Grand Canyon

The road to the Grand Canyon wound wetly through the Dixie National Forest and then through the Kaibob National Forest, home of the elusive, elven Kaibab squirrel. Part of the forest was burned out and the charred white aspens were strange, haunting, in the heavy grey fog. We hadn’t made any reservations, and were certain the campground at the North Rim was full, but at Mr. B’s urging we went to it, just to see, and were marvelously lucky – there was one empty site. This we claimed as our own and set up in the drizzle that had begun to fall. I think the North Rim campground was my favorite – it was piney and flat. We had just enough privacy and weren’t too far from the bathhouse.

I mentioned this before, but after we set up camp we went to see the canyon. Of course, it was full of fog and we couldn’t see anything. That was when I had that conversation with Mr. B – as we looked out at the white wall and wondered at what lay beyond. We took a short walk around the lodge to some overlooks, and the fog passed and swelled and rose up again, and so we saw glimpses into the canyon, which was unreal. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I won’t try to set it down here, other than to say it is, in fact, grand.

We made dinner reservations at the restaurant because we hadn’t had anything decent in days, and because it was too wet to do much of anything, we occupied ourselves around the campsite – showering, checking the internet, etc. I had a slight problem here – it was two hours earlier than I thought it was. We’d come from Utah – Mountain Standard time, but Arizona during the summer is on Pacific time. My phone was confused about this and went forward an hour instead of back. It grieved me to think that it was not as late as I thought it was, and I would have to wait many more hours than I had reckoned for dinner. So, Luke and I went to the bar. This was also a problem. The North Rim of the Grand Canyon is at an altitude of upwards of 8,000 feet. I had two glasses of wine before dinner and I was destroyed. You’d think I would have enjoyed dinner more as a result of my intoxication, but the restaurant was extremely mediocre and suitable only for lunch because then at least you will have the astonishing view to console you when your food is overcooked.

Mr. B and Mr. W somehow got invited to the employee bar, where they drank late into the night. Luke and I went to bed early and found out in the morning what better luck Mr. W. had, much to Mr. B’s chagrin. It had been cold during the night and someone remarked on it, and Luke said that he hadn’t noticed. “Yeah, but you’ve got a girl.” was someone’s response. This bothered me because it was like saying, “Yeah, but you’ve got an electric blanket,” or “Yeah, but you have long underwear.” I think this was the moment that I began to hate them.

It fell to me, of course, to make everyone’s sandwiches, which I did with the terrible bread and lunch meat we’d gotten from the general store. Shortly afterwards we drove Luke and W to the trailhead, and B and I were left alone for the day as neither of us wanted to hike down very much. Instead we drove out to several of the trails around the rim of the canyon, or I should say I drove because I was starting to get nervous about the way B drove on winding mountain roads. The overlooks were pretty, but not quite as astonishing as the day before – the fog had been extremely dramatic. There was always rain and thunder in the distance, and I wondered if Luke was getting it down below. B and I talked at length about relationships, and my nervousness at heights and I really felt like we bonded, but I was wrong, as we shall see. We met up again with Luke and W at the lodge – they were exhausted after the hike, and we agreed that we should move on rather than stay another night, and so we got in the car and drove for  Zion.

On Richard Dawkins

On the road, as I’ve said before, I was made to listen to many, many podcasts, and many, many inane conversations about atheism, many of these on the grandeur of Richard Dawkins, but moar on that below.

Mr B, looking out across the vastness of the Grand Canyon, observed to me that religion makes so many people so unhappy. It is tragic, when you think about it.  I could see, as he testified to it, that he was absolutely shrouded in gravitas. Personally, I think that most people are made unhappy by their parents’ beliefs, but Mr. B seemed to be implying something far greater about the nature of religion than that it causes bitter arguments among siblings.  Mr. B. was trying to tell me that something intrinsic to the belief is responsible for the unhappiness of the people. But, who are these unhappy people? Well, they’re you. They’re me. They’re Mr. B. They’re St. John of the Cross. And Mother Teresa. And my dad. But then, I think we would be unhappy as atheists, too, because Mr. B and Mr. W were atheists and they were both extremely unhappy. Luke, I think is moderately happy, but I think he would be equally happy if he had religion. Gazing into the divide alongside Mr. B, I wondered why he was unable to grasp that personal happiness might have less to do with religion than with mental steadiness, and I wished that I wanted to argue or had the ability to argue without getting all flustered and saying things like, “Well, I’m just sayin’.” He wouldn’t have taken kindly to that, though, as we will see in future posts.

