An opinion.
I used to laugh quietly and loudly at Nietzsche. He just seemed so goofy, staring intently at nothing and writing passionately about irrational things.
But then, somewhere along the path between February and April, I changed my mind. And Nietzsche began to offer new ways of approaching life, of approaching living. He challenged and changed some of my view and strengthened others. And now I look at him fondly and laugh, at my innocence and my growing and my transforming.

Toes
I’ve never much liked my toes – I notice them only when I absolutely have to. A few weeks ago I dropped a fifty-odd pound stone bench on my big toe, and perhaps broke it. There’s still pain when I walk or stand for too long. And so I have to notice, and I develop blisters on unfamiliar parts of my foot as I try to shift weight off the big toe.

Asinine
I unset my alarm while packing and missed my last final. Whoops.

Pencils and pens, pencils and pens
For all the expediency of the computer, there’s something about pencils that I just can’t let go of. Maybe it’s the smoothness – you can’t really run your fingers lovingly, sexually, along a keyboard. And if you could, I wouldn’t want to see it. Keyboards don’t smell fresh and smoky whenever you sharpen them, they don’t leave indentations in your index finger and thumb there and there, which hurt but are symbols of pride in work hard done. Keyboards don’t chip and splinter when you get too intense about the work, they don’t shatter and remind you that you’re not engraving. Keyboards just sit on the desk.

Fictionalize a conversation, for real this time, and have it.-How long will it be until he gets here?
-I don’t know, when did we call him?
-Maybe like five minutes ago.
-Okay.
-People are looking at us funny.
-No, they’re not.
-Yeah – didn’t you see that car that just went by?
-no, they were looking at something else. They definitely were.
-If you say so.
-I do. It’s not like we stand out a lot or anything.
-Ha! At least it’s daylight out.
-Yeah.
Not that it matters. I’m sure he’ll be here soon, anyway. Don’t worry about it.
-I’m not.
-Good.
-I’m not.
-There’s really nothing to worry about at all.

You’re haunting me.
A ghost is a memory half remembered, half forgotten. It drifts in and out through the windows, whether they have glass or not. You might mistake it for a curtain if you were careless. But other times, you’ll see it out of the corner of your eye and jump, shivering, then go back to shuffling the papers on your desk a minute and a half later. Ghosts waver in and out of focus like dust in the sunbeams.

What is your ideal room?
Somewhere where I can study for my goddamn finals because I haven’t even started yet and the clock is moving faster than it ever should, ever ever ever.

Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes. –Ovid, Metamorphoses, VIII, 188
They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.
Change always comes bearing gifts.
It's the most unhappy people who most fear change.
Change or die.
* * * * *
You might say I’m a fan of change. But how much can anyone actually want change? Any time you become attached to something, you don’t want it to change. Any time you start to enjoy a moment, a situation, you secretly deny to yourself its inevitable malleability. Is there a way to have both at once – to enjoy the moment and desire change? I’m getting much more philosophical than I want to. The point is, I quite like Daedalus and I definitely love that quote. Daedalus has a bit of the trickster motif in him and a bit of the wiseman archetype. And he factors into a number of Greek myths in various enjoyable ways. Ultimately, though, he’s most known for changing – for evolving – when he creates wings for himself and takes to the heavens. His son isn’t quite as wise or as anything as Daedalus, which is a shame. But Daedalus changes to save his life. And so creates a new one.
* * * * *
Confucius, Price Pritchett, Mignon McLaughlin and Eldridge Cleaver supplied the quotes at the beginning of the post. And the topic is of course Ovid, but it was chosen because James Joyce uses it to begin A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Not quite sure how to do this, given what I have to follow. Hmmm...
“Hi, how are you?”
O gods...are you sure you want to ask that? Really? I ask because last night was rather gothic.
Okay.
So I was dragged along to that blind date, remember? And I would have of course been so much happier sitting around the house reading Kant or something. But no, no, I had to go and meet this girl at some fancy restaurant. At least I figured I wouldn’t have to pay for her.
And good thing, because she walks in and immediately I wanted to evaporate. There are people who are bearable and people you just want to shoot, right? She was one of the shoot-worthy ones. Why? Well, first of all, her hair was standing up like Glenn Close in that one Disney movie. But that wasn’t the worst of it. I mean, I can look past something physical like that, even though she had a very strong “I’m trying too hard” aura to her. Which was kinda sad, but maybe she’d had an off day or something. I was a bit amused, that’s all. Made some sort of sarcastic comment and she glared at me and I thought, My, we’re off to a good start, aren’t we.
But anyway, about the worst of it. So we sit down, and she proceeds to prove to everyone that she basically has no brain. So I’m sitting there, wishing I were asleep or in possession of a small handgun, while she rambles on and on – I swear I don’t know how she managed to eat, since the only time I saw her mouth open she was talking. She kept looking at me expectantly, as if she expected me to say something, but I was just looking at her inscrutably and not giving her the satisfaction. So then finally, I think to myself, Why not? And I made some little comment – a bon mot of sorts – and she practically killed herself laughing. No, I’m quite serious. She choked on some food – so I guess she was eating after all, ha ha – and nearly asphyxiated herself.
We got out of there as soon after as was possible, believe me. I had to drive her home, which was rather uncomfortably silent, but more so on her part – I think she was impressed by the car, no surprise – and she lived mercifully nearby. I even walked her to her door, even though I would rather have been exposed to a year’s worth of Irish parades.
So yes, it was quite a night. Thankfully, though, she didn’t ask for my number.

Pet Names
Lucy’s name comes from the main character of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, who has aged much more gracefully than the rather clumsy stories she inhabits. There may be other literary predicates to her existence, but none spring to mind. The authors of both Anne of Green Gables and the Green Knowe books were both named Lucy, but to be honest I’m not sure they were a part of it. The latter is a definite possibility, though.
Our only reservation in naming her was that someone might think she was named after Lucille Ball. No, no, never.
* * * * *
Pet names bother me. Unless they’re extremely noncommittal ones, which I think are just silly and probably wouldn’t say. But anything more specific just perturbs me. It seems to say, “this, this, is how I characterize you, and by extension our relationship.” How shallow.
* * * * *
And how soapbox-esque of me.

Life: An anti-cliché?
Life is one of those wonderful contradictions that form reality. It’s been done so very many times, with quite similar results. Yet you and I look at our lives as if we have something entirely new and astounding to offer – as if our approaches are actually novel and worthwhile. We have to.
We have no mechanism for sustaining worthlessness. And to most of us, a lack of newness is a lack of purpose, and a lack of purpose is a lack of worth.
So I guess that’s the challenge. To find purpose where none exists.

The Last Episode of “Friends”
The Arts section of the newspaper ran a feature this past week on the “next ‘Friends.’” I think that neatly sums up the world of television and entertainment. Who will miss “Friends” in five, ten years? It’s been replaced. It was created as disposable entertainment, and it’s filled that role marvelously – lasting a bit longer than expected, perhaps, but ultimately disappearing from the screen. It now exists only in reruns and DVDs. Does it, has it ever existed elsewhere? If television was ever other than an alien landscape, I haven’t seen it.

Emptiness breeds contempt.
I don’t agree with this. And I don’t really know what I was thinking when I wrote it. Emptiness breeds emptiness breeds emptiness, until there’s nothing inside the nothing.
I have no idea what that means, and I have a feeling this topic is just going to lead to gothic poetry if I give it too much thought. So in the interests of sparing my handful of Faithful Readers, I’m going to stop now.
* * * * *
It’s all beginning/To feeling like it’s ending
I have a circle of silver on my desk. It’s about the size of a quarter and it’s completely blank. Grant Morrison’s dealt with this: a blank insignia that symbolizes invisibility. It also stands for possibility, and really when you’ve got a blank emblem it can stand for just about anything, can’t it? So this empty insignia stands for everything. For possibility of everything. I think I may use it as a charm, and I have no idea where it came from.

