It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Reading

Number one I found a worm in my poop. Number two I've got insect bites over my fingers that hurt and feel as thought I'm wearing gloves if I make a fist. Other than that, things are pretty peachy. I'm not dealing with the pains I had before and I just took some stuff to de-worm myself this morning. I maimed a spider the other day and am hoping that it was the culprit of the finger biting and that he'll fucking stop it.

There was a fire across the way a couple days back and everybody gathered into the alley and waited for the firemen who got screamed at by some woman for taking 20 or 30 minutes to respond to the call. I had some bread in my hand and offered it to Bruce who said who could eat when people could be dying inside. I went inside and made myself an egg sandwich and mounted the terrace, where Ian and Neville were watching the fire while listening to the Sex Pistols or somesuch punk. Ian said he'd videotaped some of it, I asked if his camera had audio to get "God save the Queen" in the shot.

I've been hanging out with Bruce lately, he owns a shop just next door to the Hotel Andaluz and is a curious mix of Moroccan and North Atlantic mentalities. He is especially Moroccan in regards to gender relations, telling me how "we" (men) are better than "them" (women) because "they" cheat on "us" more than "we" do on "them". His support for this arguement? Men can't go home and have sex with their wives after having affair, because if you "sleep really good" with a woman one day, you can't with another, and so he would be found out by the wife. He'll say a lot of things and respond to questions in such a way thay you can't tell if he didn't understand, he's dodging the question, or he just wasn't listening.

Farid just told me how he got a letter from the police saying he has to pay 200 euros to stay out of jail. (Aside to the audience: What Farid doesn't know is that his wife Béa told Jake about this piece of paper one or two weeks ago, and that it is false. sshhhhh.) I directed the conversation to the money he still owes me and put the squeeze on him a bit. He goes off for a few minutes and comes back, the while I've been thinking about which angle to take if he outright asks me for more money (Incredulous anger and proclaimations about going to the police? Cool reference to the paper as a fake?). So he comes back and says, get this, you know when I first looked at the paper, I thought it was saying I was going to have to go to jail if I don't pay this amount, but it turns out it's for my marriage certificate, it has to do with that, so I was relieved. Good, I said, good for you, it's much better that way. And it was.

The metaphor of earth is persistent in my mind. Digging for earth being an acknowledgement of the object of search/desire/movement being the search/desire/movement itself; and then this newly articulated desire of mine to "go underground" or "subterranean" seems to be one of yearning to realize this narcissism in living it out, desiring desire. Immersion in "earth," here, is to be consumed by consuming, an end inquiry unless inquiry is its own end. The odd turn in this metaphor is that it is one of the deathwish, living underground as burial and surrender which throws this eros/thanatos paradox (being completely subsumed by life, the dissipation of the self in life itself) into divine lighting, where one can be the medium through which life/God moves by becoming becoming (both passive/closed in being a medium, and active/open in becoming into becoming); but this modality is already in place and is already recognizing, dissimulating, and mistaking itself in life performing itself, so what am I whining about? Practically, the metaphor I desire means for me to leave be all striving and enjoy being as being, be useless. Useless, my own end. But I am not myself, everything is more than it is, nothing is just what it is; that is to say, not enjoying being as being is part of enjoying being as being, and second-order thought is a false divorce from the immediacy of narcissism. This motion was an appeal to aligning interests and for self-presence and immediate (unmitigated) experience to desire themselves unknowingly and without further reflection. What it seems to me to be at present moment is the easy flowing logic of acceptance making a bid for more headspace by allying itself with my desire to discover and experiment with ever more modalities of desiring/becoming, the effective ends of which being the creation of a space both internal and spatiotemporal to pursue this logic further, a space specially suited to the logic of acceptance in the presence of as few obstacles to acceptance (including acceptance of obstacles of acceptance) as possible--like a monastary. Going subterranean and useless as disavowal of responsibility to anything other than living immediate life immediately, in the here and now moment, where it can either vanquish protracted and deferring time-life, or, what is more likely, accept a compromise in which it finds greater expression in the web of logics through which I operate than it does at present moment. This project wouldn't so much be running away from difficulties as an attempt to purchase the timespace to further develop the capacity to willingly submit to life, to appreciate it for what it is. I suppose I'm already working on it, but not to the extent demanded of me by the metaphor. Not yet, if ever.