And now…

Well, I’m just sayin’, as regards atheism,  I suppose I agree that the world would be a better place if we all believed the same thing, and if that thing is no-thing, that’s no better or worse than Jesus, Allah, or the Hindu Floaty Thing that Timothy Treadwell invoked when Melissa was eating her babies. But then, dystopian lit is always saying that absolute homogeneity doesn’t tend to work out.

I really don’t see how those kinds of atheists (i.e. the ones that want to talk to you about it) can take themselves so seriously when so many of them are just as rabid as everyone else. Lyke, u don c me tellin u about mah feelinz on sublimity and teh mystereez of teh urths. Keep it 2 yrselves, bishes. (I did make Luke go into some churches with me, but my interest in that is strictly cultural.) Also, I dislike how Dawkins habitually shirks criticism by conjuring up garden gnomes and undergarments and leprechauns and things. One of our philosophers thought that was swell, but I think it’s callow.

THERE ARE MOAR THINGZ THAN ARE DREAMT OF IN YR PHILOSOPHEEEE!!!!!1

Bryce Canyon, NP

You know, I got totally blocked on Moab, and I kept thinking, “Why should I get so blocked after Moab?” After Moab, the vacation ceased to be fun.

The drive from Moab to Bryce Canyon was weird looking, like LOTR weird looking. We drove past the San Rafael Reef, which looks like some primordial creature’s jagged backside cut out from the earth, and then through Capitol Reef National Park, where I would like to spend some more time one day. Beyond the park the highway passed through the badlands of Utah, where the rot in the landscape was manifest in the crumbling grey sandstone mesas that once were dunes, but looked like Mordor. We took highway 12. I wish we hadn’t. They sell t-shirts in gas stations along the way that say, “I survived Highway 12.”  This is what Utah.com says about it: “Highway 12 twists and turns through the Hogsback, a section of the road where cliffs drop steeply into narrow canyons on both sides of the highway.” The funny thing is, I think I might have actually enjoyed this had I trusted any of the other drivers. I would have been happy to drive it, even. But, I didn’t trust them, and I couldn’t admit to myself that I didn’t trust them, even though I regularly indulged in fantasies in which Mr. W lost his mind and drove us over a cliff, or Mr. B in a moment of rage rear ends another driver and we go over the cliff. My greatest regret is that I was never honest with myself about my trip companions, and I desperately wanted to like them, to have fun with them, like on a fun vacation. So, as we drove over the aforementioned section of the road, I clung to Luke’s hand, and prayed to Jesus.

