Author and Columnist
12.04.01
10:18 p.m.
-Thorton Wilder
Without your wounds, where would your power be? The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken in the wheels of living. In love's service, only the wounded soldiers can serve.
This Entry Features: a life not lived. Crustimoney Proseedcake. Heidegger. Polished crystal.
Dimensions
I despair, because I know that I do not live the life I truly want to live. I look around, and I see things I want and cannot have in my life.
COMMUNITY: As you know, I want to live in dorms. The core of this issue is that I want to be surrounded by my chronological peers. I feel that I am lacking something inside myself owing to a dearth of proper socialization. Those I am surrounded by daily are privilege to have formed these social bonds with strangers they were forced to interact with. They are, as such, learning a lesson that I, in my relative solitude, am not and cannot. Society in America is created and recreated by these people who have all shared this defining experience. I will not have it. I cannot relate, except through decidedly fond memories of my time at Summer Scholars at Bard College.
SOLITUDE: I wish I could still feel romantic; could still attune myself to romantic relationships. I cannot, and my status with Emily suffers for this. I cannot feel that I am good to her, because often I am more interested in the texture of rotting leaves than picking flowers and serenading. As I've stated, were I single I would make no move to change that. I feel decidedly selfish because I often regard my time with Emily as nothing more than hanging out with one of my best friends. I know that she is hardly getting offended by these sentiments and would insist that, were everything else stripped away, she is my friend. However, I don't regard her with the insatiability that I regard past loves with. And I wish to spend time on my own far more than is conducive to a healthy romantic relationship. I want to walk through forests, read on rocks, and explore the unseen world of nature. And I think I can only be satisfied if I am doing alone. At least at first.
COMMUNION: I desire to remember, in that reticent corner of my soul, that sex is appealing. I do not, as I think you know. It is not a dreadful thing, most of the time. Today, while reading and eating in the SUB, I heard some vapid girl boasting to her male companion (who very clearly wanted to be with this lass himself, but another story for another time) that she had the most amazing sex of her life the prior night. I expected I would feel a bit of a sardonic disgust that this lass didn't modulate her voice when sharing this little tidbit. So you can understand my personal dissonance when I found that I was jealous. I remember sex, the mere thought of making love, literally breath taking. I don't know what changed. The whole interim between Kate leaving and my finding Emily just mangled things. Kate, who was once the Virgin Goddess Katie, did things with me after she left that made me feel empty when I once would have been running over since I was so fulfilled. Much as I have tried, I never again found that spark that gave me a sacred reason to share my body. Sex, in and of itself, is nothing at all interesting to me. With that spark, it is the only time I have proof that magic(k) still exists on earth. A body does not interest me, the breath of life in it does. I am not a necrophiliac, as I think so many metaphorically are. I want the fire back.
Purpose
It is odd. I have been meaning to tell you this for a long while, but other matters always interrupted. I think that, in one way, this journal has taken the place of a degree of intimacy I once shared with others.
Here is my evidence. Prior to the creation and subsequent addiction to this journal, I would write long letters confessing my successes and/or failures to someone with whom I felt intimate, usually a girlfriend or Sarah. The journal supplanted this need. I had already developed a charming/annoying sort of ritual honesty, so I had no worries about contradicting myself. I felt I was an open, and interesting, book.
Good, yes. Mostly for you. However, Kate was complaining to Emily and me on Friday that I told her I wrote her an e-mail and she expected quite a bit more than my couplet of lines. M retorted that I never write long e-mails. Kate shot me a glance, because she was often the recipient of my long letters. I think my brain justifies that I would write largely the same thing in a letter to Emily or Sarah that I am writing here. Where there are differences, several lines of notes are sent. I am thus given to believe frequent short notes confessing pleasure or interest are not enough from one who fancies himself something like a writer?
Youthful Discrimination
So, continuing my long like/irritation (it isn't usually love for very long, nor can I say I hate the girl), Kate sometimes bugs me. On Friday, as previously reported, I hung out with Kate. She was discussing her newfound love for Marcel Proust (who I honestly associated with philosophy more than literature, which made her laugh at my ignorance). I told her that I was not exactly reading the classics. I confessed to Tom Robbins and a book about the Vampire Clan killings that happened in 1996. She immediately dug into me that "of course it would be vampires."
I know you all do not know me very well, but it vexes me to the extreme when someone insinuates that I only ever read vampire books. Yes, I am a fan of some of Anne Rice's work, having read all but one Vampire Chronicle. And in my studies of various paranormal theories and stories, I have done a fair amount of research on the mythology and history of vampires. But it is hardly as though I read vampire related books exclusively. For the most part, I have been given to books on educational theory, classical mythology, and twentieth century American classics for the past several months. This is the first "vampire" book (it is a non-fiction tome about some disturbed teens and the power of cult mentality, Lestat and Dracula play no part in it) in at least a year. When I went to Summer Scholar the first year, one of the English teachers claimed that I "have a thing for vampires" and she was sure "hundreds of people" read books about them. I recall speaking up to her that I had, perhaps, mentioned enjoying one Anne Rice book once in passing in class and that I would likely guess hundreds of thousands of people liked vampire stories, since they had been the object of box office blockbusters and best selling books for nearly one hundred years. She gave me a condescending look and was going to start her attack fresh when the Resident Director insisted I was one of the best kids there, in a shocked tone of voice. So you can see how I might have slight issues with Kate doing it. Okay, have I expressed my annoyance enough on this slight? Good.
Later in the same conversation, I told Kate that I had read a little Heidegger before getting sidetracked on classroom reading. Kate became affronted and asked why in hell I was reading him of all philosophy. I informed her because it was an antique copy of Introduction to Metaphysics and I was interested to know what he had to say. She derided me for reading his work, behaving in a snobbish manner. She is twenty, months my junior. How can she already wholesale discount the works of a philosopher, I'll wager without reading a solitary page? Just because she followed The [wannabe literati] Boys around like a lost, soggy puppy and decided to go to bed with the worst offender of pseudo-intellectualism, doesn't give her validity in tossing off other schools of thought. I don't wholly agree with Heidegger, as I am sure comes as no surprise, but I think knowing some of his idea can only benefit me.
We Have to Stop Meeting Like This
I found yet another crystal. However, this one is more like the blue stone I found months ago. It is a clear and purple tumbled crystal. It was laying in a corner of the stairwell when I went to the bathroom during Spanish class.
I am fairly sure it belongs to a Silly Pagan (I've decided that Silly Pagan is a path and should be capitalized), possibly to MALFESIA THE UNDERLING OF SATAN'S LITTLE BROTHER TODD and/or her friend Lofting. Again, the purpose, I do not know. Nor, perhaps, do I want to. But I will find out. Oh, yes.
Soon in Xenology: I hang out with Zack and Melissa. Perhaps not at the same time. I see the inside of Sarah's apartment. I grow older. The semester ends.
last watched: The Daily Show
reading: The Embrace: A True Vampire Story Aphrodite Jones
listening: "The Superman Song" from America Town by Five For Fighting
wanting: additional elements in my life and soul.
interesting
thought: People believed in the higher power long before they believed in an inner power.
moment of zen: being part of a mystery.
someday I must: learn that everyone is a teacher.
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled and gifted. He is capable of crossing one eye, raising one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.
He likes when you comment.