The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

I once tried to remember my earliest memories when I was two. Here, today, sitting on this case, and looking at things that happened 10 years ago, I realize it is equally difficult to even remember what was happening ten years ago. What was happening?

Finishing Freshman year of college. Rushed a frat. By myself. Doing shots. Two story beer bong. Did not partake of that. Nevertheless, got to the frat house, and was sitting on a couch talking to a blond girl when I excused myself to throw up. Did so, in the bathroom, and sort of hung out there for a bit, sort of passed out, until Jay found me, and put me in a cab — came with me. A good friend, that time. Slept for about a day. Did not get into the frat. No worries. They were a little too rich for my blood anyway.

And then on the final day of school, G made brownies and we finished class and ate them and then we must have walked around campus, and had some fun and good adventure. It was all sunlight. No worries there.

And went to visit Jay in Memphis, and talked to some girls there, and splashed in Jay’s pool and played music in his annex, and we went to the Peabody Hotel but not Graceland, because Jay had just gone to Graceland and almost died there with George in the car. But we went to Jillians and Hot Topic and I bought a Led Zeppelin Icarus shirt.

And went back and went to camp, and I think that was the summer that the girl counselor Nicole, attractive, quit on the second day, because I wasn’t nice to her, or one of the kids called her fat, and I thought she was superhot, and thought it was funny or something, and then had to be a counselor all by myself, and we got another counselor but I let him take breaks a lot and I did the whole thing myself and didn’t like it or have any fun because my mom was an authoritarian director and I worked for her.

But nevertheless, had great fun hanging with the high school kids who had returned to Philadelphia after their own first years of college, or even just the Philadelphia ones, ML, I’d say, and EB, and A, and I saw Trey Anastasio for the first time at the Mann Music Center and they bought mushrooms but I did not and their mushrooms didn’t work and lost their pipe to ninjas but I enjoyed Trey, I did, and the people gathered there on the lawn for a beautiful experience and there it was a beautiful religious experience —

And went and saw Phil and Friends as well and was complimented on my air guitar skills by ML and Phil played Watchtower and I saw Warren Haynes for the first time and slide guitar for the first time and it was good —

And were there any girls that summer, any girls to break up the monotony — did Jaimie Gaeman work for my mother that summer, I don’t think so, I don’t, I don’t know who was there, A/M, maybe – still young, unmothered;

That spring I had briefly gotten a huge crush on Ms. BC — the living together effect — or the way I fall every so often for the sweetest girl in the room — sweet like flowers —

Here’s what this says:

Aug 2, 2001 – Trey Anastasio @ the Mann Music Center; And Bela Fleck maybe right after?

And some disagreement about whether to go one way or another and we said lets go see Bela Fleck and did, ZIR and me, and there were balloons in the parking lot –

DFW, Broom of the System = 155,079

Franzen, The 27th City = 180,882

Bellow, the Dangling Man = 51,127

Kerouac = Town & City = 197,148

RJ, Eye of the World = 305k

Tolkien = Fellowship, 187k

Prince of Nothing = 175k

DFW, Infinite Jest = 575k

Ulysses = 264k

The second rule is love your neighbor as your self.

The first rule is love yourself.

And after the house of our love burnt down,
in the fire and brimstone of the flame deluge,
we stayed in the ruins,
we kept on living in it,
And played on and tumbled, yelled, and laughed
And one wall still stood, gray, but smiling,
And there we decided to paint our painting,
So we used the soot to coat our brushes,
and imagined colors into being,
and made a rainbow with the ashes

To be each other’s psychopomps; perhaps I’ll carry you, perhaps you’ll carry me.

Lately. The weight of my short but not so short life hangs on me. Hamlet was a young thirty, as will I be, as will I be. Life goes this way. Life goes that way. How many books I have read this past year? Caught by work again, caught me sleeping; a few here, a few there, not moving the ball forward.

A couple pretty girls. The love of my life again, again. Twenty nine.

Taking tests for no reason. Up here in New York. Having fish and pie and tests, did I mention tests. Malls. Couldn’t raise your children up here, they’d grow up a little too white, a little comfortable, safe within the suburbs. The world burns outside, but I am safe within the suburbs.

People knock on my door. I solve small problems for them. I draft strongly worded letters to other short men, and they draft strongly worded letters in return. I have a small apartment, but pay my bills on time, mostly, mostly. Wish I was back there now. I wish I was back there now.

Twenty-nine years old. A somewhat simple life. Not the messiah by a long-shot. Try to do little evil. The world grows sad around me. I feel ok. Not happiness. Maybe just the numbness of a broken heart. A broken soul.

