Books are My Life: Diary 6/19 to 6/20/21

Dreams, Next and Adaptation (movies), antiphilosophy, Judith Moore & me, books are my life.

{6/19/21} Weight 213.8 at 7:00 am.

Long, stressful dream, typical for me: I was in a large hospital staff area. I had been given a very large stack of files to deliver to someone, too much to carry all at once, so I took a stack and delivered them. It was a long walk. When I returned for the rest, a woman was looking through them and told me that she would take care of them. I went away, then realized that I hadn’t told her about the files that I had taken already; I tried to return to the stairway where the files were, but got sidetracked somehow, and ended up more or less running around to no purpose that I can remember. Finally I sat down in a chair in a large open area. A woman came along, moved the other chair around next to me, apparently thinking that I was sitting in a line to wait to be served. We talked and I said, “I hope I’m not in a line,” something like that. Then I was walking again. That’s all I remember.

I woke to a ringing telephone, but missed the call. It was from Nog; I called back but did not connect, left a voice mail. Now, fifteen minutes later, he hasn’t called back. We’re supposed to meet for the Hemlock Club today.

Watched Next, a movie I saw fairly recently but didn’t recognize from the title. It was with Nicholas Cage. Thinking it was the one that starts with a plane crash, I turned it on to see that, but it was instead with him being able to see two minutes into the future. Enjoyed it again.

Looked at the Wikipedia entry for “