Highway 12 entered the Dixie National Forest, where I saw trees for the first time since Boulder, and soon we were in Bryce Canyon. The campsite was lovely. There were pine trees, there were old people, there was a store with hot chocolate. Misters B and W went off to explore the canyon, but Luke and I were tired, so we stayed at the campsite. Luke went almost immediately to sleep, and not long thereafter filled the tent with his odors such that I was compelled to evacuate. A light drizzle fell all over, and it was getting cold, so I went to the store.  I got hot chocolate. It was very nice. Then I walked along the ridge overlooking the canyon, and after a while I went back to the campsite and decided that I would like to take a shower because it had been such a long, stressful drive, and I was cold. But showers cost cash money, and I didn’t have any cash money. The money was in the car, and the car was with the other guys. I tried to sit in the tent and read, but it smelled worse and worse as the afternoon drew on. And I was hungry. But the food was with the guys in the car. I couldn’t get them on the phone and they didn’t return for several hours. When they returned, I went immediately for the showers. The first one ate my money. I went into the store and asked for my money back. They gave it to me, after observing the standard protocol, which is to say supervisors had to be found, things had to be done to the register, etc. I went back to the showers. They were about to close. One had eaten my money, another was clogged up, and the rest were occupied and I was so tired. After waiting several minutes, I finally petitioned the women in the showers to speed it up. Neither was actually showering at that point. I told them I’d had a terrible day, and I was sorry to be rude, but they were about to close and I desperately wanted a shower. I wanted to cry. I got a shower at last, and felt better, and went back to camp and hoped that we would eat soon. However, Mr. B. had taken the car into town to get some Mexican take out, and the stove was in the car. He returned after a while, but it was dark before we started to cook something made out of beans and tostadas. I think that was the night we made rice and it took forever to cook. We were going to make s’mores, too. We had a fire. It was turning out pretty nice.  But, Luke was walking around the campsite in flip flops like a foole and stubbed his toe on a rock or a concrete partition or something, and started to bleed all over the place. (Luke takes bloodthinners. It was a bloodbath.) He went up to the bathroom to clean it up, and I followed with the first aid kit, and I bandaged up where he’d cut his toe, and where he’d almost ripped the nail off. And I was glad I could do it, I was glad he was bleeding all over me, because it was something I could do, I knew what to do, and I loved him so much right then. When we went back down to the site, the other guys had put out the campfire. They said they thought Luke had really hurt himself and would just want to go to bed. Dang.

In the morning, I got up before sunrise to watch the sun rise over Sunrise Point. It’s supposed to be spectacular. But, it was overcast. I don’t even know when it rose, frankly, because it was impossible to tell. The morning went from dim to slightly less dim, and that was that. On the way back I saw mule deer, which are cute, and considered whether or not I would be able to fight off a mountain lion. Then we packed up and drove to the Grand Canyon.

Moab, UT

The state symbol of Utah is the beehive because everyone there works so hard. Well. When we got to Moab we could see that the people in the trailer beside the hostel were hard at work berating one another for what fast food item they had or had not picked up. There were dogs, as well, near the trailers. Staying at the hostel proper was a Promethean gentleman about sixty years old with one eye and lots of unsolicited advice. He scared me. I heard he used to live there, but had moved up to Montana or something, someplace that was still cold at that time of year. He came down every morning from his shed with a plastic tub filled with coffee accoutrements. He would then sit in the dining room and drink huge amounts from a french press and tell everyone what to do during the day in the desert. He was a big, voluble man with half a head of hair, an expert on many subjects, like how New England has cornered the market on headstones, and what a racket, too. In the morning, I went downstairs to make breakfast. He found me there in the kitchen and asked where we’d come from and where we were going. Then he said something about my batman t-shirt that made me uncomfortable. I told him where we had come from, and that we were going to Arches that day. I had a hard time looking him in the eye, and wished he had a glass prosthetic or an eye patch. He dispensed some wisdom on the hikes in the area, and I tried to listen, but found I was unable to think of anything other than how he might have lost that eye, and why was he still talking to me. Mr. B. was a better listener than I, and when cornered in a similar manner, learned that the good hike was The Devil’s Garden, and of that the first half was the best – better to turn back than do the loop.

We set off after a while and reached the trailhead at about 11 a.m., when all the real ass hikers were getting back to their cars. The weather was perfectly cool and dry – I guess it was really pretty hot, but I never got used to feeling the heat without humidity. It was cloudy. The first half of the hike was, as the man had said, spectacular. And then it occurred to me as we were crossing a narrow pass atop a sandstone fin, about five feet wide, with a sheer drop on either side, that I was terrified of heights. And not just terrified, but I was brutalized by the terror. We paused mid-way across and looked out over the desert, and Mr. B said, “Isn’t this what they call sublime? This is sublime, isn’t it?”

