Catiline at Pistoia
My ten thousand word historiography of Bismarck's role in the unification of Germany has been sent off to its final resting place (the inbox of a man named Novaky), and I wash my hands and my mind of the whole affair. With Dran-o. I've begun a "class" on Nordic history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it is distinctly possible that I may have things to "do" in the next month or so. Christ, I hope so.
There really is nothing quite so conducive to self-destruction as boredom. Don't get me wrong: I love my spare time and I do not understand people who have none of it. But with weeks on end at my disposal, I tend to develop fairly unhealthy ideas and spend a lot of time dwelling on depressing things. Of course, it probably doesn't help that the sky now goes from "pitch black" to "dark grey" for about four hours a day, and that those four hours really only serve to illuminate the rain that's been falling continuously since I got back from my travels. I insist that I quite like the weather, and I do sort of dread the idea of twenty hour sunlight, but I'm willing to entertain the notion that it's playing hell with my subconscious.
Lately I have been plagued with a certain trifurcation of self-paradigm. I have been confronted recently by the idea of success, which is something I have never really considered before. I have a loving, entirely unhealthy fascination with failure and futility, and I tend to find success to be as much surprising as it is suspicious. Perhaps this is a result of the lunatic financial habits of my parents, perhaps a facet of my own fatalist outlook on life, and maybe a leftover from that ugly realization in high school that all those stories everyone told you growing up that you could be anything and do anything were a pack of goddamn filthy lies. I dunno. Compounded to this peculiar notion that I might enjoy some degree of prosperity and stability in my life, is my own penchant for unadvisable extremism. So, in order of the worst possible idea to the best, I present the three wild extremes of my vision of the rest of my life.
The first is sort of a complete surrender to the most comfortable guilty pleasures I can imagine. It would be a life spent in an apartment in a Blue State somewhere (probably Portland or Seattle, since there would be no way in hell of being able to afford to live in San Francisco), quite alone and probably working some menial job I detest but which provides me with the time and the disposable income to watch as many terrible movies as I can get my hands on. Think Tim from The Office. The British version, not the American one. Obviously. I think such a life would entail a complete surrender of any pretense of normality, and would presage an unstoppable slide into the dismal nerdy sewers of society. There I would pile the nerdy goo on my head, and revel in the sort of interests which I have always avoided, even at my most nerdy. Perhaps I would be a fixture at a local comic book store or something. Perhaps I would regularly meet with fat, hairy, smelly men with Cheeto residue caked on their fingers to play games involving "grues" and "wards of protection +1" or even "roll modifiers." Can you imagine this? A one-bedroom apartment with a dirty kitchen full of takeout containers and a fairly expensive, elaborate home theater system, probably with empty bottles of imported beer and Jolt soda cans littering the floor. I have no doubt the bedroom would be piled to the ceiling with cheap paperbacks from a used bookstore (where maybe I would work part time), many of them by Lin Carter or Michael Moorcock. It is also important to note that according to Wikipedia, Lin Carter's middle name was "Vrooman."
Anyway, I would probably spend most of this sad, solitary life attempting to own and/or operate a used bookstore/independent video store/independent movie theater, none of which would succeed, of course.
This life does have a very simple and inarguable aspect to recommend it: the complete immersion in one's own unapologetically unpopular interests. Really, who among us doesn't sometimes want to live a life completely devoted to plumbing the depths of their hobbies? Wouldn't require more than a Bachelor's degree, and it would be terribly easy.
I believe this is also the much healthier and saner representation of that mad little anarchist who lives in my head and who used to convince me to make really terrible decisions, like try to join the French Foreign Legion or move across the continent of North America for a depressive bulemic alcoholic who cut herself.
