Just more sad thots

Dear diary,

The reason all my creations are sloppy is that I’m always striving beyond my own perception. You could grant me six more senses than my current seven, and I’d only want a fourteenth (etc.); so, in a way, I’m doomed to grope blindly. Even to grope toward blindness as if that’s my goal. I say as if because it’s not quite what I desire: the paradox is that I’m propelled toward the edges of possibility by my love for what is possible. I love vision so much that I can’t shake the hunch that there’s more of it just over the horizon, perhaps the BEST of it. Yes, I’m also tormented by optimism.

I am living proof that the USA has failed. So long as I remain tempest-tost on the Internet rather than incorporated with the School of the Ages, my genius is my country’s glaring deficiency: the more strength (or wildness or strangeness: for my aim is the unprecedented), I say, the more value my stray compositions evince, the more culpable is the USA for neglect. How can a country bring forth a writer of my potential and let her languish? And this is the rule, not the exception. Just think of the titans: Dickinson, Melville, Whitman… The traditional attitude, in the United States of America, is indifference to greatness.

I’m aware how arrogant I sound, using words like genius and strong to describe myself, and shelving myself directly beside my Yojos (a reference to Queequeg’s idol, from Moby Dick); that’s because I AM arrogant: it’s the truth, I admit it; I have nothing to hide except my nonexistent mortality. Who cares if I have an over-inflated notion of my own worth? You already stripped me of everything else, now you wanna take my dreams as well!?

I suppose, if the armed corporate bureaucrats could steal dreams, they would steal our dreams. They’d not stop at the financialization of physiciality: they’d charge for our spirit too — why not? And we’d meekly let them. It’s our fault anyway, for being born, for having needs and ideas: our energy is NOT our own — that’s preposterous. “How much do I owe you for that prayer that I just said, when I cried out ‘My God, why have you forsaken me’?” For I understand that if I do not pay my debts, the system will fail. And I really love this system. (May it infiltrate the afterlife.)

Dammit, I told myself, before beginning this entry today: no bitterness or complaining. And no religious talk. I’m trying to get away from religion and politics. Living in 2019, that’s like saying: I’m trying to get away from space-time. What’s left to whine about?

Blake also was abused by his country, his “green and pleasant land”; that’s one of many reasons why I relate to him. I’m talking about William Blake, the “poet, painter, and printmaker” — that’s how the encyclopedia describes him. I’d say: Visionary prophet, decidedly NOT a mystic. The second sentence of his entry reads as follows.

Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, he is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.

By show of hands, let me know if you think I’ve changed the subject far too rapidly when I continue like so:

Am I tired? Am I poor? I know for sure that I’m yearning to breathe free. “The New Colossus” is on my mind, after gleaning it above for that compound tempest-tost. The sonnet by Emma Lazarus. The one that’s appended to the Statue of Liberty. I’ve spoken of it before, but it keeps popping up in conversations, because the USA’s behavior is so noticeably turning against its lady’s sentiments. (But why do I say “turning” — was the US ever facing any other direction?)

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land...

Change “Not” to “Just”, as in exactly, and this would be accurate. I mean, in reference to the country’s current character. For what place on earth does not enjoy the presence of at least a few US military bases? However, the poem’s opening does not refer to the abstract nation itself, but rather to the giant copper statue, titled Liberty Enlightening the World: a gift from France. She truly remains a colossal contrast to the Colossus. And the people of France are in their own streets uprising, as we speak, in golden solidarity (I refer to the “yellow jacket” movement).

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning

I’ve always loved that phrasing. I’m a sucker for lightning. I love how the King James translators used the plural form of that term, which I don’t hear often enough, when rendering Jehovah’s tirade at the end of the Book of Job (38:33-35)...

Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?

Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover thee?

Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go and say unto thee, Here we are?

But while Jehovah’s bragging of casting thunderbolts usward, back in Emma’s poem we have our symbol of freedom being named the “MOTHER OF EXILES”, thus in all-caps (at least that’s how it’s typeset in the copy I’m reading).

. . . From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome . . .

I wonder: Is the present-day U.S. aware that its statue is committing this faux pas? Maybe someone from the Senate should go tell her to cool it. “That’s enough now; we’re not running a diner that’s open all night; flip over the WELCOME sign that hangs in the window, so that it reads CLOSED. Folks can’t just wander in here at any old time of the day and expect us to cook them breakfast; you can’t order your eggs ‘over easy’ or ‘sunny side up’; the only way that we know how to prepare fowl proceeds is HARD BOILED… and also scrambled. But tell all those huddled masses to come back later. Go sleep on a bench somewhere, tonight. But what’s that you say—we bombed all the benches? Well then sleep under some rubble. It’s your fault, anyway, for being born with a soul: you owe all your energy back with interest to the universe, which is to say, to the Big Bangster. Now, go, shoo! wretched refuse. —Hey, Liberty, do me a favor: Remove the lamp; then shut and lock the golden door. I’ll go activate the national security system.”

Sorry, I don’t know if that’s a little too jokey, or too pun-ridden, or too lowbrow, or too this or too that… Ya gotta let yourself wander, screw around a little, take a chance or two, when you’re not getting compensated for lying.

Think about paychecks. “Get a job!” That’s what they say to a mother who’s trying to raise her kids after their father got slain by the bureaucrats. As if being a mother is not a job. If that’s the case, then income (not to mention capital) is utterly disjointed from actual worth. In other words: financial worth is incommensurate with existential worth. That’s why there’s the saying “The best things in life are free.” But the weird thing is that we all agree to abide by this manmade system. Or maybe “agree” is too strong a word: we allow it, we’re complicit with it, by the fact that we’re not yet martyred by it. (There’s always tomorrow.) I mean, what can one mother do, if she disagrees with those who keep urging her to find employment—what can she do, if she KNOWS that she’s already got the toughest job of all, which is also the most respectable, and her performance is excellent? If society chooses to ignore her, thus relegating her to constant struggle, leaving her basic needs unmet, so that, soon, not only she but all her children suffer & die — what happens next? The money system persists: It simply hums into the future, the way that a motorcar continues down the street after striking a lamb. The car cruises into the sunset, over the horizon, past the vanishing point, while the little lamb bleeds to death on the road.