Dear diary,
Well I told you on the 29th of last month about how anxious I was regarding our driveway replacement, but then I never followed up to tell you how it went. So here’s how it went:
It went fine. I was worried for nothing, as usual. The crew was fast and kind and efficient. After that initial postponement, the job took two days. They arrived on Day One with large golden machines and tore the driveway limb from limb, causing a great racket in the process. Judging by the sound alone, you would think the world was coming to an end: it was really thrilling. At the end of that first day, we were left with a driveway of light brown dirt, indented into the earth so that it dipped down at the curbside & you could trip over it; so that was fun. The driveway stayed that way for one night. Then, the next day, which was Day Two of Two, the same crew arrived with even weirder machines of colors unimaginable to mankind, and they made even more noise pounding the ground, quaking the earth, packing the surface down as flat as possible, and then they oozed a layer of thick hideous pitch asphalt over the top, like a dark meat blanket, and then smoothed out the surface. After that, they left. Boy did that stink! Asphalt has a strong smell that I do not find pleasant. Every time I walked near the service door that connects our house to our garage, I whiffed the poisonous fumes and almost choked to death. So that was fun too.
And our neighbors are the nicest neighbors in the universe: they all came out of their houses to congratulate us after the job was finished, almost like we had graduated from school or won the Olympics. “Nice driveway!” they said. And we said “Thanks!” And then our neighbor J. who lives directly next-door said “How long is it before you can drive on it?” And my sweetheart answered, “Three to five days.” And J. said, “Hey, that’s perfect: my wife and I are leaving on a three-day vacation (we’re going to hear live music played at a concert in ancient Ireland), so you should park in the spot directly behind my motorcar; that way you won’t have to park in the street. Because look how the street is curved: what happens is that people come from that straight stretch of road down yonder, and they continue driving in a direct line instead of noticing that the road itself is beginning to turn; thus they run right into any car that happens to be parked alongside the curb, where your car would be, if you parked on the street. I just think it’d be a shame if someone were to drive by and damage your hybrid. Moreover, a lot of the cars that speed thru this area are driven by drunks, who are notoriously bad at controlling their vehicles.” So my sweetheart gave thanks again and parked in J.’s driveway.
My favorite aspect of this whole fiasco is that now we have a totally empty garage — at least for the next few days — because (as I explained earlier), in preparation for this project, I cleaned out all the junk from the previous owner; also, since we can’t yet use the driveway, now there’s not even a snow-white hybrid car therein. So I can open the service door and stick my head into the darkness of the garage and shout “Is anybody there?” and, because the place is now void and formless, my words echo back: “Is anybody there?” Then I can pretend that this is not an echo but God Almighty answering from within the gloom; so I reply “Are you talking to me?” and the words return: “Are you talking to me?” Then I dash to my bedroom and tremble until I forget what scared me. And then I restart the whole routine.
Oh, and before moving on to the next thing, I wanna tell you that I spoke with another neighbor — not the neighbor mentioned above; that’s J. — I mean the one who’s diagonally south across the street: this guy’s named M., and he’s a hunter and fisherman. Anyway, a couple days ago, he was talking about shooting waterfowl, cuz our other neighbor (a third one, whose name you don’t need to know right how, cuz he only plays a bit role in this pericope: he’s the guy whose house is directly across the street from us; so he’s M.’s next-door neighbor) was building a duck-hunting boat with fake reeds all over its top; and we both could see this boat parked in the lawn just to the right of us, cuz we were standing in M.’s yard; so I asked M. a question: “I know you sometimes go fishing,” I said, “but did you ever hunt ducks?” And M. said “Oh yes, I’ve hunted ducks. We used to do a lot of goose hunting too.” And I said, “Geese! I didn’t know that people hunted geese! So what’s the purpose—is it just for sport, or do you actually eat gooseflesh?” And the expression on M.’s face became extremely solemn, and he declared, “I’d never kill anything I wouldn’t eat.” And I said, “Wow! so you eat the meat of geese: Does it taste alright?” And M. said, “Oh yes, it’s good. Of course it depends on where the animal has been living, and what it’s been eating; and also how you clean and prepare the innards…” And I said, “Well my grandmother lived thru the Great Depression, and I’ve heard rumors that she used to shoot and kill squirrels, and eat squirrel meat.” And M. said, “Oh I’ve done that. Squirrel meat is good. I know that people get turned off because it’s technically a rodent, but the meat tastes good. I have some friends who live in Xanadu, and they keep the whole top section of their freezer filled with squirrels. They can fit more than fourteen of ’em in there.” And I said, “I’ve told a lot of people that fact about my grandma eating squirrels, and you’re the first one who not only wasn’t grossed out by it, but you actually had a story of your own to top mine: I wouldn’t have expected you to know someone with a whole freezer full of squirrel meat.” And M. said, “Well it was just the top section. But yeah, I’ve hunted a lot of things: ducks, geese, squirrels, deer, rabbits… Ya know, rabbits are tasty; but ya gotta be careful with rabbits, ya gotta clean em a certain way, cuz they get this disease, I don’t know what it is: they have something wrong with their liver. Ya gotta be aware when you’re preparing their insides, or you could poison yourself.”
