Fear in the Dark
(9-18 October 2000)
18 October 2000
-Sigh. I'm applying for the job of Seattle Mariners' manager within
the week. When Lou ran us out of the inning with a Dan Wilson-based hit-&-run,
I shouted at him not to. Much more importantly, when he brought in Arthur
Rhodes, I screamed "noooo" at the top of my lungs. Clearly,
I'm far more qualified to guide the team with the greatest potential in baseball
to their first World Series. & I've been telling everyone all week
that Rivera was due. & he was. But the damage had been done
by incompetent managing (Lou) & pitching (Arthur). Crudbuckets. March
is a long way away.
-Before this evening's disaster (described, in case you were wondering, above),
I saw this poster for some religious campus event that encouraged people to
come & "improve your personal relationship with G-d". This
cracked me up. "G-d" as opposed to "God" being the
source of my ironic laughter. Maybe it's just me, but I rarely have personal
relationships with entities whose names I'm intimidated out of SAYING. For
God's sake... the whole POINT of a PERSONAL relationship is to get over silly
organized hangups like that. What is wrong with people?
-I also saw Diane Creel yesterday. Woohoo! It'd been too long...
though she never really changes. Crazy visiting of the crazy Creel females.
-ARGH. So a whole season's hopes don't vanish all that quickly. This
is gonna take some getting used to. All this talk about a subway series
isn't going to help matters. For the, what, 4th year in a row, I have
to boycott the WS. Sigh.
-Trying to cheer myself up with quotes from yesterday's Philo Profs...
-"If you said 'Professor Greenberg, aren't you going in a circle?', I'd
say 'No, I'm going in a triangle!'" -Prof. Greenberg (Predictably enough.)
-"If you happen to have Storey, the humanity-embracing - who wants to be
his wife? You want someone who'll poke his eyes out!" -Prof. Hirshman.
(I think she meant a little better than this quote may imply. She
was talking about how my pacifism won't motivate many to look my way when seeking
a "protector". Why do I think the deeper implications here are
the ones that hit home? Odd, now I don't feel cheered up.)
-Clearly, Jordan Segal is a purveyor of salt.
-Which may be better than Frances, purveyor of the Food Network & a Library
Science Degree (pending). How's that for dullness with a side of falling
short of potential?
-These days, walking around Brandeis campus, I can't decide if I relate more
to Ray Bradbury's character in "Tomorrow's Child" (from "I Sing
the Body Electric!") & feel like a little blue pyramid, or more to
Jake's latter days at AA & feel invisible. Probably a lot of both.
The loneliness is big enough to swim in. Too bad I don't know how
to swim.
17 October 2000
-I've now officially put in a full day's worth of work at the library.
Seems like I've been working there forever. Work is good for the
soul. Getting a job is probably the best thing I've done this semester,
& that might be part of why I'm making it right now while last year at this
time I was contemplating taking a semester off.
-This may be the funniest
thing I've seen on the 'net in months. If not ever. & it was
made by Sha Sha Chu!
-I have a silly amount of e-mail to write. On an unrelated note, I have
a silly number of empty orange juice bottles gathered around this computer.
-Oh by the way, yesterday I updated the Collected Works
page. I was expecting this to be uplifting, but upon realizing exactly
how little I've written since June, it didn't help much. Oh well.
-There's going to be a new Diplo game between my friends.
I'm running the show, so I won't be playing against them directly. A
good time expected for all.
-Everyone is being ridiculously contentious tonight. Yuck.
-People are such dorks. Someone just TP'ed the entirety of the steps between
this floor & the bottom of 'Rantz. That's the benefit of being up
this late/early... one gets to beat the rush of seeing what's supposed to be
a morning surprise. Probably some moronic frat prank. It's just
silly & a waste & makes me wonder about the people going without food
on the planet & what their comments would be on the situation. Let
alone the janitors who have to take care of it. Inconsideration, thy name
is America.
16 October 2000
-My parents' reaction to yesterday's final comment? "It's
okay to be sad... for about 10 minutes". 'Nuff said.
-"People are trying to find what Brandeis is like - if they find out, I
hope they tell us." -Professor Black, on today being vistors' day at the
'Deis. If that doesn't capture it, I clearly can't do justice.
-Today looks like a watercolor painting that someone painted in the dark.
15 October 2000
-Have I ever mentioned just exactly how much I love trains?
I think that's the most settled I could've conceivably been on
this Ides of October. Moving targets indeed.
-Okay, the randomness is staggering. Staggering because nothing is random.
Staggering because our propensity to call something "random"
is borne of the gap in understanding between reality & what we perceive.
Staggering because I feel compelled to walk unsuredly around this planet
till I can see beyond the material & just realize the deeper layers. This
surface is getting in the way & no one knows what the time-delay is from
one to the next, especially on the question of salvageability. & it
keeps recurring over & over & over again.