I would have liked to have said, “Yes, this is sublime! I’m so glad that someone else made that observation and not just me!” However, I was paralyzed by the sublimity and had to sit down for a minute. It was embarrassing. I was aware, as other hikers passed, that I looked like that histrionic woman character that goes  on trips with men and spends much of the time drawing attention to herself, having to use the restroom, having a period, that sort of thing, and I was  reminded at that moment, as I clutched my knees on the rocks, of a girl I had seen once in the elevator near the cancer ward at Baptist. She was hunched down on the floor facing the corner with her hands up on the rails. A male relative stood looking uncomfortable near the buttons, and her sister was beside her. The sister said by way of explanation, “She’s afraid of elevators.”

I thought, “She’s not afraid of elevators, she’s afraid of whoever’s waiting for her in a hospital room. She’s afraid of illness, of death, of oblivion.” Being afraid of death, it does make it difficult to enjoy life. What was wrong with me, that at such a trite moment I was seized by such a powerful fear, not just for myself, and not just of heights, but for Luke, as well, as he stepped nearer the precipice to take in the view. It was like bad fiction, because in bad fiction critical moments tend to happen on white person activities like kayaking or hiking in national parks. Once when I was at summer camp, I had to cross a log over a ravine to get on with a hike. I had a similar experience then – I was eleven years old, and I was so afraid that I would never see my cat again, and what would he do with out me?! I’ve spent much too long on this moment. I had to get back to Bobo somehow. I stood up, and shamed I went on with the hike and tried not to draw attention to myself. Then my water bottle came open in my bag. I had to stop to empty it out, but it was time for a break anyway. My bag was flooded, my camera was destroyed. I was down to one bottle of water, and I should have invested in a camelbak; only a foole goes hiking in the desert without a camelbak. Not long thereafter we came to the Devil’s Garden where we met a German couple, and Luke hiked off beyond the arch there to observe us from a distance. Although the old man had told us to hike back the way we’d come, we decided to do the primitive loop and see what else there was to see. While the second part of the hike was neither as grand nor as terrifying as the first, it put us down on the ground and gave a better sense of the hugeness and the weirdness of the arches, and the fins and columns. The western sky was dark with thunder heads, and it was almost sickening to be so exposed in an arid region with rain that would not come pummeling at the horizon, maybe twenty-five miles off.

After the hike we went for beers at a brewery and Mr B. ordered a burrito. Mr. B was funny about eating out. He asked the waiter, what was the biggest dish  – this or that? What would he find most satisfying? Luke, Mr. W, and I drank beer while Mr. B ate, and later at the hostel we made something for ourselves, some permutation of beans and tortillas, or maybe it was a ramen stir fry. That was what we ate most nights. A young man from Quebec was in our room, he was stuck in Moab because his car had broken down, and we talked with him for a while, and during the night some other kids arrived, but we’d gone to bed early, there being nothing else to do.

In the morning, Luke,  Mr. W. and I went to watch the sunrise at Arches, and to eat pancakes. We did both of those things. The trip was still fresh, and we still enjoyed one another’s company, so when the sunlight broke over the sandstone in the east, we were all a little excited. It felt like being young, like seeing dawn at sixteen. The pancakes were expensive the way they are in heavily touristed areas. When we got back to the hostel, Mr. B was just getting up and ready to go, and was upset that we had gone to get pancakes without him, so we went back and watched him eat pancakes before we went to Canyonlands. Of Canyonlands, the one-eyed man had told us that the Maze and Needles were the best, don’t even mess with Island in the Sky. He said, sure you’ll be able to reach those places in your rental car. Not high clearance? Ah, you’ll be fine! You don’t really need it!

We never doubted that he was a buffoon and a horror, and only a foole would have followed such direction. We went to Island in the Sky because it was close and we were obviously inadequately outfitted for the other parts of the park. Let me be clear about island in the sky – I cannot imagine any place on earth more like Laputa. It should not exist. It’s a mesa. It’s so high! At Island in the Sky we watched pretty, curvy, ranger, Sierra Coon, talk on geology. I will now reiterate how sick I felt at the landscape. Formed by the movements of salt beds, by primordial tides, and the shifting of ancient dunes, all of southern Utah lies rotting in the sun as the wind sweeps away the grains and shards of some time far beyond any remembrance.The air, being dry, occluded not the vista, and I watched beyond Sierra Coon’s lovely figure, the earth drop away at the edge of the mesa to reveal great brown maws rent in its surface. The acrophobia I’d discovered the previous day was heightened (hehe) by the vertigo I then experienced while looking down into the canyons.

