The following is a collage made from editors’ diaries.
In June, I dreamed of the literary scene:
The founding editor of a famous New York magazine has invited me and a friend of his to drive up with him and stay at his immense, Stephen King-like country house in New England, which is still shadowed over by the recent death of its patriarch.
I’m unable to stop returning to how Socrates basically attempts to solve the symbol grounding problem via onomatopoeia in the Cratylus.
The editor is initially enthusiastic for us to visit, but once the three of us arrive at the estate, his mood changes. He traipses broodingly from one massive room to the next. Rarely speaks. On the walls of the home: glistening trophy plates, moose antlers, ski equipment collecting dust. I begin experiencing allergies – am told that a very old cat is roaming about the house somewhere.
Our functional belief in, basically, sympathetic magic is so strong, we default to the latter in order to navigate a landscape of pathogens. * * * Door knobs are rising against me / small dark haired girls in masks.
The editor says out loud, to no one in particular, “If only I could stop myself from laughing for three days straight, like Ben Lerner, then I’d really be able to see something.”
I always lucid dream, but I don’t understand people who talk about lucid dreaming as defined by having control of the dream-world. I think that all public type activities “are their own reward,” as opposed to the baker who sabotages his business end by eating.
Some real rules for life, then: 1) cook your own meals 2) social life that doesn’t revolve around drinking or drugs 3) have some art in your home 4) read the local news 5) set a timer for 30 minutes and read Proust aloud alone while drinking a green tea honey n’ rye hot toddy. Very good!
I met a man from Rikers Island debate who seemed to have acquired, as a result of the debate classes, an irritating rationalism. However, I soon learned I was mistaken. It was a product of his horror of being tried for armed robbery and living on Rikers Island for a crime he didn’t commit. “You shouldn’t have opinions and let emotions get in the way” he said, “It’s just the facts of my case. Just the facts.”
A radical says cooptation and a conservative says “woke capital”
Knowing you’re dreaming is one thing, being able to manipulate the dream-world in some external sense is entirely another. every day I’m in the waking world in cognizance that I’m here but with no expectation of being able to alter its narrative in any way other than banal, embodied intervention, and dreams are the same in my experience.
The new trend in jazz is to do with sound / But silent music is all around / It makes up the ground.
I’ll know it’s a dream but it would never occur to me to try to control it, the same way I know when I’m reading a book but I don’t want to control anything: I want to find out what happens. but I’m in it because I can do things.
I was hung up on “give up all you have” during outdoor Quaker meeting. By the end I couldn’t do much but try to be thankful for the impulse.
The self-denial required by a smiley TV personality is good preparation for violence. War is photographed in a different way than other kinds of suffering.
Jesus is just giving the shortest and simplest answer. If you only listen some of the time, and need a quick answer, that’s it. If you follow and listen your whole life, there’s more. The listening is the giving. Give your whole self! Get to know your teacher and the news won’t be so shocking!
