It all comes back to my pride. I don’t want to admit I’m wrong, confess my fears of being seen to be less than the image I have, less than the standard I set…so I crouch in fear and misery. But I need to make myself see that the man I am is good enough for the world.

He’s certainly good enough for the people I know.

So today, Mom was very loving with me, and Dad…what will I do when they’re gone? It’s time for me to get more self-reliant. This will help. I shall offer my mental strength and trust to God, and from this point on…move on…



I didn’t mention that yesterday, I psyched myself up for the presentation by listening to two songs which for me exemplified the pleasure of the text in a continuous loop: Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City” and Jay-Z’s “Heart of the City.” What a combo.

Today I ate lots of fiber and acquired a Halloween costume: ultra small-and-tight Nautica underwear to which George Bernard Shaw and Jane Austen are on my nipples, William Shakespeare and Henry James are on my buttocks, and Anthony Trollope covers the John Thomas.

I AM THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT.

And it will be a Halloween to remember…



October 31, 2009, The Day After…

The MAPH Halloween party was beyond description. I shall try to describe it.

So there’s about 70 people in your apartment, and Karen’s apartment, with a keg in your kitchen and snacks spread out in various places and plenty of alcohol everywhere you turn, and I mean alcohol, a case of Charles Shaw and rum and vodka and whiskey and Scotch and a punch Karen made which was excellent to begin with and kept getting things added to it all night. I lost count of how many Joe’s O’s I ate, but it was a significant number. I also drank a lot of wine and punch and beer playing Flipcup, where I executed a double-flip.

Costumes: Peter was a hunter, Karen Slovin an environmentalist, Karen Singerman with Adam and Mika as Firefly characters, Emma as Carmen Sandiego, Alex as Barney Smithson, Ashley as Alice (WELL DONE), A.J. as Roger Sterling (WELL DONE), Mike as Bruce Lee, Patrick as Popeye, Amelia and Andy as Bernadette Peters and Steve Martin in The Jerk, Julie as Magritte’s man with an apple, Jess as Rosie the Riveter, Erik as Elisabeth von R. (WELL DONE), Anna as a sunflower poking up from the garbage can, Bailey as Elle Woods, Matt as a frat boy, Melissa as the Death of Fun, Bill as Quailman, Bryan as a pig, Tom as the OED, Amanda as Bret Michaels, Stephen as The Ramones...

I’m forgetting a LOT OF STUFF.

Because, factoring in Daylight Savings Time, I was up until 3 a.m. after Karen went to bed early and Peter needed to get away and walk Ashley home and a certain person collapsed into a vomiting drunken heap in my hallway and threw up on one set of towels while I gave Kaelin the other set of towels and there were all these people whom Drew and Julie and Liz seemed to know but I didn’t know at all, and my apartment was overflowing with LIFE HAPPENING ALL AROUND as we basically cut loose from the worries of the days and weeks and I had no idea what was happening at the end even though I was sober the whole time, and this time I was…

And at 3 a.m. cleaning up, I had a small conversation with Emma, who with Alex stayed until the end, and we talked about BBC and Trollope and wanting to serve others and I said “Where have you been all my life?” and she said “In college” and we’re both laughing. Gave me a moment to go to bed happy on.

Great party.

The Diary Begins...

October 19, 2009
Turned in the Marx paper at 10:30. I was nervous precisely because I was confident…not that this was easy, far from it, but compared to the Freud and Lacan papers, this one flowed. And I didn’t stay up until 2 a.m. and finish the essay the next day in a panic like I did with the Lacan paper.
I was in the lounge chatting with Ashley and Ed after the turn-in when Gerard walked in wearing his peacoat and scarf, said “Shit!,” and walked out, much to our amusement. Julie was wearing a really nice hat, by the way, and Jessica had her fedora. I like women in hats. We keep saying Ashley should get a top hat. She’ll look like Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge!
Today was LOTS of reading. Five essays on the Crimean War, aka the Stupidest War ever fought, with Stefanie Markovits’s “Rushing into Print” being the best. Then a long walk to Treasure Island and home, where I felt ready to collapse as soon as I walked in but stayed awake to read Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place. Oddly, I had seen the documentary of her reading excerpts over footage of Antigua itself six years ago in Wendy and Sox’s class, but had not read the book. It’s very good, but after a while I have to wonder about how the strength of the argument turns against her…since we all see our environments and actions from certain points of view, how is hers as valid as anyone else’s?
Lytton Strachey’s Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History is surprisingly sincere in its emotions as well as its intelligence, a surprising combination from the man who gave us the immortal Eminent Victorians. Hoping I get the Holroyd biography for my birthday. Moving on to the shorter essays as my next pleasure book.
Peter and I shared a three-cheese pizza for dinner, and I decided to hold off on white wine until tomorrow. I wanted eight hours of sleep. Beer makes me sleepy. Hence the Heineken I am consuming as I finish this first entry.

