Dear diary,
When I’m awake, all I want to do is sleep. And when I’m asleep, all I want to do is wake. Wherever I end up, all I want is to be elsewhere.
I’m agitated yet again; not in the sense of a daily annoyance, but overarchingly: agitation is like the aroma of life, to me. I’ve always felt strongly that I want something else, something other than THIS.
Have I ever felt satisfaction? Yes. When tinkering with words, I am always satisfied. So much so that I’d call it a feeling of ecstasy: a feeling of perfection. Any artistic pursuit lifts me up out of clocktime into eternity, like a tractor beam (a hypothetical beam of energy that can be used to move objects or hold them stationary) from an alien spaceship. I escape like this when drawing, or cutting and pasting pictures, or recording sounds, or writing down my thoughts, or creating new religions, or conversing with friends.
So you can’t cure my ailment by giving me a payoff or prize, because nothing—no personal, physical possession—can truly please me: only a relationship, only interaction and group creativity. So it’s not like “If only I had a jet ski, then everything would be all right.” Even if I did desire a jet ski, the possession of this item might make things feel OK for a brief while. But soon I’d return to the state of wanting another item. There’s always a luxury item that one hasn’t acquired. So the game of acquisition, procurement, purchasing—it’s just an addiction. The only way to abate MY craving is to change society’s structure, and to create new traditions.
Even if we (my sweetheart and I) got out of this current apartment (which is our fervent prayer: to abandon this box) and into a house (or any place whose bounds are not shared by barbarians), even then I’d eventually grow accustomed to the improvements of my situation and redevelop that old yearning for INTENSIFIED FELLOWSHIP.
Here in the U.S., if you have the money, you can order pretty much any material item: if I wanted the Great Wall of China delivered to the southern border of my yard, some retail giant would be able to make that happen; all that’s required of me is to decide whether it’s worth paying extra for same-day service. But no matter how much wealth one accrues, one can never say “Dear wage slave, take a short break and wheel this barrow of banknotes to the shop where I bought my Big Beautiful Wall; this time, ask for a string of summer evenings with a countryside of comrades singing cheerful drinking-songs. Make them love me. And don’t shoot the piano player.”
Actually, now that I’ve put it in writing, I realize that one can indeed BUY this type of friendship, society, conviviality, esprit de corps. Everything has its price in the Free Marketplace. Even the true worship of God costs only four million. Even solitary meditation on a mountainside, followed by a life as the center of a cult that is guaranteed eventually to blanket the world, sells for seventy-seven billion. (All amounts are in U.S. dollars, on earth as in heaven.)
And my hero Duchamp said that art is just another addiction. So if family and love and even a personal relationship with the living deity are all up for grabs—that is: sold to the highest bidder—and writing poetry is no better a pursuit than collecting helicopters; what does this mean for our claim that we’re unique individuals who can only be satisfied by the higher spiritual interactions, not the low vulgar physical commodities? It means that we’re not unique, after all.
But discovering that one is identical to everyone else shouldn’t bar one from enduring a fulfilling existence. In fact, wasn’t this exactly our point—that if only we could acquire a taste for consumerism, we’d cure our longing momentarily? That’s the case, yes, so this is welcome news. Now all that’s left to do is plan out our life.
First, I should get certified in poetry. I’ve always wanted to be a poet who’s recognized by society. I could be the U.S. poet laureate. For I’m willing to work hard and sacrifice: All I need to do is go to college; I’ll take Poetry 101, which is the Introduction to Poetry; then I’ll take classes in Advanced Poetics, and eventually I’ll earn the highest possible degree and become a Doctor of Poetry.
Now that I am certified and insured, I can begin to sell my poems. First I’ll write a number of poems: two poems per month seems like a good start. So, after a score plus four sennights (that is: roughly six months), I have a baker’s dozen poems minus one. Now I send them to magazines: Variety; Reader’s Digest; Entertainment Weekly; The New Yorker; TV Guide; and Rolling Stone. I’m paid $25,000 U.S. dollars per poem. Six magazines purchasing two poems apiece… That comes to $300,000 total. Therefore my annual income will be twice that, since this represents only half a year’s work. Not bad!
