The Barometer

September 17, 2001 Once discovers, sometimes, that one's shirts smell like a drawer in a hotel. Most notably a certain Red Roof Inn, on the west side of a certain town, in the middle of a sea of corn, in the stifling heat of September. I mean, the pleasant cool of September. Yes, they were saying temperatures in the forties for a few of those nights last week. I knew at a gas station on the way home summer was ending, just from the way I instinctively thought of grabbing my fleece on the way in to buying grape juice and a stack of fig newtons. The wind was blowing; there's nothing to stop it. It either smelled or sounded like fall. I should have been hearing dry, brittle leaves skidding across parking lots, but there weren't any.

Several observations:

1. You have to be surprised that Hopkins, being the alliterative kind of person he was, did not use "beyond" instead of "past" in the penultimate line of "Pied Beauty." Though I've sort of come to the conclusion that alliteration can be too methodically used, this makes me wonder--I've read an essay about Hopkins alliterative "efficiency," but the question remains--unless you consider the "Praise" starting the next line--ah, yes. Nevermind.

2. Hopkins "Pied Beauty," Lowell's "The Quaker Graveyard at Nantucket," Bishop's "Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore," and William's, er--it starts with "Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow"-- are all manic poems, written in a state of great energy. In each case the poet was feeling good for no good reason, except maybe high blood sugar. I imagine just about all of Whitman's poems were written in this state. The mark of a manic poem? Long lines, lists, and a playful, frenzied imagery.

3. Bishop's "The Armadillo" and the poem marked XIX in "Spring and All" both begin with "This is the time of year."
posted by Mark at this time: 10:26 PM

September 14, 2001 I had to save this post because of the 9/11 overload:

I in fact walked around the campus here last night, looked at the amazing housing that people actually live in here, barefoot with their futons in old but clean brick lofts. Never did college look so good--an entire town centered around its young. "Poor kids," I thought, "They don't know yet life isn't really like that." Such is the unwanted seniority I feel I have "achieved" in just 8 months. "I will get thrown out of this place," I thought. "Somehow they will find out I'm not a student." The campus is so big I had to navigate by the stars, and I still got lost.

"Creation...a great redemption from suffering"--Nietzsche, since I am reading him, and since his quotation reappears and reappears inscribed in the Iowa Avenue sidewalk as one walks west.
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Things might change after today. One cannot conceive of there being no far-reaching changes in policy arising from this event. People pinch themselves to see if they're dreaming. The reason is that things aren't really real until you feel the pain for yourself.

One realizes smuggling in and detonating a nuclear device might require considerably less orchestration. What do you even call such a compound attack? It's not a bombing--that was in 1993. It's worse than a hijacking.

I suppose history has found suicide attacks to be alarmingly successful. A terrible concept, but hurting oneself in order to hurt others isn't a particularly foreign one as far as human nature goes.

posted by Mark at this time: 7:03 PM

September 9, 2001

you shouldn't bother if you don't have an interesting life, and even if you do, you have to be able to write about it in an interesting way.

Packing for a work week in the college town of Coralville, IA. If I envision the weather correctly, it will be courdoroys again, winter pants, because we are talking about IA, which must be 5 degrees north of here. I hear that in January, if you're going to play in Iowa, you gotta have a shovel in the van. And this is September. The equinox is, amazingly, in 13 days if the calender is right. You don't know if you've had enough of summer or not, but the number of 90 degree days is surely numbered.

I forsee some rather aimless walks, runs, and some swimming perhaps.

Tonight: How can I have anything intelligent to say about watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail yet again? I wish I could say I didn't laugh, but I found myself giving in to the peer pressure of laughing. I wish I could be a sour-puss about it.

I was intrigued by the other candidate, Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, which according to some sources, namely Beth, is shot in one long scene. The camera merely "follows" the actors around with no breaks. A difficult way to film to be sure.

Perhaps Hitchcock would have hacked the coiling life out of all of us. Maybe hearing people laugh is good for one's psyche. That a good time is a fragile thing has been lately realized.
posted by Mark at this time: 11:26 PM

September 6, 2001 Tonight I was introduced to backgammon, or more precisely, the back game of backgammon. As in appartment-living, there is power in numbers. And I ate popcorn as well.

You shouldn't even bother with blogging if you don't have an interesting life.
posted by Mark at this time: 10:50 PM

September 4, 2001

Please be Lindbergh!

That's what I was thinking today after running down (almost level to the ground) to the city, that is, the smelly river with a french name. After spanning so much urban sprawl I was of course tired, and thought seriously but pennilessly about catching a bus.

I did not know Morganford becomes Union. It made things less interesting, since I've been on Union before, but...
posted by Mark at this time: 9:19 PM

September 2, 2001 Just writing "Tired" I do not consider satisfactory, but...

