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May. 22nd, 2005 11:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaI haven't been around here much lately. Work bizzy, life confusing; the usual.
Just heard that a very beloved friend is HIV+. The first such in many years--well, long enough ago that I am no longer up on the latest medical protocols etc. because the last of my good friends with AIDS died almost 3 years ago.
And for the first time ever, I am pissed off at him. Because, OK, we all get lonely, we all get stupid, but christ, we also all know what the score is now. I want to ask him: Was it worth it, to burn the candle at both ends? To know now that you will not see old age, and infirmity? To know that we will say goodbye to you, and not the other way round?
He lives in Europe. He hasn't seen, as I have, friend after friend die over the years; he didn't live through the flood. Maybe that explains it.
No; nothing explains it.
* * * *
Work has been just disgusting. Too many hours, too much aggravation, and half my colleagues are rank amateurs. There are days when I expect one of them to jump up at a staff meeting and shout, "Hey kids, I know how we can raise money for the orphanage! Let's put on a show!" and then someone else will jump up and shout, "Swell! We can use my uncle's barn!"
And then we'll all sing "Meet Me in St. Louis."
Faugh.
Although the general drivel is punctuated by some really good stuff with some projects I'm doing on fair use and copyright and related issues. But I am counting. the. days. til vacation, is alls I can say. Maybe when I get back I will feel refreshed and perky and not bored to death. Or maybe I won't come back; maybe I'll change my name and move to Tierra del Fuego and make macramé prayer rugs.
Maybe P will also change his name and move to Tierra del Fuego and we can make macramé together and be hippies and eat wholesome food that we grow ourselves and . . . who am I kidding? Within a week we'd be murdering each other once an hour, like that TV show that takes place in real time, except that at least one person dies per episode, so the death count is something like 30 corpses/day.
* * * *
I need a good book to read for the summer, something fat and smart and preferably with a lot of sex in it. Lately the fiction I've read has made almost no impression on me: Jonathan Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which I liked a lot more than the critics did; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which was OK, but thin; Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell, which had a lot to like in it, but kind of lost momentum at some point.
OTOH, the nonfiction I've been reading lately has been fantastic. May I just pause here for a moment and say as loudly as possible that Carolyn Walker Bynum is a fucking genius? I'm reading Metamorphosis and Identity and it is just effing brilliant. Brilliant. Will post about it at some point, if I can get organized.
And I reread Foucault's Discipline and Punish, which is also a damn good book. I had to go to Philadelphia for work a couple of weekends ago (some damn conference or other), and went to see the Eastern State Penitentiary, which I had not visited in 15 years. At that time one could only see a little of it, and it was such a wreck that they made you wear a hard hat. Now you can go through the whole thing, and there are some superb artists' installations in it, including a new sound piece by Janet Cardiff.
I ended up spending about 5 hours there. It was extraordinarily moving: everything brilliant and terrible about the Enlightenment project in one blow: like walking through a Piranesi print, or one of Sade's letters from Charenton. I kept thinking, too, of Heart of Darkness, where Marlow discovers that the heart of darkness, the true black barbarity of humankind, lies not in primitive Africa but "civilized" Europe. The White City, the Sepulchral City, he calls Brussels. Hence Foucault's essay on incarceration and the panopticon, and the twin punishments--tortures, really--of isolated solitude and constant surveillanceI bought the catalogue, "The Crucible of Good Intentions" and read it on the train home.
Sometimes fiction just can't compete.
Just heard that a very beloved friend is HIV+. The first such in many years--well, long enough ago that I am no longer up on the latest medical protocols etc. because the last of my good friends with AIDS died almost 3 years ago.
And for the first time ever, I am pissed off at him. Because, OK, we all get lonely, we all get stupid, but christ, we also all know what the score is now. I want to ask him: Was it worth it, to burn the candle at both ends? To know now that you will not see old age, and infirmity? To know that we will say goodbye to you, and not the other way round?
He lives in Europe. He hasn't seen, as I have, friend after friend die over the years; he didn't live through the flood. Maybe that explains it.
No; nothing explains it.
* * * *
Work has been just disgusting. Too many hours, too much aggravation, and half my colleagues are rank amateurs. There are days when I expect one of them to jump up at a staff meeting and shout, "Hey kids, I know how we can raise money for the orphanage! Let's put on a show!" and then someone else will jump up and shout, "Swell! We can use my uncle's barn!"
And then we'll all sing "Meet Me in St. Louis."
Faugh.
Although the general drivel is punctuated by some really good stuff with some projects I'm doing on fair use and copyright and related issues. But I am counting. the. days. til vacation, is alls I can say. Maybe when I get back I will feel refreshed and perky and not bored to death. Or maybe I won't come back; maybe I'll change my name and move to Tierra del Fuego and make macramé prayer rugs.
Maybe P will also change his name and move to Tierra del Fuego and we can make macramé together and be hippies and eat wholesome food that we grow ourselves and . . . who am I kidding? Within a week we'd be murdering each other once an hour, like that TV show that takes place in real time, except that at least one person dies per episode, so the death count is something like 30 corpses/day.
* * * *
I need a good book to read for the summer, something fat and smart and preferably with a lot of sex in it. Lately the fiction I've read has made almost no impression on me: Jonathan Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which I liked a lot more than the critics did; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which was OK, but thin; Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell, which had a lot to like in it, but kind of lost momentum at some point.
OTOH, the nonfiction I've been reading lately has been fantastic. May I just pause here for a moment and say as loudly as possible that Carolyn Walker Bynum is a fucking genius? I'm reading Metamorphosis and Identity and it is just effing brilliant. Brilliant. Will post about it at some point, if I can get organized.
And I reread Foucault's Discipline and Punish, which is also a damn good book. I had to go to Philadelphia for work a couple of weekends ago (some damn conference or other), and went to see the Eastern State Penitentiary, which I had not visited in 15 years. At that time one could only see a little of it, and it was such a wreck that they made you wear a hard hat. Now you can go through the whole thing, and there are some superb artists' installations in it, including a new sound piece by Janet Cardiff.
I ended up spending about 5 hours there. It was extraordinarily moving: everything brilliant and terrible about the Enlightenment project in one blow: like walking through a Piranesi print, or one of Sade's letters from Charenton. I kept thinking, too, of Heart of Darkness, where Marlow discovers that the heart of darkness, the true black barbarity of humankind, lies not in primitive Africa but "civilized" Europe. The White City, the Sepulchral City, he calls Brussels. Hence Foucault's essay on incarceration and the panopticon, and the twin punishments--tortures, really--of isolated solitude and constant surveillanceI bought the catalogue, "The Crucible of Good Intentions" and read it on the train home.
Sometimes fiction just can't compete.
