Amanuensis to Moby Dick, Guardian Mentality No. 2

Dreamt I stood in a china shop so crowded from floor to far-off ceiling with shelves of porcelain antiquities etc. David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, p.43

William Gaddis, for the uninitiated, is a fine writer, and my edition of The Recognitions has a far less elaborate jacket, a lamination of white green yellow blue, like an atheist Christmas card, but the novel, while a precursor to the genius of David Mitchell, is a ponderous effort, a hell on earth labor to actually finish, living as I did, on the edge of the badlands, 1500 W. Page Street, closing a tome about frauds, fakes, originals, with the final phrase "rarely played." reverberating with the stark imprint of an epitaph. Perhaps Gaddis's publisher believed Gaddis was a modern James Joyce, but no. Whatever one feels about the author who murdered the novel, Joyce is a lively labor. Gaddis is a dissertation down the rabbit hole, with a density somewhat thicker than the later Gravity's Rainbow, if my imprint dates are in alignment. and following on the heels of my first nominee, you can still appreciate what literary movements like Modernism have to offer without adding The Recognitions as a very long spooling funnel to your archives. I started the first chapter again approximately six months ago, and if I wind up as a most unfortunate casualty of this youthfully old birth city of American independence, I may never get to fully reengage with William's game theory.

Ali darlin, I have absolutely no idea who you are, and I almost have absolutely not a creative word to post about the fact you've followed me. I do not stream much. Don't have a playlist, and don't use my 5c like an iPod, though I am sure Apple and ATT and Google would be ecstatic if I grasped at the straws of my zealous turning thirteen obsession with Elton John and went back to the British sound of my era as opposed to being part of the problem, as tommyturbo asserted, but what I can convey is the amazing ability of language, to create a word like amanuensis, a word I never knew until Mitchell gave me a visceral existential crisis. If Modernism killed the novel, Mitchell destroyed the aspiration of any ambition I ever had, and yet, I did not expire on the table when this revelation sucker punched me after I finished his profound display of virtuosity. I passed on my battered and stained copy to young Lance, who patiently waltzed this spastic through Ulysses in 2013. I kindly offered Lance my edition and he said no he had to give it back because he needed to buy Cloud Atlas in hard cover. I cannot guarantee you I'll trudge on at this softer pace, as my intention to vacate this unfortunate studio apartment I've inhabited since 1994 by the end of July is not, in fact, particularly salient to the imagination. Disabled writers on entitlements simply do not vacate section 202 housing. It is not done, but I cannot stay. My ability to cope with Presbyterian corporate methodology, beating and beating at me as long as it has, because I was a naive 23 year old who saw this way of life as a mere stepping stone toward a fulfilling literary adventure-- I do not know what I thought. I thought I could become like my mentor Jerry, whose name I weary of typing, but anyway, what was I saying? Oh.

Even though I do not stream all that much, as I am sorting all of this out, listening to your work is on my list, but Tony's radio show comes first. If you have, oh, I do not know, access to writer's studio digs where I could bring my cats. I love the feline children, one cannot help that, well, let me know. If you're interested in what I have to say, well, I've reached across the generation then. Now I need to rest a bit, but I had to log on and dissect this. Compulsion must be satisfied.   

Mimic

Blogger managed to frighten me, and I am still digesting it, as a prelude to the arc of my life ending exactly as it started, bodily functions constrained, wondering why viewers of my posts necessarily need to feel victorious in censoring a voice soon to fade regardless. Humanity knows it is in trouble, and power has shifted away from territorial governance to corporate control on a global scale, just as David Mitchell presaged it in Cloud Atlas, and just as the main catastrophe in the novel indicated, it won't really change that we're doomed to irrational repetition of conflicting interests, whether vengeance is refined through engineering efficiency or relegated to vulgarity, I am not certain I ever had a choice about my destiny, part failed scholar, part failed systems module, part semi-failed writer who cannot grasp everything, computer science being one topic of unfortunate illiteracy. Even if I desired comprehension, I could not grasp the complex aspects of circuitry and code, but understand the power it generates, and it scared me; I'm used to human censure, but not being wiped off search because I cause offense, or am considered irrelevant, or simply a provocateur.

Decorum would insist that I need not lift the curtains I do to prove a point, but I'm suggesting otherwise. We pay a price for sustaining people like me, especially when the judicial process cannot rectify the trauma which has to be necessarily absorbed. I am ignoring the health systems in place for that rather than seeking adequate treatment because mental health is a game of Russian roulette, and pharmaceuticals don't work. I learned this about intake long ago, just like prison, therapy is a cycle of recidivism by degree, and makes treating professionals themselves vulnerable, which liberal journalists ignore when they talk about crisis in services. There is no getting better for approximately a third of trauma clusters, only volume muting, and Google muted my volume, why?

