bloody exhausted and resentful but snooze kills there is no magic but snooze kills head hurts with a choke collar of pain but... i do hafta pee though, hangon yes, i am your teacher and yes i did assign that assignment for you, but we’re bumping up against the crux of avid. congratulations, you’ve made it this far. here’s the thing--i wasn’t asking out of snark or smarm or disinterest or ignorance. i was asking because you’re an intelligent, self-actualizing young man and i want you to start practicing a skill called “not just waiting to be told what to do” or “thinking for yourself” or “knowing what’s needed and then delivering what’s needed on time” or “there’s more to life than just doing what the teacher says” or something. well, we’ll work on what it’s called. (warning. mixed verb tenses ahead. fix later) so let’s say she did get a job. what would it be? should we flash WAAAAAY forward? she’s like some kind of teacher now? a real-estate agent GOOD GO HELP ME, NO. a gymnast. Haha. A waitress. No, too typical and expected. this isn’t somesave the poor peasant girl movie. a thief. a revolutionary. Hmm.. now we may be getting somewhere. how about a teacher, a thief, a revolutionary. or is that too self-serving? Well, wish fulfillment might be a little pathetic and transparent, but it’s not against the law. being a theif generally is against the law though. but so is being a revolutionary, unless you’re just a fashionista revolutionary. if you’re a REAL revolutionary, not even your fans like you very much. that’s the price you pay. if she’s a teacher, how did she get to be a teacher? oh you know, one of those alternative, emergency programs. the state she is in has relaxed their requirements because of a fairly illiberal government at the time. you could do some research on those alternative programs, and base it on that plus liberties. you could flash way forward, and then periodically or even just one good time flash midway back towards her being in the program. or how she got into it in the first place. if you’re just determined to have her work in a fucking restaurant, maybe a hotel restaurant, you could flash back to the encounter there that got her started. maybe it was a borrowed room full of books. maybe it was when she got started talking to the lady that comes into the restaurant every morning and orders eggs and burnt toast. she’s working on a book about the brain. this is an old hotel. there is a swimming pool. she swims in it at night after the restaurant’s closed and no one is down there. it’s quiet and moonlight and reminds her of the solitude of the stars. swimming alone in black water under a derelict sky; it reminds her of the aching freedom she felt when she first hightailed it out of that other hotel, so many moons ago. it’s scary too. preternatural childish sensation of sharks and untold depths and being sucked down into the unknown... and yet that’s part of the appeal. it gets her heart going, and that’s something that needs to be done sometimes. it is getting chilly now, this time of year, she had traveled all through that winter, and spring, and into the summer, before she basically got to this partiular hotel by default; this was the one where she really didn’t have enough money to keep going, and so she talked to the manager, and found out she was actually a pretty good talker, and the manager it turns out had a lot of influence over the owner (and that’s another flashback, or flash-side anyway), and so she managed to get a job. is it too much to suggest that maybe the manager was reminded of her own duaghter? or neice? or self? and they worked out an arrangement where she got to stay in one of the hotel rooms, on the first floor, near the pool, as part of her compensation. that’s a pretty good benefit, she had to admit. maybe not so good as things like insurance, or... what other benefits are there? she’s never really had a real job before, so she doesn’t really know what to compare this to. but she’s able to save a little bit out of each check. she doesn’t really have anything to spend money on. there’s nowhere to go shopping around here really anyway, except a clump of generic chains and franchises if you go closer to the highway, and if you go the other way, closer to town... but she doesn’t generally feel inclined to do that. it’s hard to describe how someone with such a free flying, wide ranging mind could be content in such a small sphere of physical space, but there it is. did she maybe just feel a little safer that way? the hotel manager’s neice moved out not that long ago, well, actually it was quite a while ago, but for some reason she never gave away the rest of her old clothes, so guess what? they fit. sometimes it’s tv dinners and old tv reruns in the manager’s rooms. sometimes the manager has a friend or two over, but usually it’s just the two of them. and what is that like when the friend or two is over? i would think it would be a little unnerving. but that’s another flash-side, potentially. she was swimming in the hotel pool one night and it was warm but it was also coming on fall and so the warm was glazed with a layer of the promise of a cold snap to come. a few leaves already floated in tight circles in the skimmers; she would have to clean that out in the morning; her duties had expanded beyond the restaurant. there was almost nothing she couldn’t help out with around this place now. she was swimming around, alone, in the dark, sumptuously feeling that taut-skinned, hard-nippled seal-like state that only swimming alone in cool black water