June 22: Really Tired, Arthur Rimbaud, "Evening Prayer"

I am really tired this evening after a long week of grading and writing and planning.

I tend to stay up very late at night, and I always get up early in the morning.  That's my life.  Now, getting to bed close to midnight and rising at 4:45 a.m. tends to wear a person down after a while.  After a few weeks, I usually have to just go to bed and sleep for a very long time.

I'm reaching that point, I think.  Maybe not tonight or tomorrow.  Soon.

Saint Marty has a little prayer from Rimbaud for tonight.

Evening Prayer

by:  Arthur Rimbaud

I spend my life sitting - like an angel
in the hands of a barber - a deeply fluted beer mug
in my fist, belly and neck curved,
a Gambier pipe in my teeth, under the air
swelling with impalpable veils of smoke.

Like the warm excrements in an old dovecote,
a thousand dreams burn softly inside me,
and at times my sad heart is like sap-wood bled
on by the dark yellow gold of its sweats.

Then, when I have carefully swallowed my dreams,
I turn, having drunk thirty or forty tankards,
and gather myself together to relieve bitter need:
As sweetly as the Saviour of Hyssops
and of Cedar I piss towards dark skies,
very high and very far;
and receive the approval of the great heliotropes.

March 13: F$#k You, Nice and Peaceful, Same Story

WARNING:  This post contains language that may be offensive to some readers.

That's the whole trouble.  You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any.  You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose.  Try it sometime.  I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you."  I'm positive, in fact.

Holden is right.  The world is full of "fuck yous."  You can't get away from them.  They're in schools and museums and cemeteries and churches.  Every day, I walk across the university campus, and, nine times out of ten, I will hear some student talking, sprinkling "fucks" and "fuck yous" into casual conversation.  Like Holden, I think that, when I die, someone at my funeral will be on a cell phone, whispering, "I won't be long.  I swear.  I swear.  Fuck you."

My worry this Wednesday is one that I carry around with me constantly.  Money.  Same story, different day.  My daughter is going to a dance competition in May.  She wanted to go to one last month, but we couldn't afford it.  She brought home the handout with the prices of the entry fees for the May competition last night.  Let's just say it was between "ouch" and "fuck you."  I sat on the couch, staring at the paper for about half an hour.  I could feel myself slowly slipping down the slopes of panic, but I held on and remained calm.

That's the way my life has been working for a while.  I get one bill taken care, take a deep breath to sigh with relief, and another collection note is thrust into my hands.  I've been moving from one "fuck you" to another "fuck you."  In fact, I'm surprised most invoices don't include those two words some place, as in:

Monthly Service Charge:          $2567.18
Monthly Tax:                                   420.22
Monthly Fee for Popcorn                36.13
Monthly Fee for Toilet Paper        320.15
Monthly Fee for Sleep                   543.80
TOTAL FUCK YOU                   $3887.48

I'm about ready to check into the hospital with Holden.  I can't think of anything more relaxing than having somebody tell you when to get up, eat, take your pills, make an ashtray, talk to a therapist, take some more pills, and go to bed.

Saint Marty'd be relaxed until the hospital sent him the bill, with a little note saying, "Due within ten fucking days."

This says it all...