Personal Slogans Of The Season

Publish the notes. Show 'em how to care. I'm studying studying. Under the paperwork radar. Trust the code.

I'll have mentioned "it almost makes you glad to be alive"... and today a stranger pointed out a rainbow to me and I tried out a variant along the lines of "it's like just for a second you can believe God wants us to be happy" on her and she took it smiling. The quote's probably not quite right. Because not only am I "not even acquainted with my own desires" but I can't even remember my own doggone words. Which reminds me.

That second quote's from a line of Dylan's. At first I thought it was just the turn of a phrase (to the effect of "I can't think straight"... or, more memorably, "they've got their hooks in him so deep he doesn't know which end's up" [On The Waterfront (from memory at second hand; an ex of mine was impressed with "hooks" here—the characters worked with big hooks—and mentioned it to me; I find it worth reporting now because Dylan swiped a line from the same picture ["for the love of a lousy buck"])]). But no. I say it all the time now and indeed it's sort of taken on some almost mystical Deep Truth feeling.

I'm not even acquainted with my own desires. Like suppose I'm getting real impatient working with a tutee: that feels like it's because of things going on between us in working on whatever our math problem is... but I've recently convinced myself on at least a few occasions that it's "really" because it's been way too long since I had anything to eat. (Oh. So this "hunger" you speak of feels like everybody's being deliberately obtuse. Good to know.)

Now, that kind of thing has got to be pretty common, and might even serve as sort of a counterexample: you're just as aware as the next guy and becoming more aware all the time, there, Vlorbik... stop being so paranoid.

But then there's this.

I told Ma recently "I don't know why I feel like I have to do everything the hard way... I just do"... and a little later had worked out enough of a theory to've told Madonn' that

"I seem to've decided never to believe anything that 'everybody' says: I refuse to learn from anybody else's mistakes... I have to act everything out for myself." So we're evidently looking at something like classical freudian neurosis (which of course is still well within the range of the normal but begins to suggest that there may at last be some point... "where id was, there will ego be" and all).

It turns out this is a far bigger can of worms than I can chew at this point... I've got several more paragraphs but they now appear to be too unformed even for me... this is a deep vein.

So. Six AM. The coffeehouse is open. Free WiFi. Out the door, with joy in my heart, to go meet my beloved students once again (or close up the walls with our english dead)... and my brandnew favorite personal slogan: "let's go publish something!".