So that’s all I remember about our chat. I just wanted to jot it down here before I move on to other issues.
*
Alright, now that I’ve tied up all the loose threads from that previous entry, there’s just a couple more passages that I wanna quote from the book that I told you about yesterday: The Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac. I don’t mean to make too big of a deal about this novel — I just happen to be trying to read thru it, and it’s not really my cup of tea, but it’s not too bad, so the way that I can justify giving my time to it is if I record a reaction or two, here in the pages of my own journal. So yesterday’s entry counts as one reaction; and this here quote that I’ll give below shall count as the second reaction. Then I think I’ll be finished talking about this book, and we can proceed to better things. (I could have simply stopped, after wrestling with that sentence yesterday, but I wanted to give one more example of how fiction can provoke me; and I also thot it’d be interesting to preserve a passage that I admire, so I’ll share that at the end, without any commentary.) OK, so here’s the text that I wanna contend with — first I’ll copy it in full, and then I’ll pick it apart and add my thots (it’s from the beginning of chapter 14):
This gets my goat, and parts of it bug the living heck outta me; yet it also pleases me on some level, and I agree with a certain something about its essence. I think I understand where the character’s coming from. I sorta wish that I could participate in a collaboration with the author of the above, so that I could force his lazy studious easygoing nature to deal with my zany insouciant synthetic madness; cuz I think I’d get his goat more than he got mine, but he just has the advantage of coming before me in time, thus I’m forced to read him but he’ll never have to read me.
Let me now tear the passage in tatters, starting at the start. Smith says:
I wanted to . . . go off somewhere and find perfect solitude and look into the perfect emptiness of my mind and be completely neutral from any and all ideas.
Why would you want to do this? This is stupid. Perfect solitude is what we all yearned to escape from, when we attempted deicide by emptying out our godhood till it burst us into endless life-and-death. The “perfect emptiness of my mind” is not a thing to be sought after: it’s an embarrassment. You should be ashamed if your mind is really empty. My mind is full; it’s brimming & spilling, simmering to a boil: my fancy runneth over: it’s gushing. I value exuberance, not moody brooding, not primness of thot. Not emptiness, void and unformed.
To be “completely neutral from any and all ideas” is not what I want either — I understand and agree with the stance that prefers to avoid taking ideas too seriously; but I’d rather engage with ideas, try one on for size, and discard it and try on the next one, its opposite, and fling ideas around, see what sticks. Play with ideas. I like dabbling in ideas. And neutral just means you don’t have much desire: you’re lacking in energy. “Those who restrain Desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or Reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.” Thus saith the Devil, in William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell. “And being restrained, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of Desire.” Then later in the same passage, Blake writes “It indeed appear’d to Reason as if Desire was cast out; but the Devils account is, that the Messiah fell. & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss / This is shown in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send the Comforter or Desire that Reason may have Ideas to build on”. Desiring desire so that reason may have ideas to build on: that’s the stance I embrace; not Smith’s mentally empty neutrality towards all ideas. Instead of going off to sulk by yourself in solitude, you should join a great party, and drink and dance and LIVE. Go watch some films by John Cassavetes. (I mean the ones he directed — it’s worth specifying this, cuz he did a lot of work as an actor, appearing in other directors’ films and using the money earned to finance his own poetic cinema.)
I intended to pray, too, as my only activity, pray for all living creatures; I saw it was the only decent activity left in the world.
I don’t know; prayer pisses me off. What does it mean, to pray? If it doesn’t include ACTION then it sounds fishy: I don’t want any part of it. Your act is your prayer — if that’s true, then I say: pray without ceasing; for that would mean: sublimely spend your genius in the service of otherness. But I also believe in Epicureanism, if that means regarding self-pleasure as very good: for lo, others love to see that you are happy; it’s a type of service to others when you allow yourself to enjoy the pleasures of life. But this “praying for all living creatures” — what does that mean? Whispering words to yourself when you’re alone? How does that help even one single grizzly break free from a spring steel bear trap? And then the leg that was caught in the trap needs mending — your stupid prayer ain’t doing the trick.
& note Smith’s wording: “I intended to pray”. I’d say that if you’re intending to pray, you’re not praying, you’re just pretending, like when a baby babbles before it has learned how to talk. Premeditate nothing, but jump right in to actual prayer by moving the world in a desirable direction via your DEEDS. Skip the wasteful indulgence of intention. As James the Just, blood brother of Jesus, renounces the Apostle Paul in a letter of his own: Faith without works is dead (James 2:26). Why make pray mean plot? Let intuition be our intention from beyond; no deliberation when it comes to love. Spontaneity in compassion. As Blake again has his Devil explain to a foolish Angel: “Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse”. And Mark (13:11) has his Jesus say “take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Spirit.”
