(not · so) · Mystic · Writing · Pad

Now that I am finally graduating in the spring (six years, thank you very much), I keep getting information in the mail about student loan repayment.  A few letters came last week, which I promptly filed away without looking at them.  One came yesterday, however, that I decided to actually read, and actually look at the numbers.  After hyperventilating a little bit and coming pretty close to a panic attack, I realized that, with the interest rates especially on my private loans, I am probably never going to repay all of the debt.  I will most likely die in debt.  I realize that this is the fate of a good number of Americans; given that a college degree has become necessary in the workforce, coupled with the declining and perhaps now completely doomed economy, college graduates are in a difficult spot.  College is necessary, even if only for practical reasons, which, for the average individual who is not independently wealthy and does not come from money, means that debt is inevitable.  Inability to find a well-paying job after graduation leads to the inability to pay debt, either resulting in defaulting on payments or paying minimums, which barely cover interest.  It saddens me to think that I have spent six years educating myself at a major University--first out of practicality, then out of passion--only to bury myself in a hole out of which I will never emerge.  Sure, my grades are good and I have some strong contacts for graduate school, but is it worth the financial stress?  I think about the monthly payments I will have to start making in October, and I know that my income will need to be at least, at a minimum, triple what it is now.  

What will I even do for work?  It isn't like my degree is anything remotely practical in the sense that a business degree is practical.  Although, I guess I was never going for practicality.  I never had to worry about this kind of thing; my plan was always graduate school, nothing more to think about.  Now it seems that I am questioning that more and more.  Is that what I really want to do?  Will I even get accepted anywhere?  Is that just going to put me deeper in the hole?  If I were to get in somewhere, I would be able to defer my loan payments until completion of the program; however, a Ph.D in Comparative Literature or English doesn't seem to make me qualified for anything more than I am right now, except for teaching.  Do I really want to teach?  Yes.  Does the job outlook in my field scare the shit out of me?  Yes.  Humanities departments are always the first targets for budget cuts; it is happening at the U of M.  I see some of my instructors--ones that I respect very much, who have exceptional teaching skills, and a genuine concern for students--stuck in the position of a 'lecturer,' which basically means that they have all the responsibility of a tenured professor but about a third of the salary and none of the job security.  Despite their knowledge and teaching skills, they are often scrambling for supplemental income, taking additional positions at smaller colleges, and constantly worrying about whether they will have a job next semester.  I don't want to live like that.

Graduate school is certainly not off my radar; it is still something I want.  I am just second guessing it now more than ever.  Regardless of my decision, there will be a little over a year in between graduation and the potential beginning of a Ph.D program (I won't be applying until the fall).  I could stay in Minneapolis and try to fake myself into a position somewhere that pays well and hope that I can bullshit my way through a year without getting fired.  The chances of me even getting a well-paying job out here is quite slim, given my lack of qualifications and all the kids from CSOM who suck up the miscellaneous entry-level corporate positions before they are even graduated.  I could also move back to Buffalo.  The prospect of doing this make me want to swallow my own tongue, for various and sundry reasons I ought not delve into at this time.  I have to say, though, that living in Buffalo would have some perks: UB is one of my top graduate school choices, apartments are dirt cheap (shithole cities are good for that) as long as you don't mind the late night sound of the neighborhood crackwhore makin' dat cheeez and the occasional inconvenience of a stray bullet or two, and my aunt and uncle own a pretty successful athletic club there that is a potential source of employment.  

Is this the fate of the average 20-something?  Wondering where the fuck you're supposed to fit and how to support yourself once you get there? 