October 20, 2009
Jess got my e-mail about the plans for next Monday and thinks I’m adorable. Maybe I am. Or maybe I’m just really darn honest.
New rule: at least seven hours of complete mental/physical inactivity per night. I feel so rested, so awake, and had another great workout this morning!
Strachey is an extraordinary writer. “Lancaster Gate,” his essay about growing up in his large family, made me pause over the cereal bowl this morning. “The actual events of life are unimportant. One is born, grows up, falls in love, falls out of love, works, is happy, is unhappy, grows old, and dies—a tedious, vulgar, succession; but not there lies the significance of a personal history: it is the atmosphere that counts. What happened to me during my first twenty-five years of consciousness may well be kept to the imagination; what cannot be kept to the imagination is the particular, the amazing, web on which the pattern of my existence was woven—in other words, Lancaster Gate. Try to imagine that! –To reconstruct, however dimly, that grim machine, would be to realize with some real directness the essential substance of my autobiography. An incubus sat upon my spirit, like a cat on a sleeping child. I was unaware, I was unconscious, I hardly understood that anything else could be. Submerged by the drawing-room, I invariably believed that the drawing-room was the world. Or rather, I neither believed nor disbelieved; it was the world, so far as I was concerned.”
Substitute “Squirrel Hill and Emerson and Los Angeles County” and there we are.
I saw a girl in a red coat yesterday who was absolutely beautiful.

After lunch with Ashley, Jess, and Kaelin today I went into Harper Library Commons, the Hogwarts Room, and read Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy, which is an extraordinary novel. And at page 90 I suddenly realized something which made one of Douglas Adams’s “terrible ghastly silences” come over me.
We talked in the Victorian War class today about how people use history to look at the past and the future and how the real and imaginary get bound up and create a new place where terms we judge to be the same have nuances, where the definitions change when we no longer know the real. But it’s all because we want to compare our histories. And histories repeat themselves. Because the structures men create will change and wither and die, but the feelings, the emotions we have in our nature, will not wither and die. They stay. They provide human constancy. And they go into the systems. Things repeat. And all at once, the entire world of knowledge opened up before me, and I saw that it extended beyond even the extraordinary extent which I had thought was already unlimited.
I had a Spartacus moment, the moment where Kirk Douglas says to Jean Simmons, “I want to know everything, about the stars and how they shine and why the water is blue and why the moon is bright as the sun, and I want to know you, I want to know everything about you…” I want to know everything. And I want to hold on to the sense of the past. I want to hold on to the Boston I loved which Kaelin reminded me of.
And I’m terrified that I may be a horrible literature professor, because they’re telling me not to care about Lucy and I do care about Lucy, not Lucy herself who can be a little cruel and brutal but about her situation and how she wants to love someone so much it hurts her even though she finally, Lacanian-style, gets what she wants and it’s not what she wanted. I care. I’m invested. I feel like I should be at a distance but I can’t help it.
Tomorrow I’m going to start Trollope. Tonight I shall read Tennyson and Gaskell and go to bed after eating sausage and brown rice, which is exactly what I want temporarily.
Erik is back from San Francisco and it was great to speak to him. Don’t know if I would have found it so easy to leave, but I am neither Erik nor an Ogle.
Kaelin had never heard of Bolt or Strachey. Glad to have educated her.