And I wince when Smith declares his type of prayer “the only decent activity left in the world.” What! There are countless decent acts to be performed: the scope of distinguished behavior is limitless! How about interacting with children! Reading aloud Emily Dickinson! Carpentry, plumbing! Contemplating perplexities for the sake of sharing wisdom! Wealth redistribution! Public displays of affection! (The other day, when we were out riding our bikes, I saw two heavy-set people in a parking lot, embracing — I only mention their build because I don’t want you imagining that they looked like typical runway models: the level of their attractiveness with regard to the fads of this present generation of vipers has nothing to do with my perspective — and they were French kissing, and it made me happy to see this sight: it warmed my heart; I can honestly say that it made my day. Cuz when you witness people engaged in physical affection, it reminds you of how pleasurable it is simply to share infatuation with another: it reminds you of how you yourself shall feel when you become heavy-set and French kiss your soulmate: existence yeilds perfection, in oases of time. And this is the same way I feel when I behold a rabbit nibbling on a weed in our yard: my only concern is that the creature’s liver remains in good health; cuz I don’t want whoever shoots it to get sick from its meat.)To rest and be kind, and do nothing else, practice what the Chinese call “do-nothing.”
Now here I am in agreement with Mr. Smith. If you’re not going to passionately pursue some action with others — whether it’s building a house for your enemy, or just singing loud songs at the saloon while drinking beer out of king-size mugs — just do nothing at all. As it is written (in “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman), “I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.” And later on, he says “Now I will do nothing but listen…” I’m such a convert to this doctrine that sometimes I think it’d be better if everyone, especially those who spend the majority of time on so-called philanthropy and charity work, would just STOP and rest: do absolutely nothing for a spell. Who knows if your intended “good works” are even benefitting anyone — you might be giving more annoyance than aid, like when a church invades a churchless paradise and teaches its inhabitants how to act frumpy. Your attempts at helping could even be harming others. It’s better to do nothing at all than to increase discord. I often wonder if warfare is the result of people not doing nothing enough. For what’s the opposite of doing nothing? Busy work: busy-ness: businessmen.
I didn’t want to have anything to do, really, either with Japhy’s ideas about society (I figured it would be better just to avoid it altogether, walk around it) or with any of Alvah’s ideas about grasping after life as much as you can because of its sweet sadness and because you would be dead some day.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t know Japhy or Alvah — they’re just characters in the novel. Take Smith’s remark here in general: he’s saying “I don’t want anything to do with contemplating society — I’d rather “avoid it altogether, walk around it”. I disagree with this; I love to think about society: how to better it, how to sublimate human tendencies. By admitting this, it might appear at first glance that I’m contradicting my do-nothing stance above; but consider that in the above I was talking about physical action, the way one spends one’s bodily energy in time and space; but here I’m talking about the mind, about thot, about wondering & brainstorming. I am all for daydreaming & tossing around ideas about the world. I think that’s how a lot of the best notions pop into existence. Like the custom of using a light bulb to signify that an idea has been born in someone’s mind: that’s a really clever concept, which was invented by Evil Newton the Demiurge when he was leaning and loafing at his ease beneath an electric tree one night. A light bulb fell from the branch above him, knocked on his noggin, and instantly his head became like the head of a donkey. And it never changed back.
But as for “grasping after life as much as you can because of its sweet sadness” I say that you need not GRASP after life: life is right here within you. And altho there is sadness, and sometimes the sadness is sweet, not ALL sadness is sweet, like when that girl who I loved in grade-school broke my heart; no, some sadness is bitter indeed, like when Job met God. But no sadness should recommend any product, not even life. I prefer happiness to sadness; and the best kind of happiness is that which has no apparent cause: no reason at all. “You know then that it is not the reason / That makes us happy or unhappy,” as Wallace Stevens always sez, in my favorite poem from him (“Of Mere Being”). For if you are able to find what causes your happiness, you will become enthralled to this bestower of blessing, and your desire shall be to it, and it shall rule over thee. To be happy is to be lucky; and one wouldn’t expect to be able to discover and harness the Source of All Good Luck. (At least I myself wouldn’t — but I wouldn’t put it past you.)
And as for the other reason given to grasp after life, “because you would be dead some day,” I say: this is partly relatable, but it’s mostly weak, so, again, it’s rather something to be ashamed of than to advise as a course to follow. Because life is unstoppable: the great secret is that death is merely a change-in-life, a rearrangement of eternal constituents; so, to cling to life as if it’s precious is as absurd as a wealthy miser hugging a penny that he found in the dirt. (This fellow has mountains of cash heaped up in his mansion: what’s one coin more?) Let us love life because it is fathomless and exuberant, not because the timer is running out. We keep flipping the hourglass anyway: you’re just being duped by the scary theme on the soundtrack during transition scenes. Again, in “Song of Myself” we’re reminded that
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
*
So that’s that, for that part. Now I’ll share what I consider to be the best passage that I’ve stumbled upon yet in this book: I just wanna prove that I can be gracious and offer a compliment without having even to qualify it. I’m a little beyond halfway thru the novel, and this is my favorite part so far. (It’s from chapter 16.) I simply admire it, so I have nothing to add. I’ll give Jack the last word:
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