"The spiritual decline of the earth has progressed so far that people are in danger of losing their last spiritual strength, the strength that makes it possible to even see the decline (which is meant in relation to the fate of 'Being') and to appraise it as such.  This simple observation has nothing to do with cultural pessimism--nor with ant optimism either, of course; for the darkening of the world, the flight of the gods, the destruction of the earth, the reduction of human beings to a mass, the hatred and mistrust of everything creative and free has already reached such proportions throughout the whole earth that such childish categories of pessimism and optimism have long become laughable.  We are in the pincers.  Our people, as standing in the center, suffers the most intense pressure--our people, the richest in neighbors and hence the most endangered people, and for all that, the metaphysical people."  Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics

"'In ten thousand years, I'll bet you, this war, remarkable as it may seem to us at present, will be utterly forgotten . . . Maybe here and there in the world a handful of scholars will argue about its causes or the dates of the principal hecatombs that made it famous . . . Up until now those are the only things about men that other men have thought worth remembering after a few centuries, a few years, or even a few hours . . . I don't believe in the future, Lola . . .'  When she heard me flaunting my shameful state like that, she lost all sympathy for me . . . Once and for all she put me down as contemptible, and decided to leave me without further ado.  It was too much.  When I left her that evening at the hospital gate, she didn't kiss me.  Evidently she thought that a condemned man might have no vocation for death was too much for her.  When I asked her how our pancakes were doing, she did not reply."  Louis Ferdinand Celine, Journey to the End of the Night

In an effort to reduce the amount of ridiculous, self-indulgent, 'I-am-depressed-for-no-reason' posts, I haven't updated this journal in a little while; however, I now find myself with something worthy of writing, which may also prove to be self-indulgent and ridiculous but is nonetheless important.  I am still depressed for no reason, still full of unmediated angst, but I am sad today for a distinct reason: my father called me yesterday to inform me that my dog died.  He apparently had a tumor in his stomach that ruptured; the vet said that he was bleeding internally and would die within a day or so.  My father decided to have him euthanized rather than let him suffer any longer. 

I have only witnessed my father--a big, burley, retired roofer who worked with his hands all day and ate red meat and beer for dinner every night--weep like a child on two occasions: once when our other dog got hit by a car and once about two weeks after his and my mother's divorce, when the loneliness finally set in.  He cried to me on the phone yesterday.  He said, "Coco [the dog] walked down the hallway, collapsed on the floor, and pissed on himself.  I took him to the vet.  He ran a few tests and said there was nothing that could be done.  I said goodbye to him when after the vet laid him on an operating table and gave him the shot.  I pat his head and rubbed his belly.  He turned his head, looked at me, and wagged his tail as his eyes rolled back in his head."

I can say without hesitation that Coco was my father's best friend.  He died at eleven years old; and instead of being just a family pet, I know that my father considered him another child.  He is now mourning one of his children, the child that is always home, always by his side ,and always needed him. 

As much as I want to say to myself, "Death happens, things die.  Life is nothing more than a progression toward its own end.  He was just a dog; he had no self-consciousness, no sense of the world beyond instinct," I can't.  Perhaps I do believe all those things, but Coco was part of me, even though I haven't seen him in about a year and a half.  I will never forget watching him grow from a little puppy who never stopped running and barking to a fat, old, grey-faced dog who spent his days napping in every room in the house.  He was never unhappy.

It is coming time (already) to start prioritizing schoolwork: 20+ page seminar paper, major revision and expansion of previous paper, numerous small assignments, about 300-400 pages of fiction reading a week, about 100-200 pages of theoretical/philosophical reading a week, lots of theory I have not previously read, a couple presentations, preparation is key, which means reading ahead in classes, always staying three steps ahead of the plan, sleep later.

Everyone needs to read Shirley Jackson's short story entitled "The Lottery." 

Why does Kant feel the need to discuss the differences between the beautiful, the aesthetic, and the sublime all at the same time.  Paragraphs are good.  The writing is so organized and chaotic at the same time: proposition, support, proposition that builds on previous support, iehngjhbfguebhsgijkaehgiusebgiuhbe.  Sure, I have paranoiac tendencies, but I really think he is trying to give me and aneurysm.