JB, the Existential Hero, the Edward Yellow, the Edward Williams, the Novelist, the Tale-Teller, the Latter Bard — where did he go? Whence? Left in Greensboro, with those other ghosts? And who is this? The man who wears my skin? The slave to science. The Reasonably Prudent Man.

For what? For why? Whence danger? Whence risk? When the sky opens, none of it will matter and all will be lost — so why not rage now and risk now and revel in the taste of life of on my tongue while I still have a tongue to taste with? Where shall I go next? To what purpose?

onward, christian. onward.

The internal view from my bedroom. Writing. Stories. I’m going to tell a story about a woman and the thing that happened to her. That an office devolved into sides, and the trouble-makers were rousted.

Baby, this boy in Brooklyn makes me sad.

and I find, theodicy from theists:

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1569142/jewish/Coping-With-Tragedy-in-Borough-Park.htm

Nice to know they don’t let the Good & Active Generative Force of the Universe (aka God) off the hook for this one.

I on the other one do, and simply say that in God’s mind and dream all things are possible, and that the Great Power has granted us free will, and leaves us to our devices, but with the evil, he has given us the means to fight it, to stamp it out, to heal it, and evil will persist, and beings, just like me, will always sometimes find themselves trapped in a dark and terrible and horrible and dwindling existence, one that shakes the very marrow of our bones, and in that extremity, we will pray for salvation, we will pray to be saved, and we will not get salvation, and we will not be saved, but nevertheless, our prayers will be heard, and until the moment the False Child or the Senseless Child rips us away from God and destroys our souls, we will nevertheless be in His Presence, and to have been in that Presence, in other words, to have Lived at all, will have to be sufficient paradise.

All souls sing, and all prayers are heard, and we carry the lifeforce of the universe in all of our souls, and though many songs are beautiful and only a few are dark, all songs are heard by God, and listened to, and loved, accordingly. V’Ahavta.

You shall love He That Brings Into Existence Whatever Exists, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might.

Here, at the end of the world. The very limit of our histories. Phones were called, our voices crossed the distance, slightly slower than the speed of light.

(I, the I, have a small pain in my toe from where I stubbed it against a slightly uplifted sidewalk granite flat)

Haven. Here. Now. Not then. 2011. Science fiction, hypothetical year, fiction to myself. Next to Her, H with a capital H. Still using the Great Letters, Roman scratchings, may as well, here, in the realm of Khenti-Amentiu, Lord of the Sunset Lands.

Speak Gilgamesh, tell me of the one you lost, tell me of Enkidu, and your journey past the edge of time to palaver soft with the one who’ll never die.

And Gilgamesh returned to Uruk, and rebuilt its walls, and capped its towers in bronze parapets, and walked its walls as his bones thinned out, and black hair turned wisdom-white. And then he slept with his fathers, his bones interred, and stayed a moment longer, till they were dust, and then the city that was dust too, and sands came, and prophets, and riders, and other cities, golden, clay, great, and not great, other kings, other Gilgameshs, other Enkidus, great, and not great, ages of darkness, ages of light, and then and then

This. Here. For a moment.

Another will follow. And then another. Temporary guardians of the sacred flame. We the living clothe and embrace the Living Force, and then sloughed off like the serpent’s skin and return to dust. We dance for a moment, together, and it is meet of us to smile, for that moment, while we are dancing, as long as we are dancing.

I am here, now. I would not have thought it then, and I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow. Well, I’ll be in Philadelphia. The city of the brothers. Not here, the new safe place. Love. Love. Love.

We are shiny things to each other. Musicians on a stage, begging for approval. Powerless, dependent, yet in that powerlessness, that vulnerability, something utterly and totally transcendent and beautiful – if the Wire was about he dialectic of power, everyone always grasping for it and taking it, and losing it, a musician walks the other way – has no interest in power or even riches – just women, wine, and song –

And shockingly, the slow show presents that moment where beauty meets power – power wins of course, but for how long? “We just play the notes,” one says. The players come and go, each playing the song or a song, a song that is as true as algebra and as immortal.

Coupled still again with those little human flaws, those imperfections like fingerprints that are immortal not because they last but exactly because they don’t, because in their uniqueness and inability to be repeated – it will never repeat, says the wiser philosopher – ensure their place and notice in the great pattern of the universe.

And still. We are shiny things to each other. Things to be used, to be savored, to be loved. And we do love being loved. We do love being a shiny thing.