Deferment

I was sitting at the Caribou coffee shop in the Rosedale shopping mall, about nine months ago, waiting for an appointment at the Apple Genius Bar, when inspiration struck after reading a post in the Writing and Literary Discussion forum of the local Craigslist message board.  After reading my response to the initial post, and thinking about whether or not I answered the question or just sought to bring attention to myself, it seems redundant to struggle for authenticity and genuine effort when the likelihood of being sold down the river is so great.  Forgive the overtly antiquated and obviously inflammatory reference - if I didn't feel it suited my burden I wouldn't apply it.
So, Monday morning. 

and so this night, it started - < mlmck > 01/18 16:00:39

I wrote a short story, about 17 years ago, over the course of a week. It started with that phrase, "And so this night it started..." I submitted for review to the highest chair of the English Department at the University I was attending, and he informed me of two things:

1. Starting a sentence with "And so..." was pretty pedestrian and hackneyed.
2. If you have the goods, sell them.

I kept the draft I submitted, with his handwritten comments, and went further in asking him what he meant by selling the goods. His assertion was the short story was relevant, in some way, and needed to be sold. Never happened. In response to your question, I think starting a sentence with the word, "Incidentally" is a little pretentious and conceived. You're setting a tone for the rest of the story, essay or novel that indicates a certain malaise / boredom / narcissism / "Being half in love with an easeful death"
I like the idea though, and the concept of introducing a narrative half in thought is true to the nature of inspiration...as if to imply the reader already knows at least as much about the world, oneself, general practicalities, social constraints and cultural differences between peoples, and then introduces a new radical thought with "Incidentally...". I believe it worked for JD Salinger.
Here's my effort, for posterity.
Incidentally, psychiatric wards in hospitals don't allow fresh air into the rooms of the patients. Opening a window, feeling the wind, the breeze, smelling the night air and the passing of time between night and day is not allowed. A shadow on the ceiling, a certain amount of natural light, the constant sounds of doors opening and closing, buzzing of locks, arguing of patients, your roommates sighing lack of sleep become the environment of your stay. The artificiality of your surroundings seems to reinforce the dramatic need for calm, as if your natural inclination to flee and return to the wilds of your youth will only cause further duress - a thunderstorm passes and though every day of your life you've sought an open window with which to be closer to the tremendous wind, rain and sounds, your stay is not a voluntary attempt at seclusion. It is a compulsory effort to alter your experiences, to change the perceptions of what defines your mental health, to encapsulate your behavior and present it as either autonomous or sympathetic.

I think this piece of writing can be readily juxtaposed with a review I wrote on Goodreads, back in 2010 -

The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer by William Irwin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


So, yesterday, while cussing out a library computer, well within earshot of an innocent bystander, sitting at her computer with a dazed, mildly insulted look on her face, I started into a rant worthy of another Francis Ford Coppola movie.  Something to do with JFK, the Bar Mitzvah I never had; it all pertained, of course, to why the library's computer would not print my document.  Which was, of course, user error. 

So, Philosophy...you're kidding right? 

Every philosophy person/student/professor I've ever met exudes calm, quiet, serenity, perfect and unassailable equanimity with their surroundings.  They are aloof, they are unapproachable, they are the persons of interest on any college campus, think-tank or place of intellectual stimulation.  I don't know JACK about philosophy...or String Theory.  But, I've watched the Simpson's ever since I saw Doctor Marvin Monroe try, try, try to manage the classic familial aggression so ingrained in the Simpson family. 

"Apparently, Homer, your family sees you as something of an ogre." 

Since those words, and laughing myself silly at the sight of all five family members hooked up to electric shock therapy, shocking each other while trying to get one another to "...shut the hell up...", I've succumbed to the most classic of all enabling devices, the television.
So, what does this book have to do with me, with ranting, with the Simpsons, with philosophy and tolerance? 
After acknowledging education is the long process of unlearning what you know in order to accept what you don't, there is a gutless feeling...like falling off a cliff, or being publicly shamed.  There is a feeling that everything you've been taught, learned or have been given, is suspect.  Dirty.  Undignified.  Soiled. 
As if what you've been working so hard to construct is just an enterprise for somebody else to take credit for.  Nothing has been more difficult in my life than that realization.  Every time it is brought back to me, I encounter that same, fatalistic thought.  "What's the point?"
To establish the quality of life that allows an individual to learn in the first place, seems like an achievement; to undo it all and start over, seems like an impossible and pointless goal.  Among the people you meet and see every day, new faces or old, there are few to whom struggle is a foreign concept.  If nothing else, The Simpson's can alleviate the feeling that everyone has something to laugh at, but you.  Learning to appreciate that can make all the difference between asking what's the point and why not. 



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