Read an article in the paper about a woman who won the lottery 8 years ago, threw her money around, and now has $750 dollars to her name. Where did it all go?

I have never bought a lottery ticket in my life, not because I'm afraid I'll squander it, but because being richer than I am now would almost be an inconvinience. I buy anything I want now. There is a point where money only buys more clutter or more ugly waste.
posted by Mark at this time: 11:32 PM

August 30, 2001 I was thinking of hanging this on my door, from Stuart Gilbert's translation of The Stranger:

Just then my employer sent for me. For a moment I felt uneasy, as I expected he was going to tell me to stick to my work and not waste time chattering with friends over the phone. However, it was nothing of the kind. He wanted to discuss a project he had in view, though so far he'd come to no decision. It was to open a branch at Paris, so as to be able to deal with the big companies on the spot, without postal delays, and he wanted to know if I'd like a post there.

"You're a young man," he said, "and I'm pretty sure you'd enjoy living in Paris. And, of course, you could travel about France for some months in the year."

I told him I was quite prepared to go; but really I didn't care much one way or the other.

He then asked if a "change of life," as he called it, didn't appeal to me, and I answered that one never changed his way of life; on life was as good as another, and my present one suited me quite well.

At this he looked rather hurt, and told me that I always shilly-shallied, and that I lacked ambition--a grave defect, to his mind, when one was in business.

The young office worker can not help but draw catharsis from this. Sort of like a few somewhat recent movies.
posted by Mark at this time: 11:26 PM

August 28, 2001 With four clicks, I've once again frustrated anyone waiting for my library books. Quick and easy.

Today at lunch, I revisited the concept of a grinder. In Cansas City, this was a new one, and I actually had to ask the cashier what one was. He gave me the working definition, which did not work today.

Today, in St. Louis, a grinder was a toasted sandwich. A month ago, yonder in KC, a grinder was a piece of french bread stuffed with cheese and meatballs. Both good, but since I'm too lazy at this point to do a thorough search of the information superhighway, both confusing. I suppose I can say that the grinder, in it's form of forms, has something to do with toasted bread.

And: You should always have "the news" ready in case someone IMs you, because if not, they will not be distracted from the fact that you live an extremely "adventureless tale (1)." This is why some things are worth reading, and some not. The good writers always have the news ready.

"It is difficult/to get the news from poems"--WCW

I agree, but at least it's still the news.

1. James Joyce, A Painful Case
posted by Mark at this time: 10:34 PM

August 27, 2001 Something about the "Fine Young Cannibals" gathering last monday:

I wish they had an out-tune-piano on which to play the piano part of "People Are Strange."

This is honestly how I felt. This should be my theme song. I'll not say about the ghoulishness this time, as this may portray me as a somewhat disturbed individual.
posted by Mark at this time: 10:54 PM

August 25, 2001 What even was I going to talk about?

Since the memory market is so "depressed," I decided not 20 minutes ago to spend a few dollars to keep this thing from crashing while I have several windows open. No doubt everyone else in the world is doing the same. Solidarity. But just one person can make a difference. We're all special.

It is ridiculous not to run now. Bye.
posted by Mark at this time: 12:22 PM

August 24, 2001 History repeats itself.

Already the days are getting shorter again. This was proven well yesterday as I struggled to keep the pace of a 37-year-old on a steel Fuji. We did not leave soon enough after work to have a flat tire. I was so unprepared I didn't even have a tube, so I had to bum one off Kerry. This explains why I had to stop by the Touring Cyclist today on my lunchbreak--compensation.

I suppose now I'll have to compensate myself. I bent my front rim, my new front rim, the only good rim on my bike.

All in all, though, cooled by the soaking rain, I have to say the ride was a pleasant torture. If there are hills that make you curse your existence, there are also flat, straight stretches, showers, and good night's sleeps, when time goes very quickly, and you feel generally good.
posted by Mark at this time: 11:56 PM

August 15, 2001 History repeats itself.

Benton, IL

Population 6900

linger on your pale blue eyes linger on your pale blue eyes linger on your pale blue eyes
posted by Mark at this time: 9:34 PM

August 13, 2001 Running. Swimming. Running. I think I've mentioned using nonconventional methods to tell time before. This is one of them, lately, it seems.

But tomorrow, none of that. Automated tasks. Time as a reference point recognizable by others. The conventional method.
posted by Mark at this time: 10:20 PM

Ahh, Jackie Chan movies are Jackie Chan movies; you just have to watch them and be amazed. Not 20 minutes after I got done running I was in the theater looking for a bushy haircut, a "landmark," as I said to all the church kids, trying to be funny. I must have been tired driving back to Sam's house, such was the lack of the usual ever-present tension, which I imagine to be my spinal cord's uncalled-for isometric excercises, a sort of iron fist, that, far from leading a regime, tires itself out for no apparent reason. And this is the thing I have holding me up.

