(unknown)
Tomorrow, I go into the city. In the evening Rachel will come to meet me. We will see a play: Eugene Ionesco's "The Chairs." There was a time when I would jabber to the mainly uninterested about the Theater of the Absurd, Samuel Beckett, Antonin Artaud, Jean Genet, but not as much any more. There is little reservoir of nonsense left in reserve, except here. That age has disappeared for me. It is strange. I love literature, but I never openly discuss it.
Rarely, I should say, not never.
When people find that I have an interest in reading and begin "discussing the beats" towards me... well, a mighty pair of eyes glaze over within, and then slowly roll. They exclusively discuss the lives of the beats because the writing was mostly poor. They are somehow trying to show that they are initiated with hip knowledge. It is tedious.
Dada and Surrealism have vanished from me. They seem little more than silly distractions, though distractions from what I do not know. They should not be explained away so easily, particularly without the "explanation" component, but that is mostly how I feel about them, as dreams that are not worth considering.
A good friend, one of the few friends I have with whom I ever discuss literature, recently described house music as having been "birthed" from disco. He never liked disco, or so he has often claimed. His experience with house music, at least as far as the social dynamic of it goes, is derived mainly through mine.
Perhaps I am becoming more like him, presumptuous and dismissive. There are those who will always doubt the truth of ecstasy...
No, I kid. He claimed that his claim would likely anger me, so I'm playing along a little bit.
When I was younger I was intelligent, or so I was told. That quality has somehow given way to being opinionated, argumentative. I like to believe myself a contrarian, but the truth is probably closer to something less formal. It is rather lucky that I have never been put in the position of being responsible for anybody's economic growth through speculation in stock trading. The contrarian impulse is only revered in finance when it survives, or thrives. Otherwise, it is not recognized and revered as such.
A woman asked me recently how I feel when people criticize my writing. It occurred to me that nobody does, or only very rarely. There is probably a reason for that. Cato will praise those posts which he likes. The silences must also speak, I guess.
When I worked at Apple, one of the yearly "reviews" I received claimed that I showed proficiency at incorporating correction into patterns of improvement, a willingness to share the lesson of mistakes with others. So, there is that. One of the mightiest corporations on earth values my ability to be criticized, or corrected. They compensated me financially, in part, for this very quality. So, there is that. When I think about how well I accept criticism, I will always think of Apple.
So, there is that.
I woke at 3am. I had been dreaming. It was a sensual dream, tender though not explicitly sexual. There were caresses, quiet mumbling, proximity. Nudity, but no imaginary intercourse. It was warm. When I awoke I recognized the sensations and felt guilt, relieved that the experience was not "real" for others and chuckled at that. The woman involved was unknown to me, though somehow familiar, a dream amalgam.
It is odd, that. The mind generates these apparitions in sleep, absurd and surreal, from unknown impulse. Out of the mind they leap, dancing across the heart fantastical. Dreams have the odd power to palliate the senses, to briefly remove the pains of life, they are as opiates unleashed on waves of memory. The internal fluctuations, from desire to fear, palatial to punitive, from chase to being chased (never chaste)... visions speaking their unique truths, pirouetting in the dark.
Dreams rarely resolve the mysteries they generate. Instead, the dreamer only awakens, either eager to flee the menacing visions or to return to a barely requited love; never bored, though the dream may have already exhausted itself, fled from the forest upon awakening. Even apparitions must sometimes be seduced. A dream's self-replication constructs entire architectures of fantasy at sudden unknown whim. Elaborate emanations effortlessly emerge....
Ha! Can you see now why I don't discuss literature?
The effect of certain dream-inducing drugs appealed to me greatly when I was younger. I would drift for hours, building many castles in Spain.
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