October 21, 2009
Forgot to mention yesterday that I received my first ever “A” from the University of Chicago! An A- and B+ on my intervention and response for Culture of Victorian War. That was encouraging. I also think I’m just going to look at my damn Marx grade on Monday and be done with it.
Didn’t eat sausage and brown rice…just as well, because I realized the seafood sausage is kind of lousy on its own. After reading Tennyson and the essay, I met up with Peter and Erik (whose family’s past turns out to be a Swedish melodrama worthy of Ibsen-by-way-of-Bergman) for dinner at Edwardo’s, where we shared a massive deep-dish vegetarian pizza, which I greatly enjoyed by cutting out some of the extra cheese. I am a little nervous because despite three square meals a day and less exercise, I’m not gaining weight. Mom and Dad might be ticked off…
“Maud” is a fantastic poem about holding on to romantic love and high ideals in a time where industrial capitalism has driven sincerity and reality from the world…I am a bit disturbed by the ultimate message that a man can only become a man when he goes beyond a woman, or, passes the rational to an insanity which will “clear his mind.” But I’m not Tennyson and I’m not being accused by idiots like Alfred Austin of being effeminate.

Today in Reading Modern Poets we had a very oppressive session where “Hitler Spring” was discussed in excruciating detail and “Brief Testament” glossed over at the end. Didn’t even get to “Iris” or “Xenia I.” I guess all the better for me…now I can write my paper on “Iris.”
In RMP, Kaelin’s hair curled around her face like a Bernini sculpture, Anna wore a blouse which reminded me of my pillow back home, and I left watching the leaves change color on the quad and fall and I thought about Ashley. Oh, how I missed the leaves in Los Angeles.
Tonight was strange. I spent a wonderful half-hour on the phone with Carlee, during which I got a text from my mother. Carlee is well…going to Youngstown and Columbus this weekend…and she listened a LOT to my tales of the scholastic life a la yesterday and my worries with Abigail.
I thought about Chicago eight years ago when I left feeling ill and came back feeling great and we won the national title with yours truly as principal bassist of the classical orchestra, and I bought jazz music and ate at Medieval Times and sang “Mr. Roboto” with Mr. Dispenza and Carlee Tressel, a vision in black, slow-danced with me on the boat on Lake Michigan. I told her on Capri, until I die, I’ll never forget that. And I never shall.
Marc and I talk so much better these days, ever since April…we’re both standing on our own, but we’re at a point where we care about each other, a little as friends, a little as brothers.
I ate sausage and rice tonight from Trader Joe’s. Also had a dollar milkshake and a crowd of topless men ran past me through the great fountain outside the Reynolds Club. Also re-read “Maud” and read an essay on…wallpaper. I’m in grad school.

October 22, 2009
So I decided to eat a little more today, topping off the breakfast cereal with noodles from The Snail…mmm-hmm…but they left me feeling quite stuffed, as noodles are want to do. Dad and I talked for a bit, partly about how I feel I should gain weight. He says I should do nothing unless it feels right to me. And I am feeling quite healthy and happy these days…my ab exercises are getting stronger.
But we also talked about the where-I-am-where-he-was at 25 dynamic which kicked off my moroseness yesterday. When Dad was 25, I had THOUGHT he had already started graduate school. He had launched his career. And he DID marry Mom, that is an incontrovertible fact. But he corrected me he did not start grad school until 26, and was far less ambitious than I…had not lived where I lived or done what I’ve done…and girls will come in time. I wish, as he does, I was always able to internalize what he says and move forward.
Wrote about Lucy for Abigail after a hilarious lecture where David showed clips from The Sound of Music to distinguish Kincaid’s narrative of an out-of-place au pair from those written from positions of privilege. Never anyone more privileged than Rodgers and Hammerstein, or Mary Martin with a made-to-order book. David and Mark are such different lecturers. David is animated, witty, exciting. Mark is more staid, his humor dry…but it is there. Mark’s problem is he sounds so much more superior.
I received a book today from Earl, that remarkable auditor who read his wife Trollope three times and swims at 6 in the morning while I run. Earl is going on a trip, but he wants to read my very exciting (potentially…I think so…) paper on Trollope and the Crimean, and in return he gave me a book of novellas he wrote. Had no idea he was an author! The discussion on “Maud” was suitably intense, draining…I feel like I talk too much in that class. But I love Victoriana.
My first looking into The New Zealander was richly rewarding. Trollope’s thesis is that the Crimean War was one of England’s fienst hours, since they triumphed despite no preparedness, and everything was criticized because the government listened to public opinion, i.e. the press. He refers to Newcastle on similar terms as Palliser. Oy, as Huberman and Singerman would say. Tie this in with essays on government and press and central notion of British dishonesty as destructive…I’ve got a grad school line of inquiry!
Need to wrap up so I can expel some noodle-related waste before enjoying wine, crackers, cheese, and wallpaper, then a double feature at Doc. And a woman walked by with the same pasta salad Brian bought when we were at the Div School café together. Ah, sweet mystery of life…

