Public Reading

I carry books with me when I leave the apartment. I like to read during the lulls when I am alone and about in the world.

Books help when I feel I am not getting the attention I want. I can always open a book as a defense against the slight.

The only requirement I have with reading a book in public is that the book must be interesting enough to drown out the voices.

proof

I am reading the playscript for proof. I wish I had written it.

For me there is writing I love, and even rarer those things I wish I had written, or felt I could have written. It is like sharing some unseen affinity with the author.

These reading moments haunt me as if a ghost or spirit had entered my home and sits looking at me with my head bent into a book.

Personal Cards

I have been thinking about printing some personal cards I can hand out to people in casual situations. I might put this on it.

Lynn at State Street

A gentleman having easy going fun while doing his own thing in his own time.

The gentleman part isn’t always true, but I try—I really do try.

Don't Tell a Soul

I have this strong desire to reveal the most intimate parts of my life today. I probably should stay away from the Internet.

Stress produces that feeling in me. When things are going well then turn bad that brings it on also.

I plan on reading and meditating on the meaning of life for the rest of the day—an extreme form of hedonism producing guilt I cannot explain or fathom on this winter day.

The Unveiling

Many people write and ask what do you look like State Street.

Well, that’s me in the picture.

I told you I was custom made from head to toe.

Postcards from Lynn

I wonder what it would be like to make blog entries no longer than could be typed onto a 4” x 6” postcard. Would I say less or would it force me to say more with fewer words?

Maybe, my blog should be postcards from Lynn—something you could read quickly then put away with little fuss or bother.

I might even attach a photo taken with my new camera.

This it; I’m out of room.

The Shattered Globe Theatre Does It Again

Following their nationally acclaimed production of Come Back, Little Sheba, Chicago’s Shattered Globe Theatre has produced another gem, Arthur Miller’s The Price.

The Price is a heartbreaking story of two brothers who try to reconcile their long estranged relationship after the death of their father. The Shattered Globe ensemble of Don Blair, Maury Cooper, Doug McDade, and Linda Reiter deliver brilliantly the play’s explosive emotional intensity. The intensity is so strong that I suggest you see it with a friend, for you will need to sit for a while after the play sipping the beverage of your choice so you can properly unwind.

In a city noted for good theatre, the Shattered Globe has risen to a place where it is one of the best. Check it out.

Blog Evolution

Curtis at Empty Rhetoric, a special blogging friend, has some interesting thoughts about how blogs evolve over time, which leads me to the following meditation.

It seems as though my blog has turned more personal than I ever expected. I do not know if this comes from some emotional change or if I have merely disengaged somewhat from things in which I am interested.

If my blog is personal, it is rather bland stuff. I doubt if you can identify me as I really am from my writing even though it would be very easy for you to find my doorstep. That leads to identity issues. I would like to learn to write well enough that you could hear a distinctive voice. I’ll keep trying. However,

You are who you think you ain’t.

From a Los Angeles used car commercial in the late Sixties

I am convinced of the truth of the proposition. I do not know why I remembered it after more than 35 years.

At any rate, I know I like talking to you, Dear Reader

Kiss me once, kiss me twice, come on, Pretty Baby, kiss me deadly.

Lita Ford, Kiss Me Deadly

Friday Night Hanging Out

Friday night was a fun evening. A friend asked me to hang out with her at Blue Chicago for a while. We listened to some blues and I even got her out on the dance floor a few times. I have had a crush on her since I first met her—everybody does—so it was fun doing something with her when we were not in a crowd of friends screaming for her attention.

Given fun Monday, that makes two unexpected pleasures in one week. If there is something better than hanging out with an attractive woman you really like, I don’t know what it is. I definitely need to do it more often.

You would think I would finally learn that lesson rather than being such geezer.

Friday Romance Rapping

I received a postcard from an ex-girlfriend this past week. We broke up over six years ago, yet I still think of her often and fondly. We occasionally exchange cards and letters. I send her flowers and candy on her birthday.

