(They're going to find me! They're going to find me!)
(Someone please help!)
20070227
Some of you are probably wondering where I am.
Some of you may also be wondering if this will be at all funny, if I will at all display here any of the wit and humor you have come to expect from me, if, indeed, I will use this exact forum to gripe and kvetch about this fucking ridiculous job I've happened upon, this job for which I haven't yet technically been paid, this job that, as some of you already know too well, offers much about which to gripe. Which is fine. Which you should be. The last thing any of us needs being another meta-whimsical blowhard speaking speciously of self-deception in his opening post. The last thing any one of us needs.
I am in Waco, of course, the smoke having just cleared a fortnight ago. Wokka. On the way in, though, I did check Wikipedia to see if W. was governor at that time, wondering first to myself then aloud to Mike whether he maybe should have gotten a little Republican heat for this kind of debacle under that kind of reign. Alas, the gentleman from Connecticut (whose carpeted ranch is of course twenty miles thataway) was not yet in a position of responsibility. Although of course as I write that last phrase....
So I am in Waco presently, at another RV resort/highway sound vista along I-35, I think it is. The cars go whizzing by. Ibid the trucks. All night long. Last night in Austin--pretty much the exact same 100-yard distance from the highway but about 150 miles south of here--I sat outside for several moments listening to the cars, comparing it all to Williamstown, wondering why it wasn't beautiful. Because it could be. And there's no reason why mountains and foliage and summer fog should have a monopoly on the 'beautiful', or the 'sublime'.
So I am in Waco presently. Baylor University tomorrow, another Christian university where the students are almost certain to be more earnest than the snark machines that seem, on certain campuses, to overrun the sidewalks and breezeways. For all their future work against just about everything I believe in at least I can be thankful to them for this. A little polite banter going, at least from 11 until 4 tomorrow, a long way.
I am in Waco, of course, the smoke having just cleared a fortnight ago. Wokka. On the way in, though, I did check Wikipedia to see if W. was governor at that time, wondering first to myself then aloud to Mike whether he maybe should have gotten a little Republican heat for this kind of debacle under that kind of reign. Alas, the gentleman from Connecticut (whose carpeted ranch is of course twenty miles thataway) was not yet in a position of responsibility. Although of course as I write that last phrase....
So I am in Waco presently, at another RV resort/highway sound vista along I-35, I think it is. The cars go whizzing by. Ibid the trucks. All night long. Last night in Austin--pretty much the exact same 100-yard distance from the highway but about 150 miles south of here--I sat outside for several moments listening to the cars, comparing it all to Williamstown, wondering why it wasn't beautiful. Because it could be. And there's no reason why mountains and foliage and summer fog should have a monopoly on the 'beautiful', or the 'sublime'.
So I am in Waco presently. Baylor University tomorrow, another Christian university where the students are almost certain to be more earnest than the snark machines that seem, on certain campuses, to overrun the sidewalks and breezeways. For all their future work against just about everything I believe in at least I can be thankful to them for this. A little polite banter going, at least from 11 until 4 tomorrow, a long way.
It seems appropriate, just now.
and another thing Didion wrote.
I'll get this out of the way first: I love her for the well-lit back alley. If for no other thing that she has ever written, if she never writes again--for the well-lit back alley I am thankful. Behind our restaurants, behind our kitchens, just outside the back doors of our theaters, we step out for some peace and in our hope to get away and as soon as we open the door there is always all that light.
But: I don't find this. Maybe I am particularly good at this, maybe I am, for all my introspective bluster, particularly obtuse when it comes to seeing myself, maybe I have become too good at playing the ostrich, maybe I am too fearful and cannot look. I'm not sure I see the difference, or, if seen, I'm not sure it matters to me. The point remains: I don't find self-deception very hard at all. I see the world the way I want to see it, and unless someone hits me somewhere on my body and/or yells in my ear, I will go on seeing it that way. And even after these events. Someone I refuse to stop being in love with is about to send me a letter, will messenger it to me later this week while she is in the very same Texas city I will be in later this week because, I can only presume, she does not want to see me, this is all about to happen, and yet. And yet.
I don't find self-deception very hard at all, to be honest. To be perfectly honest. I see the world the way I want to see it because it is the only way that I possibly can. And besides, which way would I see it if I weren't to self-deceive? Which point of view out there fails this test? Or passes it, however you want to look at it. It being, after all, up to you....
And another thing she wrote.
Because it is funny, every time I look in the mirror I see the same person I've seen for over fifteen years. This being how it seems to me.
Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself. (Slouching Towards Bethlehem)
I'll get this out of the way first: I love her for the well-lit back alley. If for no other thing that she has ever written, if she never writes again--for the well-lit back alley I am thankful. Behind our restaurants, behind our kitchens, just outside the back doors of our theaters, we step out for some peace and in our hope to get away and as soon as we open the door there is always all that light.
But: I don't find this. Maybe I am particularly good at this, maybe I am, for all my introspective bluster, particularly obtuse when it comes to seeing myself, maybe I have become too good at playing the ostrich, maybe I am too fearful and cannot look. I'm not sure I see the difference, or, if seen, I'm not sure it matters to me. The point remains: I don't find self-deception very hard at all. I see the world the way I want to see it, and unless someone hits me somewhere on my body and/or yells in my ear, I will go on seeing it that way. And even after these events. Someone I refuse to stop being in love with is about to send me a letter, will messenger it to me later this week while she is in the very same Texas city I will be in later this week because, I can only presume, she does not want to see me, this is all about to happen, and yet. And yet.
I don't find self-deception very hard at all, to be honest. To be perfectly honest. I see the world the way I want to see it because it is the only way that I possibly can. And besides, which way would I see it if I weren't to self-deceive? Which point of view out there fails this test? Or passes it, however you want to look at it. It being, after all, up to you....
And another thing she wrote.
I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be...
Because it is funny, every time I look in the mirror I see the same person I've seen for over fifteen years. This being how it seems to me.
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