just finished watching a bbc trollope miniseries
reminds me that while Tower's columbia writing department -- novel side -- seemed to be very much James vs. Dickens, James preferred -- I'm Trollope yields Wolfe and Joyce yields the novel now, and I'm, sticking with Messerli -- Stein was not a novelist, but a poet --
going thru papers and tossing as much as possible -- when my parents moved last they re-gifted me with all my notebooks and stuff that wasn't stolen in college (yeah, I had the worhol perrier that's in MOMA now -- that size -- stolen, all my notes for my religion thesis, everything I wrote -- other than old notebooks & high school papers -- prior to 1987 stolen -- perhaps kismet for the bravura Zen Buddhism paper -- I torched the paper, here's why for 30 pages (stolen) -- here are the notes for the lost independent study that is how mysticism isn't "the now" but it has a history and a cultural flavor -- it exists in every culture, but the language around it travels -- and here is the history of zero and one --
so what I have is proof that even though I was a high school valedictorian, and a college full ride, the reasons English was my "pick up" second major is that in high school, I was getting Ds and Cs on English papers -- and hiring typists!!!!! besides -- paying to get bad grades -- I'm not sure how I managed to pull As out of that ditch, but I did -- that's the reason I came to college as undecided major, Philosophy, Fine Art/Design, Psychology, Math. Chose a school that would not only give me a ride, but also allow me to be undecided for two years (U of I gave me a ride, but I had to go in with a major, and Physics and English were pushed for me (I knew were wrong); Stanford didn't let me in, and no advisors in central illinois knew Brown and Harvard were open c).
Maybe that's why I can't get a teaching job -- I'm a reader, and a writer, a technologist, a super geek who reads criticism and does non-text art and math for fun, but not an ENGLISH MAJOR.
another thing revealed by not a careful reading but a sorting thru for recyclable pages of "the files" is that one of the reasons I'm not a mainstream poet is that I'm a self-made poet, not a born one. I knew this, but I was reminded: writing beginning as a child, empathy, emotion, emotional understanding, religion (was a religion major, but no religion for me), "spirituality" <<< scare quotes, none of that, but all of that in a strange way, nope, don't got it
all the discipline (yeah, I had a congressional appt. to West Point), the job that paid off my student loans (grad school) and my car (mustang convertable) -- for NASA -- & the banking -- used up my discipline. choices: should have stayed in NYC, bought the floor on the upper west side, earned the MBA; should have helped create web 2.0 like I did web zero --
shoulda, coulda, but the reason I started writing poetry is I wanted to be a writer, and I figured I could master poetry. Huh, how stupid -- the same way that I pursued religion and not philosophy -- even being not religious or spiritual -- was because many approaches to the same idea is more to the point than a survey leading to law school.
more soon
reminds me that while Tower's columbia writing department -- novel side -- seemed to be very much James vs. Dickens, James preferred -- I'm Trollope yields Wolfe and Joyce yields the novel now, and I'm, sticking with Messerli -- Stein was not a novelist, but a poet --
going thru papers and tossing as much as possible -- when my parents moved last they re-gifted me with all my notebooks and stuff that wasn't stolen in college (yeah, I had the worhol perrier that's in MOMA now -- that size -- stolen, all my notes for my religion thesis, everything I wrote -- other than old notebooks & high school papers -- prior to 1987 stolen -- perhaps kismet for the bravura Zen Buddhism paper -- I torched the paper, here's why for 30 pages (stolen) -- here are the notes for the lost independent study that is how mysticism isn't "the now" but it has a history and a cultural flavor -- it exists in every culture, but the language around it travels -- and here is the history of zero and one --
so what I have is proof that even though I was a high school valedictorian, and a college full ride, the reasons English was my "pick up" second major is that in high school, I was getting Ds and Cs on English papers -- and hiring typists!!!!! besides -- paying to get bad grades -- I'm not sure how I managed to pull As out of that ditch, but I did -- that's the reason I came to college as undecided major, Philosophy, Fine Art/Design, Psychology, Math. Chose a school that would not only give me a ride, but also allow me to be undecided for two years (U of I gave me a ride, but I had to go in with a major, and Physics and English were pushed for me (I knew were wrong); Stanford didn't let me in, and no advisors in central illinois knew Brown and Harvard were open c).
Maybe that's why I can't get a teaching job -- I'm a reader, and a writer, a technologist, a super geek who reads criticism and does non-text art and math for fun, but not an ENGLISH MAJOR.
another thing revealed by not a careful reading but a sorting thru for recyclable pages of "the files" is that one of the reasons I'm not a mainstream poet is that I'm a self-made poet, not a born one. I knew this, but I was reminded: writing beginning as a child, empathy, emotion, emotional understanding, religion (was a religion major, but no religion for me), "spirituality" <<< scare quotes, none of that, but all of that in a strange way, nope, don't got it
all the discipline (yeah, I had a congressional appt. to West Point), the job that paid off my student loans (grad school) and my car (mustang convertable) -- for NASA -- & the banking -- used up my discipline. choices: should have stayed in NYC, bought the floor on the upper west side, earned the MBA; should have helped create web 2.0 like I did web zero --
shoulda, coulda, but the reason I started writing poetry is I wanted to be a writer, and I figured I could master poetry. Huh, how stupid -- the same way that I pursued religion and not philosophy -- even being not religious or spiritual -- was because many approaches to the same idea is more to the point than a survey leading to law school.
more soon
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