I spent many of the best days of my life with her. If she ever wanted to get back together, I would try. That’s not going to happen, yet it does not matter at this stage, for I will never forget her nor deny just how good it feels when I receive one of her wonderful postcards and I am reminded she thinks of me still.

Friday Oral Sex Rapping

Oral sex is a ruthlessly efficient way to give someone the requisite pleasure. Is there anyone who does not like having oral sex performed on them? As for myself, I like performing oral sex on women. I know a few women who I have given a lifetime guarantee; I will go down on them anytime.

Let’s say you pick someone up and spend a little time with them. After oral sex, you can just give the person a kiss and hug, walk out the door, and add the person to your list. Yes, it is ruthlessly efficient.

Puppy

The weather in Chicago has reached the thirties F. The change is so nice it almost seems like summer. But that is not what I want to talk about.

I bought a new digital camera yesterday. It was an impulse purchase, but I have to tell you I have already had a lot of fun with it. Sometimes, there is nothing better than treating myself to a new toy. I feel like a puppy that has just had his ears scratched.

Tuesday Came and Went

Dear Diary,

Tuesday was a very good writing day. In fact, I hit the mother lode. I wrote from early morning until far into the night.

Damn, it felt good.

Later,

Lynn

Monday Came and Went

So anyway Monday came. I spent part of the day hanging out with this attractive woman from out of town whom I met recently. The cold spell broke yesterday. Even while walking into a strong wind along the lake we still felt comfortable, or maybe she made it feel warmer than it actually was.

That is who I was and that is what I did during the most memorable part of Monday. I liked it.

Breaking the Spell

Sunday morning. The city is asleep. I stare out the window off to the east, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, drift, and dream. I don’t try to write any of it down. I don’t want to spoil it.

I truly wonder what the meaning of life is. I used to think that was a meaningless question. Now, I see it is just another difficult question, nearly impossible to answer.

The better question with no easy answer is what I shall do on Monday. What shall I be and do beyond just trying to get along one more day?

The sky lightens. I feel a chill. The moment is gone, for I have broken the spell by writing about it.

Valentine's Day Reprise

When you do not have girlfriend, Valentine’s Day is easy to blow off. This is the first year I have ever felt lonely on it. However, I gave a Valentine’s card to a woman I have a crush on. She liked it, and I liked it that she liked it, so things turned out well.

Ode to Winter

Cold cobalt February sky, do you know just how much I loathe you?

Uneasy Rider

Wittgenstein on being a cowboy.

I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse’s good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.

From Culture and Value, 36e, 1939-1940

I’ll drink a toast to that.

Kiss Me Deadly

A tune buzzing in my ear.

Kiss once, kiss me twice, come on pretty baby, kiss me deadly.

From some Lita Ford song.

Fresh Air

There seems to be a credibility gap with the Bush Administration’s presentation of evidence claiming Iran is supplying weapons to militias in the Iraq sectarian and civil war. Well you can buy weapons from anyone. That’s global capitalism.

Goody for the credibility gap: many people should take their heads out of their asses and breathe a little fresh air.

Wittgenstein on Dogma

Sometimes it is more important to describe what it feels like rather than specify exactly what it is.

The effect of making men think in accordance with dogmas, perhaps in the form of certain graphic propositions, will be very peculiar: I am not thinking of these dogmas as determining men’s opinions but rather as completely controlling the expression of all opinions. People will live under an absolute, palpable tyranny, though without being able to say they are not free. I think the Catholic Church does something like this. For dogma is expressed in the form of an assertion, and is unshakable, but at the same time any practical opinion can be made to harmonize with it; admittedly more easily in some cases than in others. It is not a wall setting limits to what can be believed, but more like a brake which, however, practically serves the same purpose; it’s almost as though someone were to attach a weight to your foot to restrict your freedom of movement. This is how dogma becomes irrefutable and beyond the reach of attack.

From Culture and Value, 28e

Aloof and Eluding

I seldom remember dreams if I have them at all. However, last night I had a succession of erotic dreams. They were filled with women I do not recollect ever meeting.

