25 january, 1998

25 january

i often feel like a preacher without a church.
i make regular pronoucements on life and spirit
i love to pound a pulpit
and i often find myself in the company of people a little lost, listening
dispensing advice or stories
young women who lost their fathers
there's something big there
it all becomes so clear to me, the power involved,
some listening,
some projecting,
and vulnerable - suffering people can be sexy
when i don't have my shit together.
fortunately, i've lived enough to have residual shit piled up in me that keeps me from reaching out wrong mosttimes anymore.

so tonight, late at night, someone comes wandering by
recounts a long past conversation i'd forgotten
but i remembered her boyfriend
she's having some difficult conversations with him
for the duration of their relationship
that's how she sees it now anyways,
i gave her my new bjork cd - i miss it already, "homogenic"
and counselled her not to make any big decisions in a bad mood.

there was more specifics
but it's late at night,
i've been working my thesis
it's kind of a sacred time for me,
discovering and managing the realization that i have proposed to sum up everything,
in one hundred pages, in one semester,
without having read plato or marx or the bible much at all
i'm slowly working and tonight i have faith i will make a sensical worldview
or something

i saw this quote of norman o. brown's, i'm reading his "life against death"
eccentricity is unlikely to be "right"; but neither is this book trying to be "right."

i talked to amy about my thesis, she recommended changing "relations" to "love" as a topic of inquiry into timeless human stuff

before it was sex, it sounded good, but didn't quite include family and community
she protested being thanked as cowriter of my thesis
and suggested instead i call her "fluffer"
that girl, she's some shit.
we're both a little sick, seeming,
i'm stuffed up, consuming unhumanly amounts of garlic
reacting poorly socially

but i called howard today and maybe talked him out of his philosophy of technology doldrums a little
he's stimulating
he appreciates amy, and i appreciate that.
that man's got a lot of love.

i showed him this, and now you too:
this will keep your (front) page from being cached and not regularly reloaded each time it's hit. so your hit rates from aol should be accurately counted now, at least with reference to your front page.
interesting to note the difference!
<html> <head> <META NAME="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache"> <title>justin</title> </head>
<body>
(i read about this tag on news.com - a cnet site).

he and abbe both had great suggestions and support for my teaching idea

i am honoured by my friends and family.
all my friends are academics
of a sort.
artists too.
and religious,
who are these people?
everybody?
the confident.
i guess in exchange for some funny honesty that girl gave me a story about painful medical suspension of death
when you hang your sign up asking for stories,
boy you can really get some.
i think perhaps i should compose a noticeable part of my thesis of short interviewed stories; instead of myself proclaiming current pheonomena, ask folks to talk about their lives. the whole thing, ugly and pretty is right there.
someday i'll have my church.
maybe it won't be in one place
maybe it won't have anybody who goes to it
it'll be my presence, and my peace of mind,
when i have it, i'll be in the church of the world
talking to whoever's there.
they laugh at me.
i laugh back
we be laughing.
i'll be relaxed,
and my hands won't hurt any more

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