Sake Mobile Ices

Slowing down

Back to Evreux, the hometown. After 5 years, I’m used to that non stop coming and going. What I’m not used to is to leave C. every time. She’s back in Lyon and I’m glad she is — she needs it — however … it feels so bizarre to feel the time slow down at night, when she’s not around.

Must be the reason why I wrote when I was a late teen; that slowness was favorable at such activities… besides, I had nothing better to do. I’m grateful I had that in my life. I still has those instant of slowness but as my main job is to write and write and write… let’s say I don’t feel like writing anything else. Paradoxes. I still have the need to blog, which is a good thing I suppose.

What is missing in my life is imagination. I don’t mean imagination as in “trying to solve problems” or be creative and all that doubletalk bullshit. I mean imagination as in day fucking dreaming. Something I haven’t done in a while. Day dreaming about places I’ll never go to except in my mind; or meeting some bizarre people in even weirder situations. I miss Kaede, I think. And Josh, and Gabe too. Maybe the two Soren(s) as well, but they’re different. They’re all different.

I wrote last year at that period something called fourteen ten; I ought to publish it here for if I don’t, it’ll never be published and will rot somewhere in some clunky storage device that will end up destroying itself; like the rest of our time’s gadgets. I think I’m tired of all those things that can’t last. Again, paradoxical in the way that we try to extend our lives while we reduce the longevity of our products. Talk about preparing ourselves to mourn and let go.

I could make a beautiful parallel with our sentimental lives.

Guess I just did.

On the brighter side of things, I’m almost done writing my paper… which is probably going to relieve me of a shitload of stress. I might have the clarity I lacked last summer to read all those things I have to read — Lovecraft, Alighieri, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Wells and God knows how many more. Derrida and Heidegger… but I’ll save them for later; I had enough philosophical things in my life for this summer and maybe fall.

I’m pretty sure I’m scared deep down to start a P.h.D. next year — provided everything works out in June. I think I’m even more scared to take the agrégation exam… but, oh well, I’ve done it this far. Might as well push it a bit further… the only risk I take is to actually pass the exam and have a PhD.

I talked about slowing down at the beginning, remember? Guess all that shit made time go back to normal…

Night folks. Sleep tight.

I will.

“You’re Lost Little Girl”

To the question: can I still have the will to write anything after writing all week for my mémoire? I guess you got the answer.

   Man, I’m so fucking tired of writing already — and to think I’ll have to keep that rhythm for the next 5 weeks is already killing me. The good news being that, hell, we’re only at the beginning (sort of) of April, which means I still have a month… so it appears to be doable. I almost wrote half of a part in a week, I can probably keep up next week and since the third part should be a reflection about what I say in the first two part in light of their own conclusion, it should be easier to write than all the shizzle I did before. But God damn it, my brain hurts right now…

   The worst part is probably that apart from writing my mémoire and the occasional geeking I do to relax — and sports, okay — my days are all about routine; even though I live with my gf, a situation that should provide all sorts of chaotic situations … but does not. It feels good to have found someone like her; the one kind of woman who actually make you love them more, and not doubt whether there’s something wrong with you… or them. It’s all about personnal interests I guess. 

   I remember a time when I used to see the world as a vast scope of every kind of Machiavelli possible. I’m glad to have switched from that perspective to the more comfortable one of people are just fucking lost in this world. If I had a penny for every time I can feel that feeling in people’s eyes or actions… well, I’d have a lot of them. There’s also the fact that when you can see the bigger picture, it makes the world a lot easier to bear. And I wish I could write hundreds of words about that topic (and I probably could) but to be honest, that’d be a waste of time.

   Well, time for the next 400 words to be written in that damn dissertation. No time to waste, hombre!

An Homage to Ginsberg

In the name of identity I committed the crime of the century [1]; In the name of identity you, I, he, she, we created monsters; monsters born out of the 2^nd world war: the post-everything: post-industrial, post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-coital, post-mortem, post-office, post-it, spontaneous prose [2] and then the beat itself broke free from freedom and liberty.      

Words that I type and re-type are those Ginsberg once or twice typed, in this lifetime or another [3], those that always come back, those that don’t work, those that say more than they intend to, those we read in retrospect, those we read before they appear before our eyes, those that don’t exist, those we hallucinate when on some drugs or other ecstasy that will only be known by the hipsters that died long ago from them.

And sandwiches, those the hipsters ate back in the forties and fifties, those that included meat, inches long of meat and dirty assholes [4] and bones and teeth and sweat and eyes closed and brides and bridegrooms [5] and naked lunches [6] with some closeted acquaintance that should come out of closet some five years later  [7]. And there had been some sandwiches that have been eaten in madhouses by the best minds [8] of Ginsberg’s generation – and ours! – playing ping-pong while undergoing electroconvulsive therapy and hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy and who left that place alone and haggard, blind to their poetic vision [9]; left to stare either at the blank horizon or the immediate wall of their consciousness. No more middle-distance visions [10] of poetry for them, no more identity except the one from medicated norm-apathy.

