Prolefeed

I could be a dime novel and be very kicked about it, I thought this morning while I was marvelling about how every lived experience has a theory of -ism attached to it. This morning’s -ism was social constructionism/constructivism. But the dime novel thought came from elsewhere, I suppose it came to me because I had been looking for a precise definition of mass culture this cultural theorist called Stuart Hall kept talking about in one of his essays. The dime novel wasn’t what he had in mind. He was concerned about postwar workingclass Britain. And how mass culture was changing it. Nostalgia does wonders to practices, doesn’t it? A sufficient patina of it and everything once reviled/unappreciated/inconsequential appears to increase in significance until one might get tricked into thinking of it with much the same fondness and familiarity as one thinks of a long deceased neighbour who got his cheap thrills throwing his garbage covertly over the boundary wall into one’s property.

Oddly enough, all I kept wanting to do while I was thinking and marveling was to retreat into the fin de siecle greys and excesses of some generic Victorian Gothic I must have been dreaming about right before being woken up by the vibrating phone-alarm. I always feel the vibration first and only then become unwillingly aware of the offensive ringer. Often in my halfsleep I wonder, scared, if I’ve suddenly woken up deaf.

I hate to sound uncool-ly post-structuralist but the idea of a margin of understanding is muchly comforting. It makes me think of Derrida. And yet its very comforting. Last I broke my head over his thought was because I got very interested in what Saussure had to say about semiotics. I don’t particularly recall it having been a comforting experience. Quite the opposite, I think. Perhaps the discomfiture stemmed from the alltooeasytofallfor nihilism it all invariably led foolish neophytes like myself to. Why did I use that word? That was such an ugly word. Very green and scummy. But not half as nice as an epiphyte, though even that word is ugly, but it reminds me of orchids and not its own ugliness and that’s why I think its endeared itself to me. But there was this one word I really liked while I was reading Derrida. Not because of what it signified. But just the word. Aporia. I haven’t thought about it for a very long time. But we look for it, even if we don’t know what its called, don’t we?

I lost my thread completely. I had something to say about the production of meaning. Something that was vaguely comforting. You may not decode what I encode and thats perfectly fine. Even if that led to a multiplicity of meanings, there’d still be some that are hegemonic, unless I render myself completely incomprehensible, which I’ve a creeping feeling I already have. But its comforting nonetheless.

But yes, gimme gimme bread and circus and I’m only too happy to indulge myself in my false consciousness. I will go reread some HP7 now.

Heady

is discovery. And understanding. There are all these theories that the wiseones construct? And construct again? And they create a language to compress everything into terms that would have been an idea in someone’s reflective ruminations once, an idea born of a sudden firing of action potentials and synapses where, in a single moment of expansion, the constraints of perspective disappear; and for that brief moment, every possibility and every connection is laid bare. And where once one found oneself floundering about with only a modest flashlight illuminating a tiny fraction of the Great Unknown, all of a sudden, there is light everywhere. If only one could put the kibosh on the momentary blindness that accompanies such abrupt moments of illumination. If only…

Fool.

Because for every instance of illuminance, the Great Unknown, one finds, has rearranged itself, stubbornly ceasing to be anything but.

I don’t know how much my appalling ignorance has to do with being a smalltowner. I suppose a lot of it could still have been forfended had I had more conversation with my parents while I was growing up. They were parents. They didn’t have lives and stories of their own. They were there to tell me what not to do and, and, and..uh …what not to do, basically, if I did not wish to incur their wrath. There was a lot of wrath, which I gradually discovered had nothing much to do with the magnitude of my transgressions.

I didn’t think that one could also talk to them.

They also had this thing about sending me away whenever they would be having discussions with relatives/friends/other grownups. So I never really got to know what grownups talked about or how they behaved, which, set back my growing up by a few years, I think. The only grownups I could observe intimately were mostly in books, inside the idiot box. Therefore I remain hopelessly juvenile still. Not that I think its any excuse for being that way. People should just grow up at the earliest opportunity.

I think I’ve always lived in worlds of my own making, or of another’s. Never the real one though. always elusive, that one. Always wanting to though. perhaps it would be easier then. No. not perhaps. Its obviously easier that way.

It’s a rather poor show isn’t it to have existed for nearly two odd decades and not have known anything. I mean I know how to factorise and solve inequalities and calculate how much I’d have to score in the next internals to keep afloat. All this information. You have to know it all. It doesn’t interest me much. Nothing does, anyhow. But I can never seem to remember anything. And all these wisemen say these profound things. And there are too many profound things around. One after the other. I believed in this yesterday and today that. Because that takes so many more things into consideration. Constant process of refinement. What would it be like without that?

How weary I feel and it’s only been just a little while.

Otra Vez

La universidad reabrirá mañana. Habrá caras nuevas otra vez. Y otra vez el mismo drama humano. Escritores, todos. Escritores con almas vacías y demasiada tinta. No hay una canción de la verdad. He visto y oído le todo y yo lo verá y oirá otra vez.

Y no habré sido impresionado yo.

Estoy por volverme loco…

…y poco a poco se agota el tiempo.

zzzzzzzzoooooooooooooopfft.

Llueve

Ha estado lloviendo a mares para los últimos tres días. La lluvia me hace triste. No se por que. Tengo un examen espanol manana. Tengo tambien una clase de italiano hoy. No creo que yo puedo hacerlo. La calle delante de mi casa es inundado. No deseo caminar a traves del agua sucia.

Hay numerosas libelulas afuera. Todas estan volando en circulos.

No hay nadie en la casa.

Ayer yo descubro una mariposa enorme en el cuarto de bano. Fue muy hermosa. Debe haber sido a quince centímetros desde la extremidad de una ala a la otra. No era alli esta manana.