The inferences? What I've insinuated about hate? Perhaps. I do not hate my ex-fiance in the traditional sense of domestic discord. I hate what he is, how the Bronx molded him, and hate how he lives, and how I live too. For my subjective intent, it isn't worth the price, which is why I engaged in an inappropriate social outreach and gave Tony Stiles my telephone number. His local notoriety doesn't mean anything to me personally except that it gives him a capacity I've lost in being vanquished so I took a chance, not really expecting that he'd oblige me with a reciprocal response as a knight in shining armor. I'm looking at a position for a health journalist, and I am not motivated, indecisive as to whether I should force myself to apply anyway. I'd rather become a dictator and overthrow a representative government, a brief and flaring bookend to my tortured legacy.

Warhol Whittled, 15 Microcrons

Being and non-being create each other.--the Tao

Do Britains themselves remember that their military used to be efficient and even ruthless? Not that I expect Elizabeth to suddenly recalibrate her decorative, if sovereign authority over the isles, but if I had Cameron's ear, I would publicly execute these suspects as no better than rabid dogs, and I mean publicly, in the centre of London if need be, after two days of watching video of these ethnic Nigerians behaving no better than if they indeed had a rabies infection, a more than glaring example of how we have outpaced ourselves, how diversity backfires, and how medieval norms seem to insist on cohabitation within a digital age. I used to believe that juxtapositions such as these events were merely literary conceits, merging post-modernism, futurist techniques, but it is another thing entirely to be living amid such disconcerting savagery, and I am not entirely blameless there. Then again, neither are you.

The fact that these attacks are increasingly shallow and cosmetic illustrates how efficient western military technology has been against Al Qaeda, but I cannot imagine even an old and comforting militia like the I.R.A. engaging in such barbaric cowardice that these two Londoners exhibited, and to publicly shame them in a ritualized hanging might do the body politic some good, *Christian* and *Islamic* alike.

Short of snapping my foot fusion, or breaking my leg, which has not quite happened yet, I had a horrible day with my lateral transfers. If someone had sat me down when I was 23 and said "Liberty is going to destroy every hope and aspiration you have," I would have snorted with incredulity, just like you probably sneer at my posts in the same manner, but they did. I am not going to be able rub Aladdin's Lamp and marvel at miracle magic.

Lyricism Minutiae

Lifting a term from Naomi Perley in her 19th century literature studies, it is the rich intratextuality of Proust that I prefer over Joyce and his Homeric Shakespearean parody, and in this sense, I am an Italian Germanic Francophile over a Saxon Anglo satirist. Eliot critiqued that the novel as we once knew it ended with Flaubert and James. True, but Joyce and Proust, then David Mitchell, broke the bank.

The novel as a literary form is dead, and Joyce took a deconstruction to its limit and essentially failed. His word smashing may strike the funny bone, but is not a consciousness simulation. Proust, on the other hand, mimics the complexity of biology by turning detailed precision of memory into a musical score. Mitchell then in the 21st century gives it digital connective tissue with historical allusions bound by chance connections that unify from the center.

Nothing more can be done with narrative except for the arbitrary perspective that seeps in the cracks.

Naughty woman with a schedule I need to keep, I should be lying down, but I wrestle with my two bit tap on why the quiet Italians, limping in on the backs of the titans, should have the last word. It turns out I can play Russian roulette with both e-cig cartridges and the simple plastic poke tubes. My constructs are slow to form, but my advantage is I am a stubborn bitch, and I am going to take my place in the field, even if I have to tutor remedial English to grasp at straws. I hate Joyce, so there, but why?

You see?
*
Lazy troping.  I can appreciate certain things in the fabled Joycean virtuosity, and of course, Western civilization survived the onslaught of Modernism deconstructing the fabulism, the assurance, of the Elizabethan world order, but it could not stop personal autonomy from turning yesterday's warrior into the modern terrorist. Is this too damning a charge to aim at Broch, Bloomsbury, their successors?

Somi's Bark

Well, now we know. The end of the world will include Christ making a pit stop in Missouri. Hilarious, and this man is purportedly brilliant. I despair of you all this evening, and you can take it or leave it, though I have made an effort to moderate my tone in recent weeks. My edition is out on loan and I have no regrets as to that, as I do not despair, quite, of my young Ulysses instructor. He is affable; he is busy, but should he stop by, my seal of approval is in the air. You're doing a fine job.

I am busy as well, but not affable, quite, and will return, hopefully around Monday morning, with new post, revisions, maybe the ghost of Eliot and his gentlemanly prejudices. I should be able to leave section 202 housing without it evolving into a death sentence, and that is so humorous that it should be good enough for a stroke at my wake.