One of the members of our party had heckled Sierra Coon -  I think it was either Mr. B. or Luke, and as we moved along towards the hikes, the guys complained that the program had not been sufficiently in depth. I was like, “Oh plz, d00dz. Ur podcasts are not sufficiently in depth.” Well, that is what I would liked to have said. See, on the trip, I wanted to be agreeable because it was so nice of them to let me along in the first place, seeing as Mr. B had wanted to make a boys trip out of it. Ah yes, the dream. Three or four men together in a car, driving at high speeds through the great American West, listening to philosophy podcasts all the way, being generally manly, and then, oh, love ‘em and leave ‘em – that would be their love song to pretty girls in western towns and campgrounds and hotels. But they couldn’t get a fourth guy, and the car wasn’t cheap, so they got me, and like I said, I tried to be agreeable, because really, what’s worse than a girlfriend tagging along?

The rest of the time spent in Moab was much of the same – precipices, the desert, the one-eyed man. That was my last blog entry – that last night in Moab. And now I will blog the rest, and let it stand as a testimony to a deeply ingrained misogyny felt by even the most liberal minded of men, the caprice and tactlessness of a woman in her twenties, personality disorders, vice, fast food, and many other unpleasant things!

And… we’re back.

Hello out there! Let me catch you up. I went out west, indeed I went into the desert and there discovered way out in America’s badlands what vanity, what arrogance lurks in the hearts of men. More on that later. First a brief update – I moved up north -  going to Emerson to get that long coveted MFA. I sold my car. I am in serious culture shock – LIKE, WHAT ARE ALL THESE DUNKIN’ DONUTS?!?sdlkjafsidjfw!!!!   People from around here aren’t very nice, but all of the people who’ve moved here from elsewhere are extremely nice. Yelling is among the more common modes of communication. These people are all humorless and very angry! I went to a bar and, after finishing my beer, was told to order another one or leave. I thought the wench was kidding around, but she was quite serious.

And now, what I did on my summer vacation. I told you last about flying into Denver, and then what happened in Moab, but I’m going to revisit those things before moving on because I was really spaced out when I made that last post. In Denver, Luke picked me up at the airport. He’d shaved his head and looked gaunt. It had only been a week since I’d seen him. I couldn’t imagine what must have transpired that would have stripped him of his beautiful nut-brown curls and put the fatigue on him, such as he looked. Let me go back further. The morning that I flew into Denver, I’d driven home from Savannah, where I’d spent the weekend with Bronwyn, and watched her lovely designs float down the runway, displayed on the lithe bodies of very tall girls. So, I was driving back up I-95 and this rock comes out of nowhere and pops into my windshield. This moment, the rock flying down from heaven, the pines rushing by on either side, the cruel, lonely sun of late May piercing my eyes as I watched the crack on the windshield spread, this moment, yes, anticipated the sale of my car later in the summer. The drive was five hours long, four of those spent looking at the crack. It frowned at me as if to say, “You don’t have insurance this.”