The second image is much more of Thoreau's idea of a life of quiet desperation. It is also perhaps the most plausible of the three. This is the one where I continue studying international relations/international political economy in Europe, get a Ph.D. in five or six years, and settle down to a life of teaching college somewhere. I would prefer that somewhere to be Europe, of course, but more than likely it would be at some forgettable state school somewhere in the Midwest, where I would spend several decades flogging my way through the department political structure, lurking in a little office somewhere on the third floor in the back past the copy room. I would spend a lot of time wishing I had graduate assistants to do the work so I wouldn't have to deal with students like me. Maybe sometimes I would feel like I was making a difference, but most likely I would hate every goddamn minute of it. This does, however, involve the possibility for publishing and for becoming a well-known (and probably well-reviled) political/economic theorist, and that's an idea I'm quite partial to. Professor Craig, if you're reading this, should I go this direction, I expect you to review at least one of my books.
Option three is fairly alarming. It starts the same as option two, but then branches into private sector work (like with an economic consultancy agency, or whatever the hell) and then into government service. Or vice-versa. Naturally, I would prefer to work for some foreign government somewhere, preferably one that isn't likely to lapse into fascism anytime soon, but I don't know fuckall about the employment prospects. Do foreign governments hire just anyone? I have no idea.
At any rate, at present I have pared life down to a bare minimum. Through the course of my travels (and my life, really, as those of you who have spent a substantial amount of time around me can attest), I have reached the point where I tend to regard the needs of biology with a sort of impatient contempt. I passed the point some time ago at which I no longer find the prospect of going two days without food or sleep to be alarming, though it's not a habit I engage in, but more of a fallback should necessity require. Like Simeon Stylites the Elder, I have
refined my existence to the point where it consists of this nearly empty room, (I really should take a picture--I have a stack of reciepts that I write notes to myself on, a stack of books, some papers taped to the wall, a bottle of bourbon and a small glass, and a plant in a saucepan which is growing towards the window so it looks like its trying to escape) a succession of books, and cheap frozen pizzas from ICA. At present, my life is sort of the uncarven block, ready for the imprint of whatever may come.
Virtually everyone I know is in Berlin for the next week or so. I have class tomorrow for four hours, and then not again for a week and a half. My giant paper is done. I've got no food, no job, no money, no liquor, no woman, no prospects.
Back to normal.
There really is nothing quite so conducive to self-destruction as boredom. Don't get me wrong: I love my spare time and I do not understand people who have none of it. But with weeks on end at my disposal, I tend to develop fairly unhealthy ideas and spend a lot of time dwelling on depressing things. Of course, it probably doesn't help that the sky now goes from "pitch black" to "dark grey" for about four hours a day, and that those four hours really only serve to illuminate the rain that's been falling continuously since I got back from my travels. I insist that I quite like the weather, and I do sort of dread the idea of twenty hour sunlight, but I'm willing to entertain the notion that it's playing hell with my subconscious.
Lately I have been plagued with a certain trifurcation of self-paradigm. I have been confronted recently by the idea of success, which is something I have never really considered before. I have a loving, entirely unhealthy fascination with failure and futility, and I tend to find success to be as much surprising as it is suspicious. Perhaps this is a result of the lunatic financial habits of my parents, perhaps a facet of my own fatalist outlook on life, and maybe a leftover from that ugly realization in high school that all those stories everyone told you growing up that you could be anything and do anything were a pack of goddamn filthy lies. I dunno. Compounded to this peculiar notion that I might enjoy some degree of prosperity and stability in my life, is my own penchant for unadvisable extremism. So, in order of the worst possible idea to the best, I present the three wild extremes of my vision of the rest of my life.