In one dream, I was at a party. A car drove up and a woman stepped out from the passenger side. Her hair was red, her skin pale, and her body thin. She wore a blue dress with shoulder straps and the dress shimmered in the sunlight.

I walked up to her and kissed her lightly on the lips. Her lips were so soft I felt that if I pressed them any harder they would melt. When I touched her delicate arms, I was afraid I would break them.

She smiled at me through a mouth full of braces. We gently kissed again. Then we went inside.

The party was filled with women I found attractive. Each time I spied one I walked up to her and kissed her.

There was one woman though with whom I was smitten. She was aloofly sitting by a window with a friend. I found her the most attractive even though I cannot say why except she exuded sexuality. I woke just when I was about to approach her.

In a night filled with dream women, she is the one that preys upon my mind.

Certain Things: Philosophy and Sex

This is already another day of reading. For someone like me, who is not required to read professionally, reading is a self-indulgent activity. It has always been that way.

However, if I were to say, I will not indulge myself, it would be like saying, I will never have sex again. I am not ready.

I am reading Wittgenstein’s On Certainty today. The question of certainty has haunted me for several years. My opinions about many things have changed radically during that time; I search for justification.

I am struggling to prevent Wittgenstein from becoming a philosophical idol just as I am struggling to prevent a woman I know from becoming a sexual idol. Maybe, those are not proper struggles—or maybe they are foolish struggles. One needs to acquiesce at times especially when the struggle causes too much tension.

I grow old and fool myself into thinking I will quit some pursuits. I really have to stop doing that. One should read philosophy and screw for as long as one can.

I wonder if I have arrived at some certain things.

The Time of Forgetting

Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night was lying on the couch when I got to suburbia. I picked it up and started reading it again, and quickly became absorbed.

Mailer relates his experience in the October 1967 peace march on the Pentagon. At the very least, it is an interesting account of a celebrity writer arrested for crossing Military Police lines at the Pentagon. I was in training to go to Vietnam at the time, so the march did not make an impact on me. My mind was elsewhere.

When I compare Vietnam to the Iraq Occupation, some things feel the same: the frustration over the waste and lives lost for instance. You would think people would still remember after forty years, yet they make the same mistakes again.

What good is any philosophy when memory fails? All that is left is tragedy.

The Harrison Method

Will Blythe gives Jim Harrison’s method for mending a broken heart.

In a 1971 “false memoir” called “Wolf,” written while Harrison was convalescing from a fall off a cliff, he suggested curing heartbreak by broiling a two- to three-pound porterhouse, eating it with your hands, followed by a hot bath in which you consume the best bourbon you can buy until the bottle is empty. Then sleep for a day. Ladies and gentlemen, this works.

If my heart is ever broken again, I will try it.

Brutal

I woke at four in the morning and could not get back to sleep: simply brutal. Oh well, it is off to suburbia, no matter what.

Hit and run avoided

Let me apologize for this post in advance, but I think the subject at hand has something to do with my writer’s block, and the only way to break writer's block is to write something for the public to read.

I have had this crush on a woman for several years. I finally asked her out on a date this week and she agreed. I regretted having done it shortly after I did it. One, she is very nice. Two, we are good friends, and I am trying to ruin a nice casual friendship by trying to get into her pants. Three, she deserves to go out with somebody much better than me.

The only excuse I can give is that I am going through one of my hit and run periods. I cannot control it.

The good thing is that tonight she told me were going out as friends only. Damn, she is a wonderful woman. Now, all the pressure is off, and she was the voice of reason, which is good, because I am never the voice of reason.

Now, I can concentrate on hit and run once again.

Who knows? Maybe, I will feel like writing again now that I am not absorbed in a date.

I know what you are thinking. State Street, you are so stupid for a man your age. I will not argue with you. Let us not forget that I am a total piece of shit too.

Oh well, I am off to suburbia tomorrow where it is quiet and I will not cause too much damage.

