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“Although your idea of what someone else thinks of you is only paranoic, unreal, and illusionary, it is part of your relationship with the person, as much a part of it as the actuality of the person’s real thoughts”
Jack Kerouac, journals 6/48
We go through our lives in these shells of contained thought looking through a little peep holes trying to figure out the lay of the land from limited amount of information much of which we produce ourselves. And yet if you ask a person what s/he thinks about you it either sounds needy or manipulative, in which case people will either lie to preserve your dignity or make a vague statement or joke that gives you as little information as possible. I have to know someone a long time to have any real idea how they are feeling about me.
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I am reading “The Windblown World“, a compilation of Jack Kerouac‘s journals from 1947-1954. This is a man who thought about his life and struggled with the huge questions of existence, but he never seems to lose his naive wonder at it all.
” We are come onto this earth and we do not know what we are supposed to do, and in all the disorder and confusion, we cry out in our souls — “There must be truth for I myself am true!” Yet it is all false and foolish around us, and we, ourselves, are the falsest and most foolish, and oh what are we supposed to do?”
I know what he is talking about. The world always drags us away from truth and muddles things. A person can’t help, but cry out every now and then, at least if s/he is paying attention.
I also found this quote there.
“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake“
James Joyce (speaking through Stephen Dedalus)
It fits in nicely with the way I am feeling about the general trends in the world, but before we can wake up, we must first realize we are dreaming.
I am in a weird space these days. I come here every now and then. It is a space where my dreams don’t make sense and nothing I do or think about inspires me, where my life seems like a big annoying bully that keeps pulling my pants down and laughing. Why do I come here anyway? Basically I have nowhere else to go and no fuel for my vehicle. I am stuck in Lodi without a bus ticket, but I am writing again and that helps, even when I write this self-absorbed drivel. Just the act of putting something out there that seems like it has me as part of it, that will thankfully be ignored by the vast lucky majority of human beings, is somehow good for me. There already I am feeling a bit better.
I have a job that I like, but is not very stable and drives my wife crazy with its flaky way of paying me. I really would like to find another job, but have you looked for a job lately? My landlady (a well-meaning, clueless miserly woman; she probably has her reasons) came by today and gave us a month moving notice, even though we are very conscientious tenants. But, since she was lucky enough to inherit property, we live here and give her our money at her leisure. I told her our situation, Mary in school and me with my measly job, and that in August when Mary is working again we could find a place. I think I was able to get her to back off a little. We are taking no chances and are looking for a storage and trying to figure out where we could find a place that would rent to us at our income level. Mary has school to finish and a big test in July for her RN license, and then she has to get a job. She is already applying, but hasn’t heard back from anyone yet. She is under a lot of stress, which also sucks the serenity out of my life. Still I go to work and cope and come home and try to write and, most days, fail. Ideas have a hard time working their way through the groggy, edgy place that is my sleep deprived brain. I don’t sleep well when I am in these situations. Maybe if I write I can sleep. This is actually helping and I know I should do it more often, even though a post like this is likely to bore the hell out of most people. This is my place and it helps me; so here it is. This is where I am now. I hope to be moving soon into more plush accomadations that have a better view, but I will have to climb a bit to get there.
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Myriad Ways 