-Even the clouds won't leave my memory alone.
-Alright, so I'm sad again. Yes, very sad. But as Cat Stevens put
it, "I've got my reasons & to me they're all true. & I wouldn't
change them, not even for you." What is right must always come before
happiness. What makes sense must do the same. Between the 2, I end
up sad a lot, but I know what I'm doing. & I'm trying to know more
about it so I can figure the whole thing out & eventually strive beyond
sadness, but not shortcut around it. & the way things are going, this
won't be a month anyone can shortcut around in the first place.
14 October 2000
[from Baltimore]
-Routinized indeed.
-What is going on? What IS this? Are there jinxes in a real-world
sense?
-Crap. Maybe I'm just a bad debater. Maybe I'm in the wrong business.
Maybe life isn't supposed to work out. "Maybe you're overreacting,"
says everyone else. But I don't know if there is such a thing. I
don't know.
-Brandzy is making every effort to make it seem that he will never give up.
& maybe he won't. I have a hard time thinking he's not wasting
his time though.
-We went to ESPNZone for THAT game? Sigh...
13 October 2000
[from Baltimore]
-There goes the streak.
-7 years after CTY here & 3 after CFL's here, I feel like this city &
especially these areas will always be familiar. It's like coming home
to a place that really isn't home.
-Amusement for the week: Freez meeting Brandzy!
12 October 2000
-Sometimes, the universe conspires to make things
work out in RIDICULOUS ways.
-I think I was beaten up in my sleep last night. I woke up this morning
with random cuts on the roof of my mouth, my chin aching as if hit, & other
odd sore spots. Not quite bruised, but feeling like it. Brings whole
new meaning to my dreams.
-I'm looking forward to Baltimore. Life has become routinized, which has
its upside, but it really has detractions. & the way this October
is playing out seems to be culminating in a full moon Friday the 13th (of October).
That's a bit of pressure. Always good to be moving when the pressure's
on. Moving targets are harder to hit.
11 October 2000
-I have just one question for Yankees fans: YOU
LIKE DAT?!
-So I saw my first-ever East Bug today. But it wasn't in East. It
was precisely the beetle/centipede combo, but far less intimidating than your
average 'pede, kinda big & squarish & scuttling across the floor of
the Gym. Yes, that's right, the Gym. Which is kinda distant from
East, if you know your 'Deis geography. So, anyone who tells you there's
no East Bugs outside of East is lying. Or doesn't know better. From
my experience there's ONLY East Bugs outside of East, but that's just the problem
with empiricism.
-Clearly, people don't listen. If they do, it's a freaking miracle.
-Why am I finding myself pricing bus tickets to the other end of this state?
What is wrong with me? Ay, the silliness. Silly, silly, silly!
-It would appear that popcorn kernels are the most resilient things on Earth.
What a resistant, stalwart material! What unbending devotion to
material consistency! Brilliant engineering would consist of replacing
steel as the steadfast framework for buildings with kernels. Obviously
this is the answer all dilemmas of modern construction. This would probably
help the Big-I & the Big Dig as well. Just bring in the popcorn &
building expenses are slashed with no loss in strength.
10 October 2000
-Now with Steino in control, they've finally updated
the debate rankings
for the year. Check out Zirk & I being 5th ranked team & me being
5th ranked speaker so far. In all likelihood, the former will go up &
the latter will go down as the year progresses. So it goes. Or might.
But Zimmy & I are also 9th ranked team, which is spiffy. That
certainly won't last. & as I think about the semi round at Harvard,
I'm not sure how much I care about any of this at all. But some of it's
kinda exciting nonetheless.
-Weeth! What a nutcase. But a really fun nutcase... she's a good
kid.
-This project just might end up functional.
-Maybe I'll be too busy to evaporate. Would that work?
9 October 2000
-I am weak. & a bad person. &
clearly incapable of handling the small challenges that life deals me. This
all makes me feel a little pathetic. Or maybe a lot. But when one
adds it all up, it's really rather sad. There is change, perhaps even
progress, but it's tediously slow & filled with constant backsliding. Days,
sometimes weeks like this, I feel I could walk out into the afternoon fog &
evaporate & do the world a service. To feel the rustle of trees below
& the wafting of bird wings fluttering around, within, would surely make
more sense than this. But I am tied to the non-ethereal & must persist,
despite the good reasons to do otherwise. & hope. Hope blindly,
unflackably, like a person who knows to a 99% certainty that the world is round
but keeps praying he'll find a corner, devotes his life to finding a corner.
Once I find that corner, if it exists, I swear I'll never leave.
Introspection, My Worst Friend* (Current)
Ye Olde Archive (Past)
Tell me this is not the end...*
*-lyrics from an as-yet unreleased song, "The Same Old Frontiers",
by SWClayton.