Well Chilled

The cold weather during the past week has me chilled to the bone. Even blogging seems frozen solid.

Now that I think of it, the weather is a poor excuse for not writing. Some days, any excuse will do.

Pulling It Hard

I have not read the book, but here is the opening of Michiko Kakutani’s review of Dinesh D’Souza’s new book, The Enemy at Home.

With this book, Dinesh D’Souza, the Rishwain research scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has officially become the Ann Coulter of the think tank set.

His new book, “The Enemy at Home,” is filled with willfully incendiary — and preposterous — assertions that “the cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11”; that the left is “secretly allied” with the movement that Osama bin Laden and Islamic radicals represent “to undermine the Bush administration and American foreign policy”; and that “the left wants America to be a shining beacon of global depravity, a kind of Gomorrah on a Hill.”

Ah, finger fuck, Dinesh. I’m a Redneck just like you. Don’t be putting 9/11 on my back.

I can pull my own pisser without your help.

The Shadow Cast by the Bears and Winter

The Bears lost the Super Bowl; and winter has arrived in Chicago. That casts a shadow across the day.

However, spring training baseball is about to start. The shadows come and go, and everything tends to even out.

If it did not, where would we all be?

Cold Cobalt Day

I bought a small anthology of poetry called The Hell with Love: poems to mend a broken heart, edited by Mary D. Esselman and Elizabeth Ash Velez, when I did indeed have a broken heart. Now, many years later, my heart mended, I still enjoy reading the many gems in it. (By the way, poetry cannot mend a broken heart. Only time can mend it, and even time may be powerless to do it. The fault is not poetry's; the heart is to blame.)

However, back to the splendid anthology of which I have been speaking, for it contains poems such as this one.

Oh, When I Was in Love with You

Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well I did behave.

And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they’ll say that I
Am quite myself again.

A. E. Houseman

For some reason, which I cannot discern, the anthology and poem seem perfect for this cold cobalt day.

Three pictures

I have three pictures. One has everything drawn clearly in it.

The second has nothing at all. I call it oblivion.

Someone drew the third one hazy, its objects difficult to distinguish, yet I you can walk into it, bumble around, bump into something sharp, and stab myself in the heart.

Ground Hog's Day

Grim world climate and Iraq intelligence reports make for a somber Ground Hound’s Day even though I understand from CNN that the ground hogs predict an early spring.

I hope you had a happy Ground Hog’s Day anyway. My favorite day of the winter is the last one, but Ground Hog’s Day is second. I think it is because my first grade art teacher told me I had drawn a good ground hog. She was such a pretty liar.

More decisions

Beer and whiskey nights. Time for a change.

I mean it this time.

Of course, there is always tomorrow and time to change my mind.

Double Clutching

I have let my hair grow for over a year. I am at that point where I must make the big decision on whether to let it grow longer so I can put it in a decent ponytail, or get it cut.

You would think a man my age would not be agonizing and double clutching over a decision like that.

Geometry, Colors, and Certainty

I finally bought Geometer’s Sketchpad. It is so cool.

I know what you are thinking. Lynn, everyone who studies geometry has Sketchpad. OK, I finally have it, so get off my case.

However, that is not what I really want to talk about. Actually, I forgot what I really want to talk about.

I think I know this for certain though. Not all that glitters is gold; and not all things brown are shit. So things tend to even out.

Some silly questions about Wittgenstein's Tractatus

Is Wittgenstein’s Tractatus really a philosophical treatise like other philosophical works of the great philosophers? Or is it notes cobbled together from his journals like his other published works—a document of a mind on fire and precursor of what was to come in his later writing? And what if his journals had been nothing but a blog? Would anybody care?

I wrote thousands of words yesterday just to arrive at those silly questions.

First light; Fair share

February 1. First light whispers cold gray sky.

I wish it was Valentine’s Day and I had a lover so I could give her flowers and candy and a card that tells her just how much I love her.

Oh well, I had more than my fair share of chances. The fault is all my own.