So when I flew into Denver that night, I was tired. I was broken. I was so hungry. And there was no place to eat. We were staying in Boulder and not a thing was open except for some bars. We found falafel on that one street that you find in every college town – the one with all the convenience foods and hookah joints that sits at the foot of campus. Or the head. Either way. I ate that falafel and found it restorative; it was slathered in Texas Pete, and I thought of home. Afterwards we found the rest of our party at a bar, (Mr.’s W. and B. henceforth) where they were engaged at the pool table. Mr. B. had gone to this bar in order to meet up with a certain lady he had met earlier, and who never showed up. Let this foreshadow his success over the course of the journey. Mr. B., when he was not shooting, stood leaning against the wall with his head down and his cowboy hat tipped forward, arms crossed, like those silhouetted cowboys that are constructed of plywood and black paint. He wore a slightly overlarge blue gingham shirt, jeans, and brightly colored sneakers. At other times he would wear this same shirt with board shorts and white sneakers. Luke told me that for the past several days much of their trip had been devoted to meeting the needs of Mr. B, stopping in shops and pulling over and that sort of thing. After Mr.’s B and W had taken leave of their new bar friends, we were finally able to go back to the campsite, which was set up in a parking lot beside a stream. I was very excited at there being a bathhouse and set off for it soon after we had arrived, and on my way saw a little fox standing perfectly still in the field behind the camp. I looked at it. It looked at me. Mr. B made a commotion over it and went for his camera and the fox moved a little further away towards the mountain. I watched it a little longer. It was dark, colored of a shadow and its eyes shone bright silver from our lights. I thought then that I’d like to follow it to see where it lived, but it was cold and dark and that would have been ridiculous, but maybe it would have been a better experience than what followed.

As I said, it was cold. It was fucking cold. I didn’t expect it to be so cold, and we were forced to huddle in the tent for warmth, which was uncomfortable as I found the air mattress both hard and cold, and Luke bony. I didn’t sleep well. In the morning we were up early, and ate of the free breakfast, then packed up and were off. On the way, we stopped back in Boulder to eat more falafel, and to poke around. Mr. B wanted to go to a camera store and I wanted to find a hotel where my great-great-grandmother had stayed in 1909; only one of us was successful. And then we were in the car for several hours on the way to Moab – I’ve already written about this. The drive between Boulder and Moab was beautiful and not too long. I’d never been to that part of the west and was overwhelmed by the energy of the landscapes – the mountains that rose up suddenly out of the land, all the rocks, the barren stretches, the pink cliffs along the rivers, the mesas of southern Colorado flat like altars beneath the enormous sky, the cottonwoods. I think the landscapes were in part what took me so long to put this down. In their immensity my mind went blank. I was a long way from my home, from the security of trees and hills. I was in a car, endlessly in a car, in the company of three philosophers, all atheists, all men, all antagonistic and straight-up unpleasant sometimes.

We took UT 128 for the last part of the drive to Moab – it traces the Colorado river, and we did it at sunset. We passed a number of campgrounds. Their fires, already lit, glowed faintly near the river and sent narrow columns of smoke up into the blue-grey light. The sun had by then passed beyond the high sandstone walls of the gorge and all the area lay in the silence of dusk. It was so quiet in the desert. We didn’t reach Moab until well after dark. I don’t remember what we ate – something out of a can, probably. The hostel was filthy. I slept really well there.

The time has come for me to set out on my journey westward!!!1

For the past two months I’ve stood hunched in the shadow on an enlarger in the role of vignettist and proofs printer. I’ve also found myself on weekends blowing bubbles at babies and advancing film in locations throughout the Carolinas and Virginia. During that time I worked constantly. I steeped in the acrid miasma of the darkroom, until I emerged reeking of vinegar into the night-sweet air of April near blind, visions of white children’s faces, dark in negative, like shades wavering on my maculae. I kept unusual hours. I wrote near to nothing. I let my nest atop the Pleasure Dome fall to ruin. I neglected my Bobo! And now I have some money saved and it’s time to travel again. So watch out for content. Also, I’m moving to Boston in September for grad school, so I can blog about big city coffee shops.

Voyage 2009. To the great American west, southwest, and southerly regions. I flew into Denver on Sunday night and camped with the guys outside of the Rocky Mountain National Park. It was cold. I was tired. In the morning we drove out for Moab and watched as the landscape faded from drably lush subalpine wonderland to sanguine desert. We’re set up at the Lazy Lizard Hostel ($9/bed), which is full of weirdos. And hippies. This morning I espied two young persons at their bible study on the steps by the patio. Or maybe it was yesterday morning.  And I think I just saw Edward Cullen downstairs. SO. Tomorrow I will have more time, and then I’ll get real on blogging and I will tell you all about what we saw at the area parks, and what pancakes were eaten.

From the deep dark depths of my documents.

I’ve been culling some docs, and I though I’d share one.

Why do we read?

