Cheers For Fears

I was a loud little kid. I was a quiet little kid.

Pausing before wheeling, I’m standing on the blacktop in a heavy denim coat. The other kids are flocking and scattering, kaleidoscopic, pigeons around a loaf of Wonderbread. Girls are getting chased and kissed, boys are chasing and kissing them, and I’m slowing down, buffering the realization that (a) I’m low on this food chain and (b) I have to decide quickly whether I’d rather be food or be alone. I see the girls with the longest braids trailing ribbons, slowing down to be grabbed and kissed by wind-up wooden boy soldiers, and sides are forming everywhere, like melted fat congealing in cold water. I run, far, to the edge of the playground, to the trees, and keep my distance until everybody forgets I was one of them.

and I still write about sad things sometimes because it seems like part of the point of writing is to do that. ok.

rachelrantsandschtuff:

Look! I found y’all a map. The grey countries are the ones without universal healthcare.

Have fun!

(Source: abaldwin360)

The sun owns spring and summer, but it gave up fall and winter to the moon.

The moon is what gathers light from light, and hands it over as a comfort to the dark.

There is more of moon, in the best of human nature, than of sun.

Subtitle, “And why it’s hilariously apt that he’s fighting with a dead man”

Maybe you heard Bret Easton Ellis went on a twitter-rant against David Foster “literally deceased” Wallace. If not, good for you. Let’s go to the park and smell things and kiss. If so, well:

I read a not altogether crappy article in Salon (link to follow) by a gentleman who has edited both authors, and has this to say:

““Infinite Jest” […] sounded the first notes of a quest for an irony-free sincerity that has become a ruling style of David’s generation and the ones that followed.

I find Bret Ellis’ scalding, cynical, brittle, savagely unillusioned worldview curiously refreshing. He is the Loki or Trickster of the literary world (or maybe the Lou Reed), poking sharp  sticks in our eyes and daring us to figure out if he could possibly mean that. Deal with it. He’s incorrigible, he’s not a nice boy, he doesn’t care if you become a better person, he is not in any way seeking your approval. Good for him. Some brave college should ask him to do a commencement address.”

Here’s what I think.

Even if Ellis’s antisocial content is insincere, his aggressive insincerity is antisocial, and society is in trouble. Which he wouldn’t notice, since, as a white male, he occupies the single most protected and privileged demographic on the planet. When this self-secure antisocial behavior is cast as toughness or stoicism, I want to puke out my reasoning brain so it can’t flood me with indignant cries of “who are you to even talk about toughness? Who are you to decide what constitutes a joke? Do you think your toughness made you liberal with dark humor, or was it only your relative unfamiliarity with dark experiences?” Darkness is not theoretical, or “conceptual,” to unprotected and marginalized people—and its exploitation doesn’t tickle, it hurts. Did you know that a tickling sensation is the way nerve endings register low-level pain? And maybe what’s low level for a white man isn’t low level for a person who has had actual threats directed at them.

I don’t want to say that Wallace is the antithesis of this, but at least he made an effort, and tried to lend his gifts to compassion. I’m afraid if you want the actual antithesis, you might have to read some Toni Morrison or something. You might have to embrace some affect, learn to feel again, since the more protected you are, the more of life is numbness, and the further you’ll go for just a tickle.

Okay.

If you want to read the other article: (http://www.salon.com/2012/09/07/i_know_why_bret_easton_ellis_hates_david_foster_wallace/)