Farrow's Generation

The angst I chew in Beckles is rising in prominence, and I know none of you know what to tell me, as only I know my growing physical weakness and remaining strength, but applying for this position would involve a great deal of work in and of itself, labor about which I cannot be too specific, but I would have to jump over many hurdles just to submit a competitive CV. If I do all that would I be strong enough? The question makes me want to split my skull for coconut juice, because the position truly interests me, and the very thought of fighting for it has inspired me with hope that I have not felt in a long time, but there are many issues involved, including my reading voice, which has suffered. Ebert has sustained catastrophic illness. So has gnostic man, who, if he ever mentioned my writing at all, would probably say I represent a safety net failure of unspeakable sadness, but their cases are different. These men are established, and I am a real jock cripple who has tasted what success could mean, but tragically never cemented my opportunity. If I go for broke, I will really have to break some eggs, and if I then get to an interview, I will need to be on, and I have never snorted coke.

Fuck, fuck, and to make a triple play, fuck.

Okay. I managed to get up to view this post RB Farrow vehicle, and let me make a quick observation before I return to burrow in later: A dirty little secret in the disabled community is that most of us want able-bodied lovers like Norman Eshley, which is why I did not let go of getting burned by Tassoni for a great length of time, or burning myself, not playing my cards properly. When I found his picture online, I had an Indian girl then, also an abuse victim, circa 2002. I squealed and blushed and did not see him as he was, a bald half assed jock academic who saved himself from being a punk through publishing on the finesse of his pedagogical concerns, no, I saw the only Italian American of my youth with whom I wanted to repopulate the Roman Empire, and my then Indian helper inflected her voice, "You really had a thing for this guy, huh?"

Yep, even if he suggested a label and then trotted off, not minding Faulkner's adage about the past not being the past.

In my brief scan of his abstract, my scurrilous lack of softened nostalgia burrows deeper, beyond the failings of my tie to him as an unrequited longing: I should have never believed that publishing papers such as his would have amounted to success. He himself was something of a jarring minimalist, as a writer, and I see traces of it in his jargon on interacting with his students as an instructor, much as my first person account of those years is just as poorly abstracted, though I do not toss the narrative because I still want certain parts of it, as a kind of personal mythos.

I want to write one or two academic articles on both Henry James and Italian Modernism, and then I am done; not sure I'd have much left after that, but since I am not an active or independent scholar, I am not sure I could meet the expectations of peer review, disadvantaged as I am.

The Beckles Projection

I had a busy, if virtual day, angling to see if I can return to the real world against young turks, such as this gent, if I indeed have enough left in my cognitive matrix to do so, since I am barely a goose with enough down left to hold myself up to a swan, and I was never a turk. In the convenience store, a young nerd said "here you go mamma," and of course I allowed it to glide, but it rankled. My mother was a mamma, a loose one, a lush, without the humor we tend to associate with the Wife of Bath, she opened her legs to the wrong people. So did I, come to think of it, without the magnitude of such reverberating damage to anyone other than myself, still with the mettle of the feckless, social media is not all that it is hyped to be, because I still like the weight of critical analysis as compared to typing "ooo how lovely!" to Ms. Farrow about her pictures. When it comes to Woody's behavior yes I have picked the side I am on, but as a matter of social equality, I have to get fusty with the forces of feminine domestication, and believe, especially in the West, that women have to "embrace their inner bitch" to quote Laurie in script, to operate in the alpha male world, and that we'd be better off engaging without overt lesbianism in the process. Do I expect secular academia to really take me back in the fold with that plank, nearly collapsed as it is? Am I for real? Not in terms of fire and brimstone epithets, no, but as an intellectual warning, yes.

My pleasures are few. One of them once was dragging my body into class with a spastic infantilism, my crutches splayed in the hallway, my breathing labored, gratefully pushing my buttocks back onto the sling seat of a metallic wheelchair frame long rusted into recycle, or landfill. Video rarely takes me out of my consciousness, sex never, good or bad, and I am probably past any point of abandon, and yes, I know abandon is ellusive for the healthy. Levels of practice and expertise are involved. It was like that when I took Paratransit to the Riverfront to see A.I. Bladder filled itself like a weakened rubber, most likely I wet myself in the studio when I returned, not a good day for wonder, or even to feel secure. After the Colorado shooting, reporters kept blaring that theatres were supposed to be a safe place for families, and those of you with relevant pair bondings, of which I am sometimes envious. I never felt that way, not safe, except when Kmac told my mother, the bungle of us screaming at Jaws popping out of the ocean, that "damn shark should run for president." She was wry in the closet. We're catching up with our fictions of science, the erosions of those boundaries, the autonomic, clinical coolness of a Spock, a Data, a Goren, a Sherlock Holmes. I always thought the organic androids from Alien were the most plausible. Should I have my DNA preserved, and come back without damaged brain tissue? Is that possible?