Why, we read to kill the pain, of course. We read to escape from ourselves and we read to find ourselves. Life is difficult, inconstant, and characterized by an unbearable dissonance between who we think we are and how we change in response to stimuli. Periodically, it becomes necessary to stop and reevaluate ourselves, the pain or pleasure we feel, and our relationships. This is where reading comes in. When we read we project ourselves into a different world, the world of a dream. There we find analogs for ourselves and our experiences that enable us, either consciously and/or subconsciously, to emerge from the text reborn, with our faith rekindled, our hearts fortified, and our consciences a little clearer, maybe. Even people who claim not to like fiction engage in exactly the same process as they read their True Crime or Personal Essays. They are inserting themselves into a world that does not exist, because whether or not account is factual, and whether you are reading about the Carter administration or Narnia or plate tectonics or celebrity gossip, it makes no difference; when the author put those words to paper, a narrative was created. And that narrative paves the way to understanding your relationship to the world, and the world’s relationship to yourself.

The Romantics tend to get this in theory – the necessity of revitalization, but in execution they fall short of the goal. Most of them are too enamored of their own experiences and metaphysical philosophizing to create something that could possibly be of any interest to any one but themselves. Maybe that’s a little harsh, but is not also true that The Prelude is Wordsworth’s love letter to himself, however conflicted? Shelley has a similar problem. Although I admire his attempts to rebirth the universe through love and perfect unity, his philosophy is naïve and self-indulgent and he has a tendency to figure himself as Christ in such works as “Adonais” and “Ode to the West Wind.” In the latter poem he says, “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!” (300) To which I would like to say, “Oh my God! Get over yourself!” Of course this entire argument operates on the assumption that the author should care about the reader, which is not necessarily true. And just because this reader finds long, metaphysical, narrative poems generally indicative of an overt and irritating narcissism on the part of the author, that doesn’t mean that another reader won’t find a balm for his wounded spirit hidden somewhere in their pages.

For me, personally, of the authors we have read this semester, Keats really grasps this both in idea and execution. He demonstrates in “To One Who Has Been Long in a City Pent” his understanding of what it means to escape into a book. He asks, “Who is more happy, when, with heart’s content, / Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair / Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair / And gentle tale of love and languishment?” The answer: no one is more happy. In their lush settings, lucid verse, and relatively straightforward narrative, his poems too enable the process he describes in the above poem. Although we did not read it, “Eve of St. Agnes” comes to mind. This is entirely subjective, but Keats gets at something that is closer to my own experience than the other poets. I can find myself in “Ode to a Nightingale.” Its sentiments express what I have often felt when watching my cat. “ No hungry generations tread [him] down.” (292) That’s a silly example, but on a more serious note his observations on the dreaming nature of art, and a sense of loss at its impermanency speak to my own thoughts on the subject. On the other hand, I cannot say that I agree with his ideas on the pleasure of pain, however necessary it may be to the creation of art.

Engaging with the text is paramount to the experience of reading. Even when passively partaking in the adventures of Harry Potter a process of personal perambulation is taking place, wherein the reader journeys through himself while simultaneously partaking in the text. This is what reading is all about.

Therin watches the Watchmen

Watchmen is just so pedestrian, amirite?!?! But, OH, how I’ve loved it in years past! How I’ve quoted from it! How I longed to look through smoke heavy with human fat! How I longed to know what cats know, if for no other reason than the sweet fan cred. But let’s get real. Dr. Manhattan’s faux-profundity (frofundity?) fills my mouth with bile; he is shallow and boring and his story arc is too long. The Comedian isn’t funny, and the irony of an unfunny comedian is about as thought-provoking as a black fly in your chardonnay. Oh, but you’ll say, the absurdity, the angst! No! If the Comedian had really had a grasp on the absurd, he wouldn’t have been such a horror. And then we have Rorschach, a socially conservative sociopath. Ms. Jupiter – I think we’re supposed to think she’s a hussy. The Night Owl – a putz. Ozymandias – a utilitarian. So, all the heroes are terrible people. How fascinating. How unexpected. Very deep, Alan Moore. You are a true iconoclast.