October 23, 2009
Three movies in the last twenty-four hours. This came after drinking French red wine for an hour and a half while talking with Ph. D. students about Elizabeth Gaskell’s use of wallpaper. I met a girl named Emily who looked like Diane Keaton in Annie Hall and a man named Gerard, another Gerard, who just bites the last bit of cheese.
The movies were The Private Life of Henry VIII, the worst kind of old-school apart from Charles Laughton’s iconic performance in the title role, A Boy and His Dog, immensely entertaining and featuring one of the greatest final scenes in the history of cinema (“she had lousy taste”), and Up, where even when I knew what was coming I still wept unashamedly during the first ten minutes. I left my water bottle in the theatre and then my hat blew off my head.
To backtrack, this was an excellent day. I printed out my readings for Victorian War and then spent the morning eating fruit and granola reading Crimean War despatches, Czeslaw Milosz’s sometimes too wordy-for-its-own-good, sometimes transcendently holy poetry, and the Newsweek with my 25th birthday on the cover, proclaiming that college should be done in three years, though when I read the article I had the impression that college should work to accommodate every student’s desires and learning style, be it two years’ worth of year-round education or six. I’d have to agree. We all have our own dreams.
Precept group was wonderful. I was able to finally talk in class without getting embarrassed and speak to Abigail with no recriminations on my side and total ease…victory…thank you, Abigail, and Miss Tressel.
After precept group was Pub Night. Too much beer and nachos, but I had a great time losing foozball and talking to anyone and everyone. Had a great conversation with Bailey about faith and Paul Simon.
After Up we went to Medici and I finally tried the Mediterranean pizza. The spirit of Montale was with me, and I am amazed typing this that his name is included in the Microsoft Word dictionary…the food was great, and I feel great. This is my 25th Birthday weekend! I should live a little, damn it! Starting tomorrow…with hours of lectures…yeah…but it’ll be great.

October 24, 2009
Humanities Day proved to be an excellent intellectual respite from the routine of Victorian warfare, poetry, and theorist of the week. Tomorrow my goal is to fill up on Starbucks without exercise and then tackle The Pleasure of the Text…also found out Barthes cameoed as Thackeray in a French film about the Brontes. Small world.
Started with The Economist over breakfast, special report on U.S.-China relations and our growing debt. I wonder if it really is better, as Marx argued, to live in a system where you know you’re being exploited as opposed to capitalism. China is growing in fits and starts with a silenced majority. It doesn’t seem superpower-like to me.
People kept asking me for directions this morning. Status of the local conferred. Sadly, I got one street wrong…hope the driver didn’t get too mad.
Lectures. The Chaucer lecture was like a movie, two Chicago professors who might have been romantically involved use the code-breaking techniques of World War I to compare 80 or so versions of The Canterbury Tales to produce a definitive text…and it kills them both from overwork and pressure. Then David Wellbery’s lecture on Faust made my back get chills at the end like a movie…the idea of Goethe’s immortal version as a myth for the modern world in which the gift of the pure moment is sacrificed for immanence was never so lovely and tragic. It was delivered in Mandel Hall, which startled me…here in the Reynolds Club, a miniature grand theatre with balconies, proscenium, everything!
Lunched at the Reynolds Club on some fantastic vegetarian Indian food (mainly chickpeas and rice) with Peter, Eric, Zach, and Adam Snyder. Turned out Zach is in the Army reserves, and since Eric was a major in Iraq, they had plenty to talk about. Having Eric in Culture of Victorian War, by the way, is a real bonus for the class.
Then came 2,300 year-old Chinese history, which gave me some things to chew on about what events are selected for historiography and how the way they are presented leads to judgments. Anna, Peter, and I finished with Richard Strier’s very rewarding “How To Read a Hard Poem” where we brilliantly dissected Hart Crane, then got mutually confused over Emily Dickinson comparing herself to a loaded gun.
Quiet, solitary night after that. Workout (sun came out and it was beautiful), dinner, laundry, reading, now bed. New rule: red wine may be wonderful, but it should only be drunk in groups with food…on its own, white wine is much preferable.

