Friday 9/4/20
I'm going to be working very hard for the next four days, and will duck in here periodically to mix up the routine. A grind. This morning I have begun a short story, realized there is something in "Fitty" I may need to address--regarding the timing of an event; that is, how long it takes something to occur--as well as listened to the Beach Boys' Friends, plus a podcast on Margaret Oliphant's "The Open Door," and begun copying and pasting the contents of this journal into a Word document.
I was to have a new webmaster, who was recommended by the old one as a close friend of hers. She had the access info to this site--since changed--and phoned me, talked to me, appeared perfectly professional and smart, and then ghosted me.
I'd been told there was a way to make a Word copy of the blog contents in an easier fashion, but I don't know what that is, so I'm doing it this way. There are almost 800 entries at this point. They cover thirty-nine pages of website, as one can see, and this morning I did the first full page of them, with the first entry being June 18, 2018. I need to find a new webmaster, so that is on the to-do list now as well.
As I looked over--briefly--those early entries, I thought again how if this was my life's work, this journal alone, it'd be enough. Pepys' diaries were enough for him, for instance. But as a self-contained record, and a record--really of so many things--as a work of art, there isn't anything like these pages. Had I told someone that all I did for twenty-six months was write this one work, it would seem, I think, as if I worked at it constantly. How many pieces, essays, op-eds, have their been in that time? The first novel. 250 short stories. I'll keep trying to make headway in the copying-and-pasting. I'd like to be done with all of it in a week or two.
On a note of some levity, here are a couple dispatches from the world of dating. I don't go on dates. I don't meet anyone with whom I think, "here could be something." I used to--there'd be such a person maybe once a year, who stood out enough, who was smarter, who wrote well, but I don't meet people like that anymore. I wish I hadn't met those I previously met--they were not well people. I was engaged to one. The Oberlin violinist, and as someone remarked to me the other day, she was as crazy in her way--and will always be a fundamentally broken person--as Molly was in hers, though for commitment to planned and precise evil, I think Molly is without peer. I would even say that if Molly were to think about what she did, she'd completely come apart. This other person suggested to me that she exists in a state of complete come-apartness and life is but a series of motions that are gone through. I would think--no, I know--that it's impossible to live with yourself with the knowledge that you did that. You couldn't live a life after. You'd have to find a way to repress something, or block out a portion of your brain, or do everything you could to believe a narrative entirely comprised of lies, of an alternate reality, just so you could get out of bed each day. I do know this, for what it's worth right now. Not a lot, but I know it to be true.
One reason why I don't meet that kind of person anymore is because there are even less of them. The clone army has taken over. Indoctrination among people is now almost uniform. That person (in this case, that person who is a female aged early twenties to mid-forties, who reads, who has some orientation to art, who knows "fancy" words and doesn't send acronyms and smiley faces) who might have been a somewhat independent thinker five years ago is now about the virtue signal, the parroting of platitudes, and they're more depressed, more reliant on self-medication, more lost, more broken, more insecure. I'm not going to pretend along with you, I'm not going to enable you. I'll help you, but I won't enable you. People are also more conservative. There are very few romantics. There are very few people who think in terms of "why not?" and possibility and taking a chance and throwing the ball down the field and risking a little rejection or heart soreness. Everything is roboticized. People don't want to reveal too much, to let their feelings be shown. The pose must not be interrupted. Consequently, the person never comes out. I don't want something just to have something. I want a great person who is not like anyone else who thinks and grows and has courage and a sense of wonder and an open mind and an open heart. I want someone who feels like they are starting out, who always feels like they are starting out, even as they do much, and as they learn, and as they evolve. That's the person for me. And, obviously, fit and hot, baby.
Couple examples here of pretty much as well as these things go. This is about the best it gets. One woman sent me this:
"Haha too funny
"I don’t use any of the words you use so we may not be compatible. I may have to break out the dictionary for you. You do make me laugh tho. That’s a good thing."
There was one of those smiley face things in there. Obviously that's not going to work. Also, a regular smoker, kind of out of shape, and pretty sure we wouldn't be running up and down stairs together. But personable and honest, and it's nice to see that. But there's clearly nothing there for me.
A doctor sent me this (I don't know what the first woman did):
"You’re extraordinarily intelligent. You’re that rare individual on the site that uses the correct form of your/you’re. 99% of the accounts could be deleted on that criteria alone. Combine that with the words 'chill' and 'laid back' and the server would crash."
She's correct--you rarely find someone who does know the difference between those words. No one knows the difference between "then" and "than," it seems. We covered "outgoing" yesterday.
This is Jacques-Louis David's 1817 painting, Cupid and Psyche. I don't know what's going on with that look on his face. In Musings with Franklin, the pervy guy from the suburbs who dresses up as Ben Franklin writes a song--for he fancies himself a balladeer--called "There's No 'I' in Sodomy (But There are Two Os)" and now I'm sort of hearing it in my head, even if it doesn't exist. Perhaps it's a prog-country fusion. But with a lute.