I won’t take issue with Alan Moore’s recycling of tropes – I am in favor of recycling. But, Watchmen isn’t very good. It’s trite. It’s jejune. New York gets exploded by tentacle monsters, so after fisticuffs with Ozy, Jupiter and the Owl do it beside the pool in the Antarctic fortress. Dr. Manhattan walks in (after disappearing Rorschach), looks tenderly on, finds Ozy, expostulates on endings, and leaves never to return, all of which unfolds in twenty-seven brief pages. But much of that is illustration, so really we’re talking about five pages of text. Did I mention Bubastis, my dream pet, gets exploded too?! Not enough time!

Besides being generally kinda cursory in its storytelling, the central argument of the text, that the end might justify the means but it’s probably better not to dwell on what those means are, is utterly superficial. Moore glosses over it like CoverGirl WetSlicks FruitSpritzer LipGloss. His personal opinion, embedded deep and clear within the text, recommends that when all seems lost, the only thing you can do (for self-preservation) is sex it up. Love is all you need. If people just did the sex love – OH MAN! There’s truth and beauty in sex; it’s Keatsian, but without the elegance and the erudition. I thought this kind of despairing preoccupation with romantic love was really touching the first time I read through it, but now I think that it’s probably immoral. What kind of world would this be if everyone simply turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed by Capitalism’s beef-cakey Aryan corporate supermen, and turned rather to one another for some of the old ars amatoria? ARSE AMATORIA, say I! This is the world in which we live! Personal pleasures are unequivocally privileged above social justice. Well, the world is going to hell in a hand basket – bring on the Kingdom of God. And while we wait, SEX PICNIC!!!!1 I am outraged at the orgiastic culture in which I regularly indulge. I am outraged at myself.

One of my ex-boyfriends thinks that Rorschach was right – never compromise, even in the face of Armageddon. (I think that if that ex-boyfriend had ever compromised, we might have had an easier time.) Rorschach was right, although he lacked teh basic faculties of reason, and was only right by accident and consequently was not right at all. Obviously, you can’t just blow up a ton of people to spare future suffering when future suffering is an inevitability in any case; Rorschach only got the first clause. Very irregular in his personal ethics! Ate beans, though. Mmmm.

And then, Dr. Manhattan… Cold, blue, naked Dr. Manhattan, utterly devoid of moral sense, yearns to extend his unfeeling hand for the betterment of humanity, is made out of radiation, and somehow manages to be appalled by his own capacity for destruction whilst simultaneously harboring feelings of disinterest and/or revulsion for teh human pplz. Moore, I think, is trying to get at the inhumanity of progress and the atomic age, but has really made of Manhattan a simulacrum for most academics and all medical students. DM’s dubious ethics negate the moral highground with which he is consumed, and the perversion of which results in his removal of himself from teh planet. I hate guys like that.

Ah, but this is what I hate most about Watchmen! It’s filled with good things and interesting characters and it begs for discourse, but when it comes down to it, the things you say about Watchmen are much more interesting than the experience of it. I was bored during the film. I went back to the graphic novel. Unimpressed. I think in the hands of a better artist… maybe then it would have been delicious. Maybe Dostoevsky should have written it. As it now stands, that it’s considered one of best novels of the 20th c…. Srsly? R U 4 Rlz?!

From my notes.

So, I’ve been working on something really difficult and pretentious. It was going really well. I was really working the difficult and archaic form. And then I found this in my notes.

“Who, being accustomed to brevity
Could bear the infinite, perfect pleasure?
I, accustomed to the uncertainty,

And the horrors legion, and the measure
of the middle class, the two dollar beers,
the sunshine on the lawn, the sun-warmed fur

Of Bobo
But no, it was more like the dirt yard,
The 40, the Bobo
That lurked within myself.”

WTF?!?!?!?!

I must confess.

Today I got really silly and submitted several of my poems to the New Yorker. (And not even under a pseudonym.) This is among the more ridiculous things I’ve done for a number of reasons, none of which are worth mentioning.