October 25, 2009
My life is one of pleasure and pain. The pleasure is beautiful, gracious, a blessing from God who gives me everything, including friends beyond compare. The pleasure is never expected, rarely sought, always abundant. The pain is something I bring entirely upon myself: the pain of being able to solve all my biggest problems with strength and fortitude while going nuts over the tiny, insignificant problems which aren’t really problems at all...isn't that the way?
But tomorrow I shall celebrate no matter what letter appears beside by paper on Marx. For I did do great things with help from He Above and my fellow toilers under the sun.
And today, I read The Pleasure of the Text in a single four-hour sitting, which is akin to having tantric sex. Barthes’s thesis is that all interaction with art, the text, is erotic, comparable to sex, a drive of life beyond the drive of death, a creation where you take an author’s words and become undifferentiated from them, create new meanings, go beyond ideology. In Barthes’s world, if sex is reading, there is GLBT, perversions, BDSM, masturbation, necrophilia, chastity, and, yes it makes sense, you can draw out the middle syllable of “bananas” when you’re angry and perfectly convey what he means.
And I’m being forced to learn this. I’m a lucky man. A blessed man. And I ask for the memory of Job and all sufferers to be blessed. And Mommy with her piggy flu.

My Life as Doctor Faustus

I wish...

Abigail chastised me yesterday that I keep expecting every week to have a "breakthrough" moment where the inscrutability of the Core will give way to total understanding. A few hours later, I did have the breakthrough moment...and the breakthrough was that I will never have a breakthrough moment.

To explain what this means, I must also explain why I have not posted on the blog in days. Classes started this week and my second paper was assigned, and I had already decided during the all-core weeks that apart from a few predetermined social activities which would be rigidly structured, I would work. Nonstop. Rise before 7, usually 6, and go to bed after 11. Except for looking at the news in the morning, no reading for pleasure. Breaks only for meals, exercise, walking, and sleeping. I would show the world that I had a right to earn a master's degree in English through sheer mental exertion which would finally result in absolute comprehension of my class material. It got to the point where every minute spent not working, every minute idly browsing the web or otherwise, I was full of guilt for the time not spent working. I remembered Jordan telling me to get ready to stay up until 2 in the morning, remembered the exhortation in my University of Chicago Daily Planner to study as much as possible, reduce all socializing, and never waste a minute. I would fulfill these dictums.

And at first, I thought this would WORK. Sure, I felt dreadfully tired at night, but it was proof I was working hard!

Then I got the topic for my next paper, to explicate a passage from Lacan's "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function." Reading the text and my notes carefully, I determined to write a great paper which would build off my own jubilant "B-" from the first paper, one which would situate Lacan's ideas in the grand psychoanalytic context I'd spent three weeks in. A first draft complete, I popped in to Abigail's office hours to ask her a question about citing Freud. Providence. It turned out I completely misinterpreted the prompt. But Abigail was more than happy to help me work through it for a few minutes.

But then my brain began to take a toll. I had spent three days working on this paper and they had been essentially wasted. Then came ninety minutes in precept group discussing Lacan, and I realized that like we the poor humans of his "Das Ding," I was chasing after something impossible to find. I'd been looking forward to social hour all week, but now I felt physically ill. Everyone kept giving me worried looks. And Abigail finally ordered me, with the same exasperation my parents feel every time I get fixated on something and can think of nothing else, to please go talk to other people about other things besides Lacan! This was our time to relax!

Then I made a mistake. I have consumed much more alcohol than I did last night on several occasions, including here in Chicago, and never felt a thing, but now the wine mixed with my stress level and after everyone had gone, I found myself collapsed onto a bench a pathetic, crying, bubbling heap of mush.

I, who will be 25 in 23 days. I, the serious student.

A wonderful girl whose name I could not tell you and Braden walked me home, and then I called my parents. A few times. And I woke up after eight hours of sleep sober and ashamed.

It was my crack-up, Fitzgerald-style, but I think a better analogy is with Christopher Marlowe's great tragic hero. Like Doctor Faustus, in my mega-ambitions I had lost sight of why I had come here to get an education in the first place.