The first is sort of a complete surrender to the most comfortable guilty pleasures I can imagine. It would be a life spent in an apartment in a Blue State somewhere (probably Portland or Seattle, since there would be no way in hell of being able to afford to live in San Francisco), quite alone and probably working some menial job I detest but which provides me with the time and the disposable income to watch as many terrible movies as I can get my hands on. Think Tim from The Office. The British version, not the American one. Obviously. I think such a life would entail a complete surrender of any pretense of normality, and would presage an unstoppable slide into the dismal nerdy sewers of society. There I would pile the nerdy goo on my head, and revel in the sort of interests which I have always avoided, even at my most nerdy. Perhaps I would be a fixture at a local comic book store or something. Perhaps I would regularly meet with fat, hairy, smelly men with Cheeto residue caked on their fingers to play games involving "grues" and "wards of protection +1" or even "roll modifiers." Can you imagine this? A one-bedroom apartment with a dirty kitchen full of takeout containers and a fairly expensive, elaborate home theater system, probably with empty bottles of imported beer and Jolt soda cans littering the floor. I have no doubt the bedroom would be piled to the ceiling with cheap paperbacks from a used bookstore (where maybe I would work part time), many of them by Lin Carter or Michael Moorcock. It is also important to note that according to Wikipedia, Lin Carter's middle name was "Vrooman."
Anyway, I would probably spend most of this sad, solitary life attempting to own and/or operate a used bookstore/independent video store/independent movie theater, none of which would succeed, of course.
This life does have a very simple and inarguable aspect to recommend it: the complete immersion in one's own unapologetically unpopular interests. Really, who among us doesn't sometimes want to live a life completely devoted to plumbing the depths of their hobbies? Wouldn't require more than a Bachelor's degree, and it would be terribly easy.
I believe this is also the much healthier and saner representation of that mad little anarchist who lives in my head and who used to convince me to make really terrible decisions, like try to join the French Foreign Legion or move across the continent of North America for a depressive bulemic alcoholic who cut herself.
The second image is much more of Thoreau's idea of a life of quiet desperation. It is also perhaps the most plausible of the three. This is the one where I continue studying international relations/international political economy in Europe, get a Ph.D. in five or six years, and settle down to a life of teaching college somewhere. I would prefer that somewhere to be Europe, of course, but more than likely it would be at some forgettable state school somewhere in the Midwest, where I would spend several decades flogging my way through the department political structure, lurking in a little office somewhere on the third floor in the back past the copy room. I would spend a lot of time wishing I had graduate assistants to do the work so I wouldn't have to deal with students like me. Maybe sometimes I would feel like I was making a difference, but most likely I would hate every goddamn minute of it. This does, however, involve the possibility for publishing and for becoming a well-known (and probably well-reviled) political/economic theorist, and that's an idea I'm quite partial to. Professor Craig, if you're reading this, should I go this direction, I expect you to review at least one of my books.
Option three is fairly alarming. It starts the same as option two, but then branches into private sector work (like with an economic consultancy agency, or whatever the hell) and then into government service. Or vice-versa. Naturally, I would prefer to work for some foreign government somewhere, preferably one that isn't likely to lapse into fascism anytime soon, but I don't know fuckall about the employment prospects. Do foreign governments hire just anyone? I have no idea.
At any rate, at present I have pared life down to a bare minimum. Through the course of my travels (and my life, really, as those of you who have spent a substantial amount of time around me can attest), I have reached the point where I tend to regard the needs of biology with a sort of impatient contempt. I passed the point some time ago at which I no longer find the prospect of going two days without food or sleep to be alarming, though it's not a habit I engage in, but more of a fallback should necessity require. Like Simeon Stylites the Elder, I have
refined my existence to the point where it consists of this nearly empty room, (I really should take a picture--I have a stack of reciepts that I write notes to myself on, a stack of books, some papers taped to the wall, a bottle of bourbon and a small glass, and a plant in a saucepan which is growing towards the window so it looks like its trying to escape) a succession of books, and cheap frozen pizzas from ICA. At present, my life is sort of the uncarven block, ready for the imprint of whatever may come.
Virtually everyone I know is in Berlin for the next week or so. I have class tomorrow for four hours, and then not again for a week and a half. My giant paper is done. I've got no food, no job, no money, no liquor, no woman, no prospects.
Back to normal.
posted by Eccarius | 5:07 PM
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