wisdom

It happened! It got cold. I know this is the tip of the iceberg (har har) in terms of weather but it is already colder than your average Pac-NW winter’s day and there is something thrilling to me about the approach of a serious winter. We in middle class America so rarely encounter stuff that can actually kill us if we don’t have our shit together (aside from, you know, driving cars every day and also just living in the poisoned world we’ve allowed corporations to ruin). I conceptually do not like living in places with harsh winters because I always have one eye on the apocalypse and I think about how dumb it would feel to survive an apocalypse but then just die anyway because it was so cold and you couldn’t grow any food. AND YET, the approach of a badass winter still thrills me. I like the feeling of battening down the hatches. The other day we went around our house and closed all our storm windows. The radiators are hissing. I made arm warmers out of the legs of wool tights I got at Goodwill, because my big mittens leave a gap between their cuffs and the cuffs of my coat. I think I am pretty set for winter clothes, although we’ll see.

I am researching sun-lamps that put out UVB so that you can get vitamin D from them. The reputable ones are like $400 which is just too steep. Plan B is to see if there is a tanning salon in town that uses bulbs that put out UVB rays. Ugh!

A lot happens and nothing happens.

I am just working a lot and that’s kind of it. “Today I sat in the same place for 6 hours and read 33 papers about arts activism.” “Today I researched comparable programs to see how many semesters of history they require, in preparation for the program committee meeting.” Stuff that is so boring, but isn’t boring TO ME. It is weird.

You might say that everyone’s job is like this to some degree, except remember that some people are, like, wildlife photographers, cowboys, and paparazzi

We fall into a hole and only notice certain things. My old man had not even heard about Kim Kardashian’s greased-up butt. When I showed it to him he said “is this sexy” and I said “I don’t know”

Next week is normal, then a one-day week because of Thanksgiving, then a normal week, then finals week, then christmas. I need to call a chimney sweep, get snow tires on the car, make a dentist appointment, and get new glasses. I lost the enormous binder where the HR orientation ladies gave me all my health insurance information and now I literally don’t know what to do. I guess call HR.

Is there anyone in America whose worst nightmare is not “having to call HR”

I bought $600 of books using my startup funds! That’s something exciting/interesting, right? A book about late romantic music; a book about 20th century media culture; some encyclopedias; a book about the first century of music after the invention of the printing press; a book about capitalism

“and I bought some DUMB stuff TOO”

been eating a lot of brussels sprouts

the dog had to wear his coat for the first time. He did not like it. But he figured it out, as we all must in our own time.

I re-read The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. What an epic book. I don’t understand how someone could be so wise at age 23. She was an observer of humanity. If I’d written a novel at 23 it would’ve been some hysterical overtly feminist eco-warrior sci-fi dystopian future thing that you would’ve read and thought “Wow, the person who wrote this is certainly 23.” Whereas McCullers at 23 is like diagnosing and beautifully describing profound existential issues of loneliness and isolation and the impossibility of ever truly knowing someone. She has this 5 page speech about what living in a racist system does to people that is fucking spot-on, to this day. 23 year old kid from the shitty South. Where did she come from? She later married this terrible alcoholic who tried to get her to commit suicide with him, and when she refused, he just did it without her, and then she was a widow. She died super young after a lifetime of chronic painful diseases and a bunch of debilitating strokes. Writing her stories about hunchbacks and weird little girls and misplaced love.

I was thinking about how DFW wrote The Broom of the System while in actual college–so like, much younger even than 23–and how incredible that is too. One always imagines his thesis advisor, stuck with this bizarre, smelly, totally pretentious manic a-hole of a student, but then one day he ambles in to your office and plunks down this 1,000 page novel that is, quite frankly, fucking brilliant. And then he also writes a critical exegesis of it as his thesis. You’d be like, uh…….wow. The B of the S though is brilliantly CLEVER but it’s not exactly “wise.” DFW’s wisdom came later, with age, like a normal person. It’s interesting to see how wisdom doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with intelligence. Obviously. Think of all the great scientific geniuses of our age who are profoundly un-wise. Inventing the atom bomb for example. Doing shit because you CAN, not because you SHOULD. Anyway, what makes a person wise? Wouldn’t you like to know–we could end war or whatever

I would like to be more wise. I would like to have a long beard and stroke it thoughtfully while pondering moral issues.

But I need to grade a bunch of papers about 70s rock now