The Eternal Return of the Shame

I think I have died and gone to irony heaven. Or maybe irony hell. That might explain the conversation going on in the corner.

Soren Kierkegaard: Irony is infinite, absolute negativity.

Alanis Morissette: It's like rain on your wedding day.

Soren Kierkegaard: Infinite negativity.

Alanis Morissette: Rain on your wedding day.

Soren Kierkegaard: I can't even talk to you when you get like this.

Blaise Pascal: It's the eternal silence of the infinite spaces.

Wade Boggs: It's Pitt the Elder.

Soren and Alanis: No, it isn't.

Where was I? Oh yes, IRONY HEAVEN: Oliver North is back in Nicaragua because...because the Nicaraguan people "have suffered enough from the influence of outsiders."

I almost peed myself.

It betrays the paucity and the rigidity of much neocon thought that the reelection of Daniel Ortega is causing hysterical (and entirely speculative) fear-mongering about WMD at our back door.

News flash: the Cold War is over. Don't you all remember taking credit for it?

The Sandinistas were never that bad in terms of governance. They overthrew the Somoza kleptocracy, they instituted free elections, they made unbelievable strides in literacy, they didn't "disappear" people. They weren't perfect--they exercised prior restraint on the presses and they forcibly removed indigenous people from their land. Amnesty International concluded, though, that these abuses were (apart from the repression on the press) not sanctioned by the government, but were the unauthorized acts of the militia and the FSLN attempted to prosecute the offenders.

The real reason - and not, perhaps, entirely unwarranted - that the US was concerned about the Sandinistas was that they had ties to the Soviets and had received military assistance (during the Somoza regime) from the KGB.

There's no KGB anymore. And Ortega is now a Christian free-marketer. So why all the fuss?

I think it has something to do with the trauma theory of memory--that certain events in our past can't become integrated into a seamless narrative, and thus acquire a distorted and distortive significance: we return to them again and again and we are forced to misread them in order to make them fit into the narrative we want to tell.

I guess Nicaragua is that for the neocons--the Iran Contra Hearings are the scene of trauma to which they return and rewrite and relive. By sending North again, a North who is speaking against foreign involvement, they can reimagine themselves as liberators.

Funnily enough, while this is the traumatic scene in the neocon memory, most everyone else has forgotten the Iran Contra scandal.

Except me--I'm still obsessed with it. How can you not love a trial of top government officials that produces the line, "I am not a potted plant"?

Genius.

So Much Grading, So Little Will to Live

Why, oh why? I beg and I plead.

"Please," I ask them. "Please never write 'utilize' or 'societal.' 'Use' and 'social' sound so much nicer. And so much less pompous."

But they do not listen.

Now, I know that this is a minor point. And I certainly don't lower anyone's grade over this. And I recognize that this might be a purely idiosyncratic peeve. I've said as much to them.

But couldn't they just indulge me? Just once?

Please?

"Hey, Good Luck With the Syphilis!"

That's what I should have said (loudly) to the annoying chatty guy in the pharmacy today.

Ah, l'esprit d'escalier, as les Frenchies say. The wit of the staircase.

I'll tell you the story tomorrow. But I thought I'd share my comeback to you, since it came too late to say (loudly) to the annoying chatty guy in the pharmacy.

Busride Beckett: An Impromptu Production of Endgame on the #86

On the bus today I was eavesdropping. I couldn't help myself.

There was a couple sitting behind me who I got the sense were having "the awkward busride after the drunken hookup which they're not sure yet if they regret."

I realize that this is a very specific kind of commuter category, but I think we've all been there once or twice. The subway is better for this kind of thing, because it's noisier and the demand for conversation is less. Driving is the absolute worst.

Anyway, there were some awkward moments. They'd clearly spent the night at his place, because he asked her where she lived. And then they both seemed embarrassed by the implications of the question. There was some talk of a mutual friend. He said he'd call her that night, to which she muttered something about "maybe being out tonight." Ouch, guy.

And then this very charming and intelligent discussion about what one says at the bus stop if one wants the driver to open the second set of doors. It doesn't have anything to do with their semi-regretted debauch, but that just made it even more delightful:

He: I heard some lady call out "rear door" the other day? You ever hear that?

She: I'm not sure. I think: I say "back door."

He: Everone says "back door." But I like "rear door." First of all, you get to say "rear." Also, it sounds more technical. But mainly, it's funny to say "rear."

She: "Back door" actually sounds dirtier, though.

He: Yeah, I guess so. It also sounds more commandy. "BACK DOOR." Jawohl, mein Bussenpassengeren!

She: Yeah, "rear door" sounds nice. Like you're on the team. "Can you open the rear door so that the passengers may exit in an orderly fashion."

He: And, you get to say "rear."


They got off at my stop (where, incidently, the driver opened the back door without prompting), exchanged an awkward kiss, and were gone from my life forever. Goodbye, you funny slutty wonderful things, you. Goodbye.