You used to me my haven; now you are just another place for me to be distracted.  There is a guy at the table next to be--some wanna-be gangster Minnesota rapper douche bag, sporting and American Eagle button up shirt and frosted hair--who is listening to music on a walkman (not kidding) and rapping along with it.  Every now and then he takes a break to call someone and show off his b-boy skillzzz by rapping to them over the phone.  A mother and a young child--probably a few months old--are sitting on the other side of me.  Am I the only one who thinks it is strange when parents hold extensive conversations with their children in public?  I mean, I get the whole language acquisition thing, but damn, there is no need to blab on and on about nothing to a baby, especially in public, and especially when you insist on referring to the child as 'drool monster, and 'booger butt.'  Then there's the breastfeeding: now breastfeeding in public does not bother me...in theory.  In practice, however, there is something grotesque about sight of a small human sucking on a big swollen tit, striped with veins and nipples all puffed out like freshly baked muffins.  The baby pulls her mouth away from the tit, resulting in a strand of milky saliva stretching from the red, swollen nipple to the child's toothless mouth.  How could I not watch such a spectacle?  I don't know if the imagery bothered me as much as it got my Freudian crank turning.  At some point, that breast will be taken away, and that little red haired mass of human substance will join the rest of us in that horrible, unending quest to get it back.  Hold on to that secreting flesh ball as long as you can, little one. 

After working for many hours today, I think I have my list of potential graduate schools narrowed down to a manageable list:

UPenn

Emory

UC Irvine

UC Santa Cruz

UCLA

Cornell

Duke 

University of Florida

University of Buffalo

All of the programs are either Comparative Literature or English programs that allow a focus on theory--i.e., are not concerned with making me take seminars on Medieval British literature or some crap like that (some people might love it, I don't).  All programs were chosen based on their resident faculty.  UPenn Emory, and UB are home to some of the best (probably THE best) Lacanian theorists in the country; UCI, UCSC, UCLA, and UF all have really interesting programs with a strong faculty interest in psychoanalysis; and Cornell and Duke have both awesome programs and the prestige of the name (I'm not above whoring myself to go to Cornell).  I thought about trying for the big Ivy League schools--I have a strong enough GPA, my letters of recommendation and statement of purpose should be strong, but I'm not sure if I have the connections (possibly a few at Yale)--but their programs tend to be so traditional.  It's just that all the Ivy League Ph.D's get the rockstar jobs.  That's fine, though.  I'd rather get into a good program with good faculty and not put myself through hell for 7+ years. 

The one school that just kills me is University of Buffalo.  For so long people have told me to look at their program, that it is perfectly suited for my interests.  I have avoided doing so in fear that they may be right.  I moved away from western NY, vowing never to return (even Cornell is cutting it a bit close); now I find myself face to face with the realization that this school has a program that will let me study exactly what I want, not to mention that it is one of THE places to study Lacanian psychoanalysis in the U.S., with many highly distinguished faculty members in the field.  Fuck, can I really live in Buffalo?  Some people love it, but I don't think it is the place for me.  I guess it would be good since there is not much to do there, so I can focus on school, and rent is insanely cheap.  Also, I think that while growing up, especially in high school, I really fetishized the concept of 'somewhere else,' the 'other place' where everything is so much better, but Minneapolis is a shitty place in its own way. 

Things I will not miss about Minneapolis: upper Midwestern passive-aggression, 'Minnesota nice' (my ass...that just means that people talk shit about you behind your back because they don't have the balls to say it to your face), the highly, HIGHLY overrated local hip hop scene, air that is so cold that you feel genuine pain when you breathe, waiting 20 minutes for a bus in said air, people who choose to use a bicycle as their only mode of transportation...in the winter (saving the world from global warming one broken bone at a time), the ridiculous Minnesota accent, people imitating the accent as if it is funny, and most of all, the complete and utter lack of good Italian food (I stopped eating dairy years ago, and I still crave Favorite's pizza on an almost daily basis).

Man, I'm pissy tonight.

I shared a table at Spyhouse today with a woman working on a translation of Juvenal's Satires.  We got to talking about grad school when she asked me, "So, what is your 'project?'"  I laughed and died a little inside.  I have no project, but I need one; at least, I need to act like I have one on a statement of purpose.  There is a substantial childish part of me that just wants to do what I want and have the world leave me alone; however, academia is about marketability, and if I want to play the game, I suppose I have to sell my wares just like everyone else.  The problem is that I don't have much interest in what is in vogue right now in the nebulous world of cultural studies/comparative literature.  

On a completely different note, I am currently looking at a man whose desktop background is a picture of the word "Jesus" surrounded by a heart that someone traced in sand.  Now, I (try to) respect (most) religious beliefs, but come on, what a tool.  Apparently he loves Jesus so much that he feels it necessary to be reminded every time he opens his computer.  I think this is why I hate people and why people hate me.