could bring, when she noticed something. the square panel of glass, submerged a few feet below the surface--she had always seen it as a light that didn’t work, that never turned on, but there was a shaft of moonlight tonight, cool clear like a single piercing note, and it illuminated that square of glass, and she swam up close to it and opened her eyes and looked more closely and that’s when she was sure she had really seen it-- it wasn’t a defunct light-- there was no big dead ridged light bulb behind that glass, but there was something-- shapes, incongrously rectangular and irregular and dry-- those were-- there were *books* behind that glass panel! an uneven row of books, like a row of british teeth (haha, ok, maybe edit that later man). she stopped, hovered, stared until the chlorine bit her eyes. old library bindings; the glass too thick and the light too dim and the covers too faded to make out titles. but unmistakeably a little row of books, just there, on the other side of that glass. and that discovery, well before the conversation with the burnt-toast writer lady in the cafe, was definitely the beginning of something. she wheeled about like a languid baby blue, and cruised through the scary black water, heart beating hard as always, thankful to have made it back to the shallow end without being gored by an orca or harpooned by a mad bearded humanoid, or... heaving herself up and out, she stood dripping for a moment, shivering in the moonlight, and then she grabbed her towel and wrapped herself in its luscious comfort. its rough textured warmth. she had to get some sleep, beautiful silken warm sleep, the remains of the water’s coolness making the warm blankets indescribably delicious. yes, the gratitude. yes, the awareness of being in a golden moment; no, she hasn’t forgotten to be humbled by that, but right now, something else grips her and makes her almost able to forget about that for a moment. she had to get some sleep, but tomorrow—tomorrow, she’s got a little quest to go on! the way we fixate on the life of a ladybug, as on the choice of a word it seemed so rockemsockem for the first three months or so, and now it seems so pointless maybe instead of “quit” i just need to adjust my methods, shift something around, rotate the crops ... think about that, and type more at the dentist. deal? deal, yes, ok, thank you sir, you’ve no idea how much i appreciate this. see? humans can learn new things. sometimes you just need a neuron transplant. your daughters aren’t perfect; your characters aren’t perfect; you can’t force them to be who you want them to be. This has something to do with why it matters and why you bother getting up at five o’clock. Know when to shut up and let shit go. oh, and by the way... (neither are you) who made the noise in the underwater room with the teddy bear? VOCAB abnegation dado baize splenetic passe-partout pecuniary interpellation lugubrious there was a woman who said she had an errand to run. she returned home a few months later to find chaos and confusion at work in her house. # CHECK IN ## 092818 - must get *back to the first-thing writing.* that's part of it - for mornings, push beyond the 15-minute limit; see if you can keep going (when you can); but it’s ok to find a natural place - don’t let it slip; don’t let “inactive reverie” return to being the default - must get *back to the planned 15 minutes mid-day* whenever. Put it on the calendar in the morning. - This is exactly the right time for this check-in, because I realize it has “begun to look like business” to my subconscious, and my subconscious has started going to work undermining it, and has gotten rather farther in the enterprise than I had even suspected. - Dorothea says, under the short but powerful section called “Succeed, or stop writing,” that you have to keep doing these two things—the morning sesh and the prearranged 15—until you “write fluently at will.” So I’m relieved to say we need to keep doing them. - Therefore I’m going to prescribe one more week of doing it solidly, and then we’ll have another check-in, to see whether it’s time to proceed onward from p. 84. I get that I’m a little afraid to let Schand into the room to look at all my ragged heaps of sheets. They’re kind of sweaty and they have a funk to them; he might judge me. So I’m glad to take that week, and just fully concentrate on doing my Icoul job and making sure I get it done right and to the letter and on the dot. That way I don’t have to think about a week from now for a whole week. Whew. sedulous spend more of time reading spend more of time writing improve vocabulary (or at least mitigate deterioration) watch planet earth 2 try brief history of time again call or text tom have sex make love with language worry less this doesnt feel like a morning. i’m tired but i don’t have loopy brain. what happened? what went wrong? I’m just a normal tired guy. that’s no fun having a job is onerousl seems kind of pointless why can’t we just hunt in the afternoons, make scientific discoveries by the light of the rising sun what even is my job? is it real/ is it bullshit? do i actually “teach” anything to anyone who needs to know? Is there anything as urgent as the hunt in what I supposedly do? DO i build or make anything? am i part of the chain of brave fools who make scientific discoveries? am i part of someone’s art project? so far that’s the only three things i can think of that ae real. hunting (or farming i guess, but that’s just a slow motion boring depressing version of hunting); science; and art (which includes