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Feb. 11th, 2012
January 29, 1991
Feb. 11th, 2012 11:11 amWhile listening to NPR discussing race and class in the military, I strongly felt the issue concerning my own economic life. What am I going to do?
I'm beginning to feel negative pressures from my dependency on my family. Were it not for the bloody realities of the Persian Gulf Crisis, I might have run to the military. Even without the war, however, I think it would be a bad idea. Whenever 'running away' one should be wary of where on is running to. Judgment is bound to be lacking. So, the issue remains.
*******
After discovering a box of old cassettes, I taped the State of the Union message. I intend to outline it, so that I might understand more about the worldview of the American cultural elite.
===============
February 11, 2012
Yeah, I don't think I ever got around to outlining that speech, but I am sure it is just as well. Besides, I think I finally figured out what our elite seeks, and it is not the general welfare, and it is certainly not my personal welfare.
As for thinking about joining the military, I thought I figured that my eyes were too bad for that anyway, though it is true that I would not fail the vision test for renewing my driver's license for another few months yet.
These early entries are severely depressing. It reads as though I had a child's mind that was desperately striving in vain to break into significant thought. It feels like terribly wasted time. I wish I could have broken into my reading life already, but that will not happen until the end of the decade. I would read a few good books, to be sure, and I did come into my materialst philosophy, but it is so sadly little for these years lost.
I'm beginning to feel negative pressures from my dependency on my family. Were it not for the bloody realities of the Persian Gulf Crisis, I might have run to the military. Even without the war, however, I think it would be a bad idea. Whenever 'running away' one should be wary of where on is running to. Judgment is bound to be lacking. So, the issue remains.
*******
After discovering a box of old cassettes, I taped the State of the Union message. I intend to outline it, so that I might understand more about the worldview of the American cultural elite.
===============
February 11, 2012
Yeah, I don't think I ever got around to outlining that speech, but I am sure it is just as well. Besides, I think I finally figured out what our elite seeks, and it is not the general welfare, and it is certainly not my personal welfare.
As for thinking about joining the military, I thought I figured that my eyes were too bad for that anyway, though it is true that I would not fail the vision test for renewing my driver's license for another few months yet.
These early entries are severely depressing. It reads as though I had a child's mind that was desperately striving in vain to break into significant thought. It feels like terribly wasted time. I wish I could have broken into my reading life already, but that will not happen until the end of the decade. I would read a few good books, to be sure, and I did come into my materialst philosophy, but it is so sadly little for these years lost.
the back gate
Feb. 11th, 2012 04:38 pmRemember that problem we had with the back gate, how the latch would not come down and secure the gate, so that I had to use a plastic wrap to secure it. Today, the latch comes all the way down. I don't have to tie it down. I guess it is the shifting of the wet grounds. I have to fight off the personal insecurity about not tying it down, but I can manage.
Sylvia struggles with American life before our great sexual revolution, and one wonders if this is a big factor in her emotional struggles to come, this sexual repression, the passionate artist holding back on her need to revel in the wilder pleasures of her carnal nature.
_ _ _
Here I sit in the deep cushioned armchair, the crickets rasping, buzzing, chirring outside. It's the library, my favorite room, with the floor a medieval mosaic of flat square stones the color of old book-bindings ... rust, copper, tawny orange, pepper-brown, maroon. And there are deep comfortable maroon leather chairs with the leather peeling off, revealing a marbled pattern of ridiculous pink. The books, all that you would fill your rainy days with, line the shelves; friendly, fingered volumes. So I sit here, smiling as I think in my fragmentary way: "Woman is but an engine of ecstasy, a mimic of the earth from the ends of her curled hair to her red-lacquered nails."
Then I think, remembering the family of beautiful children that lie asleep upstairs, "Isn't it better to give in to the pleasant cycles of reproduction, the easy, comforting presence of a man around the house?" I remember Liz, her face white, delicate as an ash on the wind; her red lips staining the cigarette; her full breasts under the taut black jersey. She said to me, "But think how happy you can make a man someday." Yes, I'm thinking, and so far it's all right.