For one thing, I had almost forgotten my passion for learning so many new things and reveling in the learning. I was now desperate for grades, desperate to not fail, desperate to use my brain to GET IT and in so doing please Abigail and David and Mark.

But I thought the point of my being here was to figure out what's going on. The truth is, nobody knows what's going on, and I think I was the last person to admit it! Everyone in the class, all my friends who are so much more articulate than me and can talk about philosophy and linguistics in ways I've not yet come close to understanding, are not trying to seize the material. They're pondering it, asking questions. I have not been doing so at all.

Hence the breakthrough moment. I'll never have a breakthrough. Lacan is not meant to be easy, and nothing else will be easy. This class is a challenge I am not predestined to win, and winning isn't even the point. They want me to think. And if I never understand some things but I can think better, that's what everyone will be happy with.

The other point. Braden and Wonderful Mystery Girl told me that they couldn't believe I was working at such a frenetic pace, Abigail found it hard to comprehend how I could spend six hours with a single Lacan essay, and Mom and Dad got ticked off that I would not let myself have fun and had even given up pleasure reading. And blog-updating (on my end). And everything else which makes my life fulfilling. Hard work is a matter of quality, not quantity.

I thought being the total academic was why I was here. But it's not. I'm supposed to be the same person I've always been, the person the people in the program are counting as a friend, the person whose teachers are praising him for being thoughtful, the person whose ambitions should never surpass how much he surrenders himself to God.

I hope God can forgive me...and Abigail as well...and I hope the people in MAPH will realize my life as Doctor Faustus is over. I am an ordinary person trying to learn things, a person who loves books and films and his faith and his friends and the well-rounded life he'll try to lead from now on.

The post-script: after some rest and recreation, I sat down and wrote a new first draft which was even better than my original paper. It's my best work yet at the University. And now I remember that my revisions to my first paper came after I took a break to play board games and watch movies, and that worked out really well! I DO need to disengage for at least a little each day. That's how I get things done. Now Peter disengaged last night as well, but he went to the movies and my favorite restaurant with our other friends instead of sobbing like a wreck for twenty minutes. I need to learn more from my roommate...

Memories of a Free Festival--September 26, 2009

Walking to the DuSable Museum of African-American History, I see fire trucks, police cruisers, random ordinary cars, and cops directing traffic outside the University Medical Center, and I never find out what it was all about.

Davis and I see Ken Chaney's Awakening, who in one hour perform the most intense collective music anyone could ask for, six men who have obviously been doing this for years, decades, in perfect harmony. The standout is Ari Brown, whose compositions "Wayne's Trane" (where he combines two melodies into one cogent whole) and "Groove Awakening" are catchy and complex, inspiring flights of sheer fancy.

Trombonist T. R. Galloway stands at the side of the stage, unsure in the shadows, while the band plays a song he wrote about his wife, hands in pockets, a little bemused, nervous, insecure smile playing on his lips.

When I was in the Boardman Orchestra, during practicing the bass, whenever I got bored (sadly a usual occurrence) I would take off on various musical ideas inspired by the original sequence of notes and keys...they were incredibly simple ideas usually based around repetition, but listening to Lorin Cohen's downright funky soloing, there was little difference between what he was doing so brilliantly on stage and my goofing off. That may be the true brilliance of jazz, understanding music enough to have an infinite number of combinations at your fingertips, but always knowing exactly which one to play for maximum effect. Sort of like the superego filtering out the id...no, I won't go there.

Davis and I walk over to the Midway and I trod on the grass for the first time ever. It feels nice. I eat half a red pepper, mixed greens, goat cheese, carrots, and raisins sandwich. It tastes nice. Peter joins us, having slept in after the dinner party, and Karen and Teresa follow. The company is more than nice.

James Wagner, who founded the Festival, died a few months ago, and Ari Brown and Willie Pickens lead an all-star band on the Midway. The day has been brisk, gray, and cool, but as the group plays Wayne Shorter's "This Is For Albert," the sun breaks out for the first time and never goes away. Of course, Mr. Brown warms us all up with a sizzling "Naima..."

