y'all can't all be wrong: Stick Your Hand In The Fan And Join My Fingerless Parade

My words begin plucking at threads nervously, seeking purchase, a weak point, a vulnerable ear. That’s when it comes, the urge to shout in the church, the nursery, the crowded movie house. It’s an itch at first. Inconsequential. But that itch is soon a torrent behind a straining dam. Noah’s flood. That itch is my whole life. Here it comes now. Cover your ears. Build an ark.

Freaking pound my thin brain and its half-wit understanding into fallow ground on exhaustion on excuses and on another trip to NYC. I think I'll just sit here until the words come out right. Five days of vacation, one day of work, and back into a lifetime of burnout. Tip the bottle a little heavier tonight. I am fumbling towards the weekend and when it arrives I will stumble through it and on Monday my dishes will remain unfinished.

NYC: I'm in the middle of the International Center of Photography (ICP) and I start to freak out about all the allusions I don't know and all the words I can't comprehend and how there are 8 million nearby people disposed to cut my throat in intellectual-dog eat intellectual-dog fashion.

One exhibition at the ICP was "Cuba on the Verge" and God, what do I know about that? I know that Castro was born the same year as my dad. I know that Cuba is currently the in place to go to. This -- by the words of all my friends who ride on the outer envelope of the avant-garde -- and curse -- I can barely say beer in Spanish. Castro -- crazy fuck. He got out of jail, went to Mexico, returned to Cuba with 81 men and started a revolution (but don't trust some lame blog for your history facts). Eighty-two men to start a revolution? You'd better be a genius in psychology to lead a revolution, but then you'd better be stupid enough to believe it all. Viva Fidel! But don't freak. Whatever. One of the pictures in the exhibit had that approving message spray painted on a rock. Viva George W! Is that better? Don't think now -- just punch multiple holes in your voters' ballot, or better yet, don't vote at all.

Number 9. Anyone can start a revolution on a bad idea, but it takes a true genius and true thinker to revolutionize a great idea. OK, that quote has been in my cerebral phlegm for a while. I finally coughed it out. Someday I'd like to go back to school and find the roots of that quote as I'm sure I lifted it from some long-ago-smarter-than-me philosopher (not that I ever formally studied philosophy). And not some school like the University of Minnesota and its à la carte, look-don't-touch educational methodology. I want a school where I can conquer academia and then get my ass kicked by knowledge and understanding. Ravishment for queries, lust for dialogue, rush for consumption. And even if I get A grades, I'll ask for Cs, because I'll know my educational truths with or without letters appended to them.

NYC: I trekked up to the Upper West Side. Columbia University baby. I just wanted to experience what it felt like to walk around an Ivy League institution. I walked through College Walk (what else would you do on it?). The path is flanked by Low Memorial library to the north and Butler Library to the south. The front facade of Butler is inscribed with names like Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Vergil. Honestly, the inscriptions shook me with reverent intimidation (allusions and words will kill us all [update: this, this, this is how I feel: words shift too quickly]). Although, they also struck me with curiosity and want: a mind to be tapped is a journey to be gained. Low's inscription had some blah-blah-blah about "for the public good" or something close to that. Yeah, well, at $30,000 per academic year, what public is it good for? Hey, I am a too-small-town boy way out of his element. I'd gladly go back, but my brainy sin's been let out of my school bag and I want to run with all the academicians. Oh God, chop off my legs and spray me with ridicule, I hate being out of my element. Especially when I write a paper and don't include big words such as obsequious, decocting, cupidity, voluble, remonstrance, polymath, gasconade, and/or coruscate.

I so dream of an intellectual, yet altruistic coterie that bends and accepts ideas, making malleable every thought I give to them… [more here soon]

I'm eroding, beating nighttime waves senseless, looking for switches in darkness.

But If that's what it takes to get it out, then pound the fuck out of me until dirt and flesh become one. I'm living my life of allusions, waiting to impress the guy with the bigger desk and longer pen, "Welcome aboard Mr. Berg, we need someone just like you."

Comments

nobody knows about cuba, but we all know about cuba libres.

Posted by: jill @ July 10, 2003 03:42 PM

I could go for one of those right now. Last December I bought an awesome bottle of rum for my sister. Eventually, I'll give it to her, but for now, that damn bottle just sits in my cupboard tormenting me.

Posted by: TQ @ July 12, 2003 03:56 AM