It was marvelous out today: an afternoon where the soundtrack is the buzz of a one-propeller plane and it’s impossible to be in a hurry for anything at all. The quad’s so interesting when it’s warm – it’s easy to forget that beyond its self-containment, there’s so much more of the university. It seems like an ecosystem of its own, enclosing walking, sleeping, studying, staring, basking people. And it’s going to be a wonderful night for hookah.
* * * * *
JUG: Justice Under God
It seems to me that the only true justice is justice under a god. If god knows everything, then, well, god is the only thing qualified to judge what’s just. We humans can’t compete. But does god know everything? How can we tell? I really don’t see any reason to trust god...especially considering the backwards, tricky world god created. Anything that makes water that both drowns and sustains or atoms that can’t make up their minds whether to split or fuse really doesn’t seem to me to be very straightforward. And how can something not straightforward be just? Justice needs to be straightforward, to see the blacks and whites when others would perceive only grays. In conclusion, don’t trust god to be just. And never take wooden nickels.
I never got a JUG when I was at Marist. I don’t intend to now that I’m out of Marist, either.

The revised edition had a page filled with assorted punctuation marks and read: yoo mey salt nd peper as yoo plees.
I waus to make my Enemys grin in time Lik A Cat over a hot puding and goue Away and hang there heads Doun Like a Dogg ben After sheep gilty stop see I am Afrade I Rite toue hash my peopel Complane of backker spittel maks work to Cleane it up - in the women skouls
-Timothy Dexter
* * * * *
That’s a quote from the book A Pickle for the Knowning Ones or Plain Truths in a Homespun Dress. It’s the inspiration for the topic and a story that I don’t think I can outdo. So run a search on Timothy or the book and see what you can pull up. I promise it’s worth it.
Timothy’s one of the great American eccentrics; he’s my second favorite after Emperor Joshua Norton I of the United States. Emperor Norton is a wonderful figure – he dressed in castoff military uniforms, made his own money which was accepted as legal tender in his hometown of San Francisco, ate free at most restaurants, was tried for insanity and acquitted, and was remembered by thousands when he finally died in the street one day. America doesn’t make them like she used to, no siree.

Tiscali
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Tiscali...Come start a revolution!

Running Out of Time
The Centerville Synchronized Runners were in their third year of existence and in their third year of trying to deal with the lone blemish in their dazzling short program: Daphne Wilkinson. If the name Daphne sounds familiar from a source other than Scooby Doo, it’s probably from the Greek myth about a nymph by that name. Her claim to fame was running from the god Apollo for long enough to turn into a plant and escape permanently. It was on the strength of that dubious connection to running that the director of the CSR, Will Cooper, had admitted Daphne into the fold when the club was first starting. That was long ago, before Will had to turn applicants away, before the club had become renowned throughout the Plains region. You call Will a fool (as many townspeople did), but he didn’t want to throw Daphne out of the club. And it was clear she wasn’t going to leave. So there she remained, a constant problem. For unlike her mythological namesake, Daphne simply couldn’t run. She more joggled along, disrupting the rhythm of the people beside her and nearly throwing the entire team off balance. What a shame, said the townspeople, dreaming greater-than-regional acceptance, if only Daphne would die, or move away, or break her leg. And people wonder why synchronized running hasn’t gained national prominence!

The 11th Floor
There was something about those people on the eleventh floor, Jacob Stedwell thought as he passed it on the elevator. They were probably all Bohemians or something. He’d heard stories - Mrs Kidman on the twelfth floor, who was divorced but was nice anyway, had told him that she’d heard from the landlady that the eleventh floor had parties at least once a month. Jacob Stedwell hadn’t heard anything himself; he went to sleep promptly at nine-thirty and he’d slept like a rock since the day he was born, his mother and wife had agreed. He wondered if they were maybe those Communists he’d heard about. Or they were Rock ‘n’ Rollers, he thought, in his bleakest moments. He slept with his grandfather’s blunderbuss beside the bed, just in case they came for him during the night.