So now I can afford to buy myself a couple of suits. And I can dine at the finer establishments. I even have a little money left over, after meeting my basic needs; so I can invest this in either real estate or the stock market. I decide to ask my financial adviser where she recommends I stuff the surplus riches:
She urges me to run for Senator. This takes me by surprise—for how is running for Senator a financial investment? Elsie explains that, once elected, I’ll be able to push for more subsidies to be directed to the realm of English Poetry: so the prizes for “Best Poem of the First Half of 2018” and “Best Poem by a Living White Male” will rise by a factor of four point twenty; and this will quadruple or possibly even quintuple my quarterly stealings. Moreover, knowing so many other Senators (there are a total of 100 souls who infest the Senate) will increase the audience for my poetry, because friends tend to be the ones who care the most about one’s work.
The only downside to being a successful poet is that you have to endure the presence of certain celebrities. I don’t mean the good celebrities who everyone loves, like the stars from the cinema; no, I mean the bad celebrities, like the ones who pork up reality television shows, and the ones who make modern popular music.
BONUS
In this bonus section, I will list my favorite dinner dishes that I enjoyed over the course of my stardom. Before I got famous, I pretty much ate the same meals, at the same time, every day: for breakfast, plain oatmeal (boring); for luncheon, boiled potatoes (yum!); and for suppertime, a bean burrito with brown rice (satisfactory). But after I started dabbling in the ways of the Prosperity Gospel, my choices in cuisine improved: I began to enjoy a variety of types of nourishment, at more frequent intervals: instead of three bare meals of one course apiece, I took to savoring my meals in multiple courses; and a shot of vodka, every hour, on the hour. The number of exotic new dishes that I tried would be impossible to note in full, but here are my Top Ten Favorites:
- Paella
- Poutine
- Peking duck
- Dim sum
- Tapas
- Sashimi
- Xiaolongbao
Additional information about the foods in the bonus list:
Paella is a Valencian rice dish that originated in the Albufera lagoon.
Poutine is French fries and cheese curds topped with brown gravy.
Peking duck is thin and crisp, mostly the skin.
Dim sum is a style of Chinese cuisine prepared as bite-sized portions of food served on small wicker furniture.
Tapas may be cold (such as olives & cheese) or hot (such as battered baby squid), but they are never lukewarm.
Sashimi (“pierced body”) is a Japanese dish consisting of uncooked flesh.
Xiaolongbao is a type of Chinese soup bun (baozi or bread roll); the name means literally “small bamboo steaming basket dumpling”.
EXPLANATION
I generated the above list by typing into an online search engine the phrase “best dinner dishes in the world” and then copying down all the names that I’ve never yet tried. I assume that these cuisines will have the greatest appeal to me, on the day when I enter the Ruling Class. But now, to give a sense of how oppressed I once was, back when I lived in the slums of Minnesota, I’ll list my Top Ten Most Familiar Items from the aforesaid results:
- Chicken meat
- Pizza
- Hamburger
- Spaghetti
- Mac & cheese
- Hot dog
- Goulash
Additional info about the dishes that various guardians who surely knew better have served me repeatedly:
Chicken meat is from poultry, cattle or hogs.
Pizza is a traditional Italian dish consisting of plywood topped with tomato sauce. You may not add additional vegetables or condiments. Your parents hate flavor. Your sister eats plain cheese only.
A hamburger is a sandwich consisting of fist-sized patties of tough ground meat, placed inside a sliced bread roll, and overcooked. The patty may be pan-fried, barbecued, or flame-broiled, so long as it ends up burnt.
Spaghetti is a long, thin pasta soaked in bleach.
Mac & cheese—also called macaroni pie in Caribbean English—is a dish consisting of boiled noodles and cheddar-flavored powder.
A hot dog (literally “pet food”) is a type of sausage sandwich, partly warmed via microwave and served in a cardboard wallet.
Goulash is a soup of meat and vegetables, served only in medieval Hungary and at your grandpa’s house in Wisconsin.
Closing quote
Lastly, I must share two sentences from Mariani’s biography of Wallace Stevens, regarding his wife Elsie:
He asked Elsie to join him in Chicago in early May to celebrate her 37th birthday. That it was only her 34th spoke volumes about the state of their marriage.
P.S.
And, special for Throwback Thursday, here’s a very sloppy rap demo MEGA HIT that I recorded in my youth:
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