Praeteritio

Ok, it's been a busy few weeks and the old blog has been a little neglected. Here's what I would have blogged about if I'd been blogging:

1. The Bi-Weekly Random Thought Post

This post would have noted that the face of country music would be very different if "drink" didn't happen to rhyme with "think." I would have said something clever and maybe rewritten a Merle Haggard song with a different central rhyme. I would have written this post in a slightly pompous pseudo-academic tone to heighten the comedy. My persona for this post would have been pedantic, but with a charming naivete. I think you would have liked it a lot if I'd written it.

2. The Election Post

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

3. The Being Amused/Crabby About Urban Life Post

I was on the subway last week and this very well-dressed woman in her early 50s asked the crazy guy who was rambling about Jeffrey Eugenides and his new meds and how he didn't think they were working and how he was sexually frustrated:

"I'm sorry, Sir, I can't understand what you are saying."

I was dumbstruck. Who fucking talks to people--any people--on the subway? Who fucking interrupts the crazy subway guy? To ask him to clarify??? His reply was priceless, though:

"No need to fuss, ma'am. I am just cogitating with my own self." If I'd written this post, it would have been funny and possible insightful. I might have also have bitched about some buskers. That seems likely.

4. The Literary Post

In the last two weeks, I've read the first page of No Country for Old Men about 6 times. That's all the fiction I've read. I would have blogged about how great the first page was.

I might or might not have copped to having not read further.

5. The Ted Haggard is a Big 'Mo Post

Um, who is surprised by this? But the focus of this post would have been on escort/pharmaceutrical provider, Mike Jones: Worst. Prostitute. Ever.

Jeezum Crow, isn't it the first rule of being a high end (this is possibly a bad pun--I can't tell) manwhore that you don't out your clients? I think Jones's behavior was very very rude.

6. The Veterans Day Post

Here I would have said something about all the amputees and head injury victims that the current war is causing. And about how the VA isn't well-equipped to handle the kind of long term care that these veterans will require. It would have been a touching post, but it would have had enough irony and a few moments of inappropriate humor so that it wouldn't have been sappy. It would have been freakin' brilliant. You would have wept and laughed.

It would probably also have included some leftist crackpot rantings. Just a guess here, but a guess that's playing the percentages.

If I'd been posting, that's what I would have posted. I hope you would have enjoyed reading these things.

Greatest Hits and Obscure B Sides

I remember the first time I read Hamlet. I thought: "This Shakespeare sure uses a lot of cliches." And the first time I read Julius Caesar I laughed when I read "it was Greek to me." It just seemed so odd in context.

Our colloquial language is full of Shakespeare. The Bible, too. Ben Franklin. The funny thing about these quotes is that they are so familiar, it no longer occurs to us that they are quotes. Even when their syntax is decidedly marked: "murder most foul," or when they are metaphorically resonant: "in my mind's eye."

It's hard to imagine these as invented combinations. We use them just like words--like they are an indivisible part of the language. It is as surprising to read them as an orginal poetic utterance as it would be to learn that someone invented the word "tree."

Well, maybe not quite as surprising.

But it's strange to think how different the status of these expressions is in contrast to the quotes where we recognize that we're quoting (even if we don't always know what we're quoting). We recognize, for instance, that "the lady doth protest too much" is in quotes. Knowing that it is in quotes give the utterance an air of either pomposity or, more usually, irony.

But what I'm thinking about today is the transition period--the residual quotation marks. Phrases that we still recognize as being sort of in quotes, but which are used so frequently that they are starting to have the status of a "in the twinkling of an eye" or "the face that launched a thousand ships" or "salad days." That is, phrases that we use without the implicit quotation marks.

So, these are phrases that are in quotation marks for some people, but not for others. We really never are having the same conversation.

The ones I can think of are mostly from the 19th and 20th century, which I guess makes sense. The language would not draw attention to itself--it wouldn't sound Biblical or Shakespearean or Marlovian or whatever. Not only do we not often recognize where these come from, we often don't recognize that they come from anywhere.


march to the beat of your own drummer

hitch your wagon to a star

To begin, begin.

They fuck you up, your Mom and Dad.

anal (as in "Lighten up Feemus, don't be so anal.")

class consciousness

suspension of disbelief

time is money

military industrial complex


There is something interesting in these phrases severed from their context, un-quoted, as it were. By being unquoted, they cease to embed themselves within a particular text or a particular moment. They acquire the patina of meaning, of something that transcends the situatedness of their original utterance. They achieve their permanence only by being misunderstood. There's some cool metaphor or meaning there--I'm not sure what it is.

As somebody smarter than me once said: there is no apotheosis that is not preceded by a death.

True dat, as the kids say.

P.S. I'm sure the kids don't say that anymore. As soon as I know what the kids are saying, they're saying something else. It's totally bogus. Ya dig?

p.p.s. The answers:

Thoreau
Emerson
Wordsworth
Larkin
Freud
Marx? Lukacs?
Coleridge
Franklin
Eisenhower