Freud and Books

Three words create the title. The first a name, a proper name. What then to evoke a proper name? In naming, in the proper name there is a death of sorts, but also a remembrance, an ethics of memory in the proper name that is only possible through death. Next word, a coordinating conjunction. Useful and necessary, but why here, why not any other conjunction. To decide it to limit, is to shut out possibilities, but then it is necessary, no? Finally books. That is to come.


That first paragraph was just my Derrida-esque evaluation of the artificiality of titles. Kidding, but seriously.

Went to my favourite bookstore yesterday. It is my favourite simply because it is within walking distance and the people are great. An old building with oddly tudor-style archetecture. Very out of place in my town. Rows and rowds of shelves housing books there is, everything jam packed on the shelves. I walk in, and the first thing I hear is Bob Dylan on an old radio. Sitting at the nesk, one of the owners of the door, the sign out front baring his name. He is a wiry oild man, late 50s or early 60s perhaps. The colour draining from the tips of his black hair, creating a crown-like effect on his head. He was speaking to a patron of the stoor. The man translated books from German, or so he says. Mr MClure bag nto indulge him, then started to talk about music. First Ray Charles, then to New Orleans style jazz...but then the conversation of which I was privy took a turn. Mr. McClure brought up the fact that we forget so easily our past, that the racial tensions of the 1960s is not dead, but rather forgotten under the auspice of every street named after Martin Luther King, every high school, every award. They don't remind us, they force us to forget the tension that is our past. The thought of John Kennedy, a war hero, battle harden, having to call the Gov'ner of Alabama to get him to allow a single black girl into a public school, his voice trembling in terror, that is what is forgotten. What is forgotton is the need that many black americans felt, to arm themselves against hatred and terror wrecked by felow citizens. How soon we forget.

I bought The Imposible by Georges Bataille. Brilliant book.

T.I. seems to be acting symptomatically on his new album. Why? How? What do you mean? Acting symptomatically because of the trauma of his early life. The song, "Dead and Gone" seems to demonstrate this point very well. On the track he seems to want to kill off his "old" self, to represent a break with the past and thus acreate a new idenitty for which the issues of the old self are not a problem. This is simply a method of cooping. He cannot come to terms with the past and thus create a new me which is exempt from the past. The abuses of the past didn't occur to this new me, that was the old me. This break with the self is a near schizophrenia of sorts. How can we come to terms with our idenity if we seek to create a new one each time something bad happens?

Witty Title

I should be reading. Always something left to read. The world around me is completely inauthentic. Not really, well just a little. More importantly, is that I am living an inauthentic life for some reason. I just can't get out of it.


I remeber one time, I went to the low country. Down to the poor parts near the coast, where they still speak a creole kind of gullah. It is a poetry of sorts, just to listen to them speak. Because they are an insular type, I hate the ubiqiutous they. The people who live in that region are wary of strangers, especially tourists. I don't blame them. Most people point and take photos like they are at some kind of living history or a zoo. I decided I wanted to get close to these people. I took my camera and printed up some made up creditials. I told them I was from National Geographic and I was a photojournalist. I was doing a story about coastal US cultures. That worked well. I told them I was there to find out about their culture and their history, how and why they do things. It was fun. They were accepting of me.

I think that is part of the problem. Some people think hoping right in the middle of another culture is some sort of novelty experience. To be the token, if you will. That isn't the way at all. There is no respect in that. There isn't an ethics. But to learn, to experience as one might, from and through the eyes of another, while maintaining that respect, never making a mockery of it. I don't think people realise that very often. When you jokingly become that strange token bystander you are making a mockery of people. You are invading their life, their culture, their dreams as though you are some god-like deity that can just drop in. Have a good time, laugh it off later.

I know exactly why this bothers me, but I shan't go into it futher.

To steal from Derrida

"If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy."-Richard Yates


Always begin with a quote, or maybe a poem, that way you can frame everything you plan to write in words that are not your own. But in the end, whose words are their own. I was wondering while driving, yes driving, I hate to have to do it, but we can't be picky, just falling into our own reality. ion has been written. We as humans experience a great deal of things. With the mass market and media we "see" more than before. Hence the culture of the 20th and 21st cave been shown everything, from the Holocaust up to the cure for diseases once thought unthinkable, wars, peace, scandals. That being said, it takes words to fit those actions. That is where the art is.

I hat Atlanta. I love it. We have a love hate relationship. The city is so aesthetically unappealing it is funny. Went to a Shakespeare dinner theatre. It was interesting to say the least. Polonius and I made eye-contact and I did one of my awkward facial expressions and made him react. It was fun. However, despite the silly cast and subpar performance.

The real show, the stagee, if you will lay in the street itself. In the city. Cities breathe, you know. Outside of the theatre, in a back alley there was 10-15 homeless people. Half of them drinking 40s (cheap malt liquor). Some of them working as window cleaners for an extorted buck. Half of them asking for change, inquiring about the show and asking for charity, a car ride. Then seeing the drug deals and the hand offs, that is the interesting thing. The theatre crowd mixing with the drug dealers. Now that is life if I have ever heard of it. There is a poetry in that. The poetry of the world, the streets, the word, a strange mix, I will admit, but it is real. Very real. More real than the people who never see it.

Just to say hello

So here goes one for fun. Always busy. Only time to write is now. I love to be spontaneous. Planned spontaneaity if that is possible and not too oxymoronic. Have a schedule enough to get everything done but still have the time and ability to go out and just something.

For instance, last Sunday night, I was painfully bored. I do not know why, perhaps way too much reading. I had the idea to go chase the sun, so I did. I hopped in my car, which I have not driven for some time now and just took off west. While going down the highway, the sun leading my way, I spotted a road. Freshly paved, the asphalt still dark, but eerily secluded. It called to me, it cried to me. I obliged it. I road for some time and when it opened up I was in the middle of a road that split a horse farm. Acres and acres of rolling hills dotted with horses and quaint fences. It was beautiful. Granted I could not share what I saw with anyone--windows down and music blaring, it was wonderful. Much the same, I went walkabout Saturday. No one was around so I just took off walking. I went to the book store and browsed then I kept going. Just taking everything in.

I enjoy that. A good deal actually. That and buying people silly gifts that are so practical that eventually they can't live with out them. But that is the ultimate gift isn't it. Tryannical almost. For some reason I always feel that I am just a dot on people's lives and that I will fade away from memory. I don't know why I think that, but I do regardless.