Perhaps it was Marty who explained this strange physiological effect to me. "Feel that tightness in your chest?" he said. "That's stress." At the time he said that I thought it more temporary than it's become. I wont say, "I don't know how to stop vomiting since I've started working in an office," like the Sonic Youth girl does, but I will say that at times it seems like we are wasps flying into a flame, extinguishing ourselves.

Anyway, I've waited too long to see the lights do that again, slide like so many runway lights on some obsolete flight simulator game. Or rather, to be mellow enough to really see anything.

posted by Mark at this time: 12:11 AM

August 12, 2001 t
posted by Mark at this time: 2:26 AM

When you go through your wallet thinking you might have a card at this video store, when you take the clerk's question of is that "still your address?" as a rebuke, its time to think of moving out. Really now. Seriously.

The above rambling may not make sense, but the point is the word "still" and all the thoughts that go with it. The point is you've forgotten you have a card at Hollywood Video, so long has it been since those better days, when you rented videos mellow-minded with your friends, when not having any impetus wasn't necessarily a bad thing, when living here still made sense. I didn't include too many specifics, did I?

CITIZEN
K A N E

is the greatest movie of all time. It is about a rich guy. This is the second time I watched it. It was good. It was the greatest movie of all time.

It tends toward the hypnotic, the doors in the mansion are geometricaly harsh, the mansion itself, huge for a huge despair which only the horrible, half-shadowed eyes of Charles Foster Kane can hold. What a horrible movie.
posted by Mark at this time: 2:19 AM

August 10, 2001 Risk. An evocative word in itself, isn't it? Tonight, I thought so.
posted by Mark at this time: 11:53 PM

August 8, 2001 People are starting to ask me, "Have you found an apartment yet?" The answer is: I drove around spying out some pads today, in fact.

There is a favorite bridge of mine near Broadway and Bates, a historic bridge I take it, on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi. It runs into Belerive Park, where sleeping on park benches seems to be a favorite pastime. If the area is run down, it is admirably run down.

posted by Mark at this time: 10:54 PM

The junk is gone--I had a war against this clutter--only a yellow, hardbound thesaurus, an Elizebeth Bishop complete poems, and Cien Anos de Solidad are sleeping on the floor tonight.

(Actually, this is a lie, there are more things)

Such fatigue has followed me for the past two days. I have to wonder if I bled out all of my electrolytes yesterday bailing and sampling six wells in the angry, angry sun. Such sweat as you would not believe. Halfway through the day, I called my boss from Dairy Queen and told him I was taking a break, which he could not but commend me for, such was the anger of the sun god, trying to make news items of us all. I had three items of choice in front of me: a large lemonade, medium chocolate malt, and small fries: fluids, sugar, and salt. My design of course failed. Strangely, however, I just ran and felt like I could run forever.

Beyond a little fatigue here and there, I refuse to unleash my complaints. I will not die of starvation any time soon.

I hearby pledge to try and grace this journal every day until I'm 24. Age of course doesn't matter and shouldn't be mentioned. I'm 23.
posted by Mark at this time: 1:50 AM

August 6, 2001 New information:

A sometimes-Kansas-City friend, Bryan, tells me the cow sculptures are at the Plaza, and not Westport, as I wrote two days ago.

I suppose it's been said before that people go to a musical to see life played out in front of them. They want to be able to point to what is wrong, to laugh at the stupidity of the characters, then walk through the crowd gathering at the concession stands during intermission and come to the realization that they have seen part of themselves.

Musicals, as opposed to plays, are supposed to make us feel good. So my snottiness in not liking, and being bored through last nights presentation was justified. But that didn't stop me from living vicariously through one of the characters, who I saw as my future self, perhaps.

--I use the technique of "chunking" in this very technical writing I'm doing--

While at the Muny, I was thinking about my wandering into two plays in Cedar City, Utah, last summer, a summer that, as it seems now, will go on record as my last best summer ever, a summer when I was not inexplicably constricted and weighted by my own existance. Having lived for several joyfully nomadic weeks under the Utah sky, which is the closest thing I can think of now to a dream, I was primed for the experience of going to these plays. I walked everywhere, to the store, to the record store to find an existant indie-rock section, being, as it was, a college town. I was in a polygamous relationship with all the town's gutters, which were more like street-level aqueducts, always running six-inches deep with water. I, and all the other students I was with, spent the days placing ourselves within the geology, the nights watching the sprinklers come on after volleyball.

I was in the right environment to use the word "beautiful" injudiciously.

Last night brought me back to that. Though now I have niether the environment nor the feeling nor the pretext in any way to be injudicious. And I ask, as I've asked repeatedly before: What is wrong with the eye of the beholder? Is there some kind of plank in it?
posted by Mark at this time: 10:00 PM