In "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious," Lacan states, "In a concern for method, we can try to begin here with the strictly linguistic definition of I as signifier, where it is nothing but the shifter or indicative that, qua grammatical subject of the statement, designates the subject insofar as he is currently speaking.  That is to say, it designates the enunciating subject, but does not signify him.  This is obvious from the fact that there may be no signifier of the enunciating subject in the statement--not to mention that there are signifiers that differ from I, and not only those that are inadequately called cases of the first person singular, even if we add that it can be lodged in the plural invocation or even in the Self [Soi] of auto-suggestion."

Then--with nods to Saussurean structuralism, Hegelian dialectic, Cartesian subjectivity, and possibly Heideggerian ontology--he attempts to make your brain explode: "Being of non-Being, that is how I comes on the scene as a subject who is conjugated with the double aporia of a veritable subsistence that is abolished by his knowledge, and by a discourse in which it is death that sustains existence."

 

I find myself at work early this morning after a series of dreams ranging from erotic--the subjects of which were Doug, my hot Wedge boyfriend, and the actor Javier Bardem, who plays Juan-Antonio in "Vicki Christina Barcelona," the new Woody Allen film--to just plain anxiety-ridden.  It was my third night staying in my new apartment, and I still can't kick the insomnia; I can only hope it goes away by the time school starts, but really I know that school will just make it worse.  Maybe not, though.  Maybe school will give me the structure I crave.  I mean, who knows?  Perhaps something glorious will occur.

Truly, things have been looking up for ol' Tom: I have a new apartment with a friend and academic colleague, my grant and loan money is about to arrive, and I got promoted at work.  All of this scares the hell out of me.  It won't last, and I find myself unable to enjoy it, as I am just waiting for it to fall apart in front of me.  I know it won't be that drastic; it will be a slow process, but it will happen. 

For the first time this summer I am feeling real sadness about not going to Burning Man this year.  I spent the months of July and August last summer on the brink of a panic attack--barely sleeping, barely eating, living on coffee, cigarettes, and clonazepam.  Now it is a year later, and I still don't sleep, I eat too much, drink too much coffee, smoke too much, and have built an infuriating tolerance to clonazepam.  I have to say that I miss that feeling.  I miss the fear.  I miss the bipolarity of feeling as high and low as I have ever felt in my life, of being in the desert with tens of thousands of people and feeling completely isolated, covered with dust and wanting to cry.  I think that next week I will start urinating in an empty pickle jar, just for old time's sake.

After countless interviews (okay, three, but it feels like countless) for a promotion at work, it finally happened: I am now the weekend receptionist at the Wedge Co-op.  I don't get much of my modicum of self-worth from my job, and this certainly isn't a promotion that will make me any kind of money (I did get a small raise, though) or fringe benefits that I already have, but it will do one thing for me: get me off the fucking register on the weekends.  I will probably still keep one short shift as a cashier, as I do get along well with some of my co-workers down there.  I now have a computer, a cubicle, and all the miscellaneous office work that is thrown at me.  One of the best perks: I don't have to listen to the gut wrenching muzak played throughout the rest of the store.

"M. de Rollebon was my partner; he needed me in order to exist and I needed him so as not to feel my existence.  I furnished the raw material, the material I had to re-sell, which I didn't know what to do with: existence, my existence.  His part was to have an imposing appearance.  He stood in front of me, took up my life to lay bare his own to me.  I did not notice that I existed any more, I no longer existed in myself, but in him; I no longer saw my hand writing letters on the paper, not even the sentence I had written--but behind, beyond the paper, I saw the Marquis who had claimed the gesture as his own, the gesture which prolonged, consolidated his existence.  I was only a means of making him live, he was my reason for living, he had delivered me from myself.  What shall I do now? [...] I jump up: it would be much better if I could only stop thinking.  Thoughts are the dullest things.  Duller than flesh.  They stretch out and there's no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth.  Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished words, a sketchy sentence which constantly returns: 'I have to fi...I ex...Dead...M. de Roll is dead...I am not...I ex...' [...] My thought is me: that's why I can't stop.  I exist because I think...and I can't stop myself from thinking. [...] I am.  I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think?  I don't want to think any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I...because..."  --Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