music). is there anything else? management doesn’t count; that’s just being a stooge, that’s just following somebody else’s orders on behalf of someone else’ cleaning, serving, delivering, all that stuff... that’s all just the tragedy of “civilization.” That’s all the stuff we should just normally do for ourselves and each other, based on normal family units, but for some reason we started inventing jobs that had nothing to do with the big three (food; science; art), and the jobs we invented basically had to do with either service or being served. “Making money” i think they called it. And since money is imaginary, you have to artificially defend the position and invent all kinds of new rules and relationships and then force other people to use up their life force in service of making it seem real. o there’s another kind of job; it’s called defense or war or fighting. but that again i think used to be a thing that everyone did when necessary; you had to have a real job too. but along with the invention of “making money” comes the invention of the full time warrior, but since war isn’t all the time, the full time warrior spends much of his or her life and energy and life energy on made up bullshit too. All he has to do is stay strong and be ready. and you can’t stay strong forever, but if you don’t have a real job what are you supposed to do, so then we needed to press more real, vital people into the service of an imaginary necessity--so we can have old people, mostly old angry mean fat aggressive jealous men--still feel like they’re a needed part of something urgent and vital. THey also invent endless wars so that they can feel like they’re doing someething, like they’re urgent and necessary. Artificial urgency is the stuff of money and ideological war (as opposed to the hunt and actual defense); and it takes the souls of millions and millions of people, pouring their life energy into made up bullshit to keep it running smoothly, like an electric current that powers nothing but itself. This could be all bullshit. I have no idea if the rise of “making money” as a job parallels the rise of organized military and the whole rambling wasteful conscriptive nature of that. If I could figure out the exact terms, that would be something maybe i could research. YOU KNOW, IN MY FREE TIME. What do I actually spend my Free time doing? eating. making another coffee. eating canabutter and feeling groovy. sitting in a cafe. walking around a city. sleeping. shopping (ugh; speaking of made-up necessity!). helping the kids with homework. going on field trips with the kids. going to the Y with the kids. Giving rides to the kids. Making supper for the kids. waking up the kids. Taking them to jazz band and whatever else. grocery shopping. laundry. reading. reading the internet which is not the same as reading. watching hypnotic videos and falling asleep.watching movies with the kids. mowing the lawn. taking out the trash. cleaning something. rearranging my “office.” brushing the cat. getting bit cuz i brushed the cat too long and aggressively on the side. taking a bath. taking a walk. driving. driving to milwaukee. driving to oconomowoc. delivering packages of made-up necessity to farmers and peons alike. dreaming about being some kind of artist. Does that leave any time for research? I guess. But I’m scared of research. I don’t know how to do it; beyond a fucking web search. Neither do my students. Hey, that reminds me; i never got around to answering the question of whether or not being a teacher is a real job, or if it’s something (like ) that we used to just do as normal people, for each other, as part of growing up (the basics) and as part of a scientific community (the advanced stuff). Have we invented a structure of artificial dependence to make jobs for “teachers” just like we have to make jobs for “military” or anything else huge and labyrinthine like that? Am I basically a manager, managing and reinforcing people’s learned helplessness so that I can “make money”--if so, that’s pretty pathetic, because I don’t even make that much. Stay tuned. If I can figure out the vocabulary and logic of what I’m actually asking, I’ll see if I have it in me to do a little bit of research on this one. So we’ll keep it in here for now. I think it has to do with this: what is the correlation between the rise of a military-industrial complex and the proliferation of jobs that exist only to make money and the rise of great swaths of the population doing jobs of servitude and menial tasks? if it wasn’t always organized like that, what was it like before? why did it change and is this the end point? Is this inevitable? Also I was just thinking about Gail at mixed Co. and that girl and whoever else singing beg steal or borrow Do you ever have too many thoughts at the top level of your consciousness, skating around like a bunch of water bugs on ice? Me too. Here’s a little game i thought of in the bathtub (don’t say that part): 1. Stack of index cards. 2. Two of them a different color at the back of the stack. 