But then I do a flipover and reach out in my mind to E., seeing a baseball game, maybe, perhaps watching television, or roaring with careless laughter at some dirty joke with the boys, beer cans lying about green and shiny gold, and ash trays. I spiral back to me, sitting here, swimming, drowning, sick with longing.
I have too much conscience injected in me to break customs without disastrous effects; I can only lean enviously against the boundary and hate, hate, hate the boys who can dispel sexual hunger freely, without misgiving, and be whole, while I drag out from date to date in soggy desire, always unfulfilled. The whole thing sickens me.
-- Sylvia Plath Journals, 1950
_ _ _
Here I sit in the deep cushioned armchair, the crickets rasping, buzzing, chirring outside. It's the library, my favorite room, with the floor a medieval mosaic of flat square stones the color of old book-bindings ... rust, copper, tawny orange, pepper-brown, maroon. And there are deep comfortable maroon leather chairs with the leather peeling off, revealing a marbled pattern of ridiculous pink. The books, all that you would fill your rainy days with, line the shelves; friendly, fingered volumes. So I sit here, smiling as I think in my fragmentary way: "Woman is but an engine of ecstasy, a mimic of the earth from the ends of her curled hair to her red-lacquered nails."
Then I think, remembering the family of beautiful children that lie asleep upstairs, "Isn't it better to give in to the pleasant cycles of reproduction, the easy, comforting presence of a man around the house?" I remember Liz, her face white, delicate as an ash on the wind; her red lips staining the cigarette; her full breasts under the taut black jersey. She said to me, "But think how happy you can make a man someday." Yes, I'm thinking, and so far it's all right.
But then I do a flipover and reach out in my mind to E., seeing a baseball game, maybe, perhaps watching television, or roaring with careless laughter at some dirty joke with the boys, beer cans lying about green and shiny gold, and ash trays. I spiral back to me, sitting here, swimming, drowning, sick with longing.
I have too much conscience injected in me to break customs without disastrous effects; I can only lean enviously against the boundary and hate, hate, hate the boys who can dispel sexual hunger freely, without misgiving, and be whole, while I drag out from date to date in soggy desire, always unfulfilled. The whole thing sickens me.
-- Sylvia Plath Journals, 1950
my DVD movies
Feb. 11th, 2012 05:43 pmI took a break from my TV shows and put in one of my DVD movies, and you will never guess which, despite my limited holdings.
No, it wasn't "The Girl Next Door". Nor "A Gun, a Car, and a Blonde". Forget about it! It was a "Grindhouse" flick from the 70s: "Trip with Teacher". One of my rape flicks, in which a teacher and her cute high-school girls gets stranded on a school bus on their way to a camping trip and are waylaid by a couple of ex-convict bikers.
I was extremely disappointed with it when I first got the DVD some years ago, even though it seemed like a miracle that I would come upon the movie, which had stuck in my fancy ever since I first watched it with Pop at the Drive-In when I was but a little boy. However, watching the DVD again, now that I was not so focused on the tawdry thrills, it wasn't so bad. I doubt I'll be getting more 70s movies, but it's not impossible. These movies have a certain kind of innocent quality about their playing around with sleazy themes. It's almost kind of sweet.
No, it wasn't "The Girl Next Door". Nor "A Gun, a Car, and a Blonde". Forget about it! It was a "Grindhouse" flick from the 70s: "Trip with Teacher". One of my rape flicks, in which a teacher and her cute high-school girls gets stranded on a school bus on their way to a camping trip and are waylaid by a couple of ex-convict bikers.
I was extremely disappointed with it when I first got the DVD some years ago, even though it seemed like a miracle that I would come upon the movie, which had stuck in my fancy ever since I first watched it with Pop at the Drive-In when I was but a little boy. However, watching the DVD again, now that I was not so focused on the tawdry thrills, it wasn't so bad. I doubt I'll be getting more 70s movies, but it's not impossible. These movies have a certain kind of innocent quality about their playing around with sleazy themes. It's almost kind of sweet.