This is why I love Sartre.  He manages to summarize the role of the Other in Hegel's lord/bondsman dialectic, Lacan's idea of desire as desire for/of the Other (which has its roots in Hegel) and the alienated subject, Freud's thoughts on writing in the "Mystic Writing Pad," Derrida's notion of linguistic differance, Mueller's interpretation of "I want to be a machine" in Hamlet, and finally a funny little play on Descartes' cogito ergo sum--all of which was done in three pages.  Bravo, Sartre.  Fucking bravo.  How the hell am I supposed to sleep tonight?

I good friend of mine had a dream recently that she thought would be of interest to me...and it was.  I thought it would be interesting to share the dream along with my attempt at analysis (posted with her permission, of course)

I have been thinking about it a lot the past few days.  When I look back on it, there is so much more that I should have included, but I think I'll save that for later.

I never read much as a kid.   I always thought it was boring, but like most twelve year old boys who are more interested in farting and boobies than the printed page (don't get me wrong, I still like farts and boobs), I had yet to find anything outside the seventh grade English curriculum that stimulated me enough to keep my interest.  My English teacher at the time was Ms. Gorman, a recent college graduate, mid twenties, and very pretty.  She included Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart on our reading list that year, a story that tweaked that hitherto unknown corner of my adolescent mind that really wanted to hear a good story about an evil eye, murder, and the haunting heartbeat of the ostensibly dead man under the floorboards--that return of the Real, the residue.  Ms. Gorman was nice enough to let me borrow a textbook she had from a college English class: a beautiful, hard-bound Modern Library edition of Poe's complete works in one volume.  I spent the next few weeks reading and re-reading the aforementioned story as well as his poetry.  In my impetuous excitement, worldly naivete, and subtle understanding of the capitalist market, I asked Ms. Gorman if she would consider selling me her book.  I can still remember her reaction: a hint of confusion gave way to the classic--and almost cliche, but no less valid and, I dare say, genuine--"I have done my job as a teacher" feeling of actual accomplishment, as she told me, "You can have it."

I kept the book all through high school, reading bits here and there, always thinking about how special a gift it is.  The inside cover is inscribed with Ms. Gorman's name and dorm address at Buffalo State College; underneath that, my name and address are printed in my seventh grade penmanship.  

I picked up the book tonight and flipped through the pages, examining her notes in the margins of various stories and my notes on the poetry.  I read though The Purloined Letter, a story I have not read before but found it to be one of the best. 

 

"To authenticate everything of the order of the imaginary in the subject is properly speaking to make analysis the anteroom of madness." (Jacques Lacan. Seminar III The Psychoses)  Once again, Lacan questions the very core of psychoanalysis while at the same time authenticating it through its very contradiction.  This quote is found toward the beginning of the third seminar, which starts with a short exploration of the goal of analysis as to understand.  It is this basic premise of analysis that Lacan deconstructs in a way: if analysis achieves its goal--that is, to understand the analysand's behavior, motivations, and psychic activity--then the analyst's couch would serve as a gateway to psychosis.  Insofar as psychosis/the end of desire/nonexistence/death essentially exposes the real aspects of the imaginary order and analysis essentially seeks to do the same, the work of analysis inadvertently works toward the psychoticization of the analysand.  Lacan points out this contradiction of motive while also expressing interest in the mystery of how, if analysis pushes the analysand toward an understanding of his or her imaginary reality, the end of analysis is not psychosis. 

I am afraid of silence, too.  I hate it.  When I was young, my grandfather always used to say, "The silence is deafening."  I would always argue with him when he said this.  I saw the statement as so ridiculously absurd, and I couldn't believe that something so nonsensical could come out of someone's mouth.  Lately, I can't agree more.  I go out of my way to make sure silence doesn't overwhelm me--I eavesdrop on conversations in public, I talk to myself in the shower, my television is almost always on when I am at home because if there is no dialogue, then there is nothing and I am nothing.  I don't like being a subject.