Eli Eli Lama Sabachtani [11] the poet said when raging, crying, messianic and all powerful, “dominating the whole room [12]” full of queers and princesses and people consumed by Moloch [13] the almighty! Moloch! Moloch the mind who leaves people in the nightmarish reality. Moloch, who repetition is the motif of the consummation of the human mind by the human mind. Moloch, who lies restless in poems, having no origins but the one of language itself [14].

But the poet also found holiness. Holiness from the mind to the body and everything else that probably went straight to Heaven in Eternity or Eternity in Heaven; somewhere you can find all those artists that should have rot in Hell by religion standards but who, because of their incline to want freedom in nothing and everything and dogma too, should, in Ginsberg’s mind, go to Heaven.

So come into the Green Automobile [15] and roll over the pavement and highways [16] from Denver to New York [17], but on your way don’t forget to smell the stink of Paterson [18]’s caricature of grotesque human beings, the greed, the burning desires and cruel optimisms [19] that drove Ginsberg insane for the Peyote God’s solidities [20] or a pound of Marijuana or enough heroin to die on the cross in L.A. and make his last breath in Denver [21].

Freedom will never die as long as people will disagree… and everything is going to the beat. [22]

Sport

What a downer to know the word is derived from French itself derived from English.

   Re-reading my previous notes about what endurance taught me — notes I wrote a year ago, maybe more … time flies these days — made me want to re-write about sport, endurance and what it taught me.

   I think time weakened my hubris. I do not feel the need to deliver a message regarding sport and how important it should be in everyone’s life — despite the fact it should be, to some extent, a real important part of their life. No, I think I am passed this point. I finally understood another quote by Thoreau, namely:

   ”If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.”

   So I run (Mondays, Wednesdays), I bike (Tuesdays, maybe), I swim (Friday, from time to time) and that would be it. I do core exercise as much as possible, with the aim of doing them daily. This discipline is needed to be able to witness the changes and improvements you make. I know that one month ago I could not have run a 6,5k without having a hard time at the end; let alone doing it at 10kph. It may not be much, but — and it pains me to confess this — I have a very bad endurance to begin with; which is why I started this whole business of running in the first place.

   I also think I am less angry at the world. I think that it is largely due to my girlfriend Constance, whom lives with me since last September. It was very, very hard at first; mostly due to the fact that our previous neighbor (we moved in January) was a unemployed drunk with a tendency to listen to shitty music or shitty tv (which one is worse? the bets are open) at a volume so high that I really felt that the fucker was in the room with us.

   This might come out of nowhere, but in a previous post regarding endurance, I did declare that I finally understood why “corporations” were to eager to give us all those shiny sport equipment; something that was less about money than actually helping people get things that will prevent injuries. The psychological attempt to make us brainless consumers can only work when you don’t see it; or can’t see it. There are also the addicts; for those I have no advice… may you find the reason of your addiction and get rid of it, be it amazing deals or seasonal sales. It is just there to tempt you, but trust me, there is nothing — nothing —that pushes you to buy but yourself, you see.

   All in all, what I re-learned through exercising regularly is that I know how to focus on my studies again, without being tempted by social media and other time-wasting “things,” be them websites, video-games or articles to read on Wired magazine or The New Yorker. Great magazines, by the way, I really recommend you to subscribe to them. And hell, I don’t even get paid to say that!

   Speaking of these devils, that article about prosthetic limbs in the latest wired mag is not going to read itself, is it?

   Cheers for reading folks, it has never been about you at all.

I will not put a title to this note. It shall remain a sans-title note. It shall not multiply in death, in the deaths of the name. 

   It’s been so long I let myself go through the rejuvenating process of writing whatever comes to my mind. I do write these days — more than I ever did in a sense, since I gotta write my m.a. final paper — but I think a part of me forgot how to write what I have in mind. What could define myself through my words.

   Or perhaps I honed my writing skill a bit too much to truly understand what it is I am trying to say. I remember a time when I could deliver a powerful message in a few words; a message that both was from the heart and from my mind. I think doing this kind of diploma is messing with my brain and sense of identity; all the more since I am writing about someone who died, an other who haunts me more profoundly than anyone ever before.

   I became careful with words since the beginning of the v.2 of my paper. Their edges are so sharp you can cut your brain in so many pieces that you could lost it in less than a second.

   It is all about Icarus. In a way, I feel like Icarus: I want to reach the sun with my wax and feather wings … to only burn myself.

   I’ve got reasonable doubts regarding next year. The main doubt I have is a pure problem with my ego, or my hubris, c’est selon. But is it ever?
The real hubris problem is the double edged sword of ambition: on the one hand, I’ve got a chance few human beings have, all things considered: getting a PhD before my thirties. On the other: do I have such an ego so as to carry this out properly? Will I have the detachment necessary for such a task? Or am I going to make a tremendous mistake that could cost me a lot more than a few weeks of shame?

   I believe it is better not to over-think it. If anything, I should have the full coöperation of my mind to complete this objective without lacking either focus or willpower. It is going to be one of the hardest challenge I will probably have to face.

   Let’s hope that it will be for the better.