Davis departs for a violin band at Rockefeller Chapel, and the rest of us go see Tatsu Akoi. Picture this...in an oak-paneled Oriental Institute lecture hall, an ebullient Japanese man whose smile never fades begs us to buy his CDs. Three saxophonists, including avant-garde legend Ed Wilkerson and Mwata Bowden on the unusual trip of bass sax, clarinet, and didgeridoo. Three very young girls playing the traditional kaito drums, three feet tall and booming with the thunder of God...and the music that comes out sounds exactly like the most glorious Blue Note sides of the 1960s, solos bopping like mad, drums keeping the rhythm, and Akoi laying out the foundation on his bass, happy as the man whose girlfriend said yes or who cradles his newborn or who holds his Ph. D. or who just had a really great day. Never seen anything like it, never heard anything like it.

I pick up my black-eyed peas for Melissa and Mika's dinner party (that's another post) and wrap it up by catching Willie Pickens solo with his trio at International House's grand but over-AC'd assembly hall. The repertoire is just that, a little Monk, Coltrane, Golson, Powell, Shorter, Jimmy Heath, but Pickens sounds like a reincarnated Oscar Peterson, 77 year-old fingers rhapsodic one moment, bangingly percussive the next, playing "Four In One" as if it's the last song he'll ever do and he needs to squeeze in as many notes as possible.

Everywhere I went, these musicians had smiles on their faces. No brooding Trane or Miles. Jazz really makes you happy. Made me happy.

Never Underestimate the Power of a Top Hat, or, Lisa From 3 to 5

So...the last few days have been devoid of posts because I finally hit on the solution to reaching some kind of success rate in this business of graduate school. To wit, read everything and take notes, then read it again...and take more notes...and read it and your notes again and take further notes if need be! It paid off, because lights are shining in the darkness on Freud and Lacan, but between that, re-reading the 900 wonderful pages of John Sutherland's annotated Vanity Fair Oxford edition, and similar readings, and future papers...I warn my readers to not expect regular posts too often.

But, since orientation, I have had some terrific lectures, a great precept group meeting where I learned to share my insights more openly (for even when I'm wrong, which is most of the time now, I get closer to being write through listening to others...everyone in my group is helping me understand better), and moved towards better senses of argument tracking and precision of language.

I also had two different nights out.

Thursday, I went to Old Town with Peter, Alex, Erik, Jess, Ashley, Julie, and Jamie to see the Second City. Before that we had a dinner at an Irish pub called Corcoran's across the street, which served the best corned beef I've had outside Musso & Frank. Turned out to be Guinness's 250th anniversary, so we got samples, glasses, noisemakers, and cardboard top hats...looking at mine right now next to my Emerson diploma. I wore that hat the rest of the night and had a fantastic time...the Second City was hilarious, especially the second half of their show, with an improvised sketch about a private eye, a parody of the Hall of Presidents at Disney, and a plea to adopt normal black children instead of Asians and Africans...and my group talked all night and laughed and wandered the streets and rode El trains and Metras...it was a nice way to unwind.

Last night, Karen Slovin gave a dinner party at her apartment upstairs. She made a fantastic pasta, I tossed a salad, Peter baked brownies (finally got to try them...delicious!), and twelve people or so congregated around a crowded food table despite the roomy living room and drank a LOT of red wine. Victorian meal style. On the one hand, I got accused of being something not very nice at one point in the conversations. On the other hand, I had a blast talking to everyone concerned (including my accuser), and found another person who, like Peter, I feel a bit switched at birth with...Jenny's opinions on religion were almost the same as mind, just with different word choices in expression. I also met Preston and Harold who live on the second floor. Two great guys who study computer science and math...and whose midnight ponderings regarding Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica helped my tired, overfed body realize it needed sleep. (No disrespect when I say I came to college to escape mathematics.) Should have worn the top hat...

I have to wrap up, for today will be my last non-work-centered day of the year, and it will be spent at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival and another potluck dinner. BUT...yesterday I had a small lunch with Lisa, proprietress of Color Me Veggie, in town for a wedding this weekend. She and I are on remarkably similar roads...dealing with personal issues and professional doubts, but a lot sunnier than before. At least she looked and felt sunnier, and I know I feel sunnier these days...and though we'd spent two months together in L.A., then met in Boardman, and now again in Chicago...a hard life...it was hard to let go when we gave each other a good-bye embrace. She would love what I'm doing now. Especially with the modern poets.

But Lisa is part of my present which reaches back into the past. Always there and wonderful...but right now, I've got the future on my mind.

And now, to be or not to bop...

I also had two