3. Rubber band. 4. When you have one of those thoughts where you’re just really 100% sure yes definitely this remember this do this, write it on the top card. 5. Put that card in between the different-colored ones. 6. When the top colored card gets to the top of the stack, it’s time to go through your cards and get rid of the ones you’re not going to do right now and do the ones that are left--right now. 7. Start over. 8. Adjust size of card stack to taste. ## optional rules a. set a limit or a certain number of cards per time period (eg, one a day; no more than two an hour; whatever). b. put the ones you get rid of in one bin, and the ones you actually do something with in another bin (once you’re done doing the thing); periodically if you like you can go thru the bins and learn things about the intersection of what you think is important and what you choose to actually do something with. What other variations might be helpful? Do you have any little tricks or games or systems that work for you? Tell us in the Atrium. # REMINDERS > He is not as acute as Evelyn Waugh, the writer to whom he is most often compared, and is certainly not his equal as a stylist, but Powell is a far more disinterested writer than Waugh, and lets his characters reveal themselves in a wholly natural way that Waugh would not have been capable of. Waugh’s fiction always bears the artist’s stamp, whereas Powell’s work appears self-generated. > Less original novelists tenaciously follow their protagonists. In the Music of Time we watch through the glass of a tank; one after another various specimens swim towards us; we see them clearly, then with a barely perceptible flick of fin or tail, they are off into the murk. That is how our encounters occur in real life. Friends and acquaintances approach or recede year by year…Their presence has no particular significance. It is recorded as part of the permeating and inebriating atmosphere of the haphazard which is the essence of Mr. Powell’s art. (Waugh) # CHECK IN 2 There’s so much stuff I could go on about. The humming noise in the house, beneath the floor, behind my ears, (almost) below the limen. The fact that Millie is (online) friends with my fave student. How hot it is today, weirdly. How dumb I feel (we’ll come back to that one). How much of a whiny bitchy asshole beast I acted this morning when Libby missed the bus, and the car’s not working right, and her bike tire was flat. Really? Just those three things got you *that* upset? Get some perspective, dude. Yeah (we’ll come back to that one too). Dreams: a train that you ride on your belly, through lonely nightscapes; the track dead ends at a little rise above a town. There’s a tavern down there, and the possibility of some kind of redemption or reunion, but the connection is tenuous. There is a sense of vast emptiness behind you and to the sides, however, and so down the hill you will go, with your brother, your sister, or whoever or whatever else is nearby. a notorious cave, the entrance to which you’re poised over, with a handful of companions, getting your gear ready. the manhole cover is off the cave entrance. it’s anonymous, small, insignificant even, and yet passersby in the street call out, “Oh, you’re going into Val----!” There is a note of admiration and one of derision or even disbelief, and the implication is one of warning. But what I want to do instead of all that: remember when some teacher you or somebody had said, “Just come to class. If you come to class and just use the time to practice, that’s still better than not coming to class. It’s OK if you’re not prepared.”? Well that’s why I’m going to list the things I need to work on or change. You’re supposed to check in monthly (in this secret, hidden academy to which I haven’t been officially admitted but whose classes I audit with relish, and whose professors and students have become accustomed to seeing me lurking about) and ask yourself, “Have things improved? If not, then change your methods.” Now, I’m advanced enough (even though I don’t have the credentials to prove it; as a matter of fact, in this realm I have *no* credentials) to know how to disengage that question from the things it doesn’t apply to, and to apply it to those things that really need it. So yes, I am kind enough to myself (hopefully that’ll make it easier to learn how to extend the same generosity to my kids) to pause for a moment to acknowledge (and not in a perfunctory or obligatory way) all the things that *have* improved, and then I get down to work whittling away at the things that haven’t, enough, yet. So the methods I need to change are related to these domains: - calorie restriction - regular exercise - keeping your brain active; doing something with it that is somewhat challenging - an appropriate degree of socializing - attitude and behavior: resilience, optimism, compassion, doing things for others, volunteering And there are other strategies like meditation for reducing stress and so on, but I think I’m OK with that because of my morning and mid-day sessions. If I ever want to exchange a normal typing session for one where I just sit still, I could certainly give that a try and see how it goes. SO, let’s see if I can remember them all without looking bnack up, or copy and pasting, or referring back to the email to self (wherein I had quoted something that seemed smart that I read online) that I just now copied them from: - calorie restriction - physical exercise - keeping your brain active - socializing - volunteering and having a good attitude Nice. Good job. That seems to be the gist of it. So... Are those the methods, or are those the tests by which I evaluate whether the methods are working? I’m going to say, for now, provisionally, a little of both. But mostly those are the methods. The test is whether I can look around at proximate time in my consciousness, and honestly say I’m happier, more relaxed, more in touch, less lonely, etc. SO let’s try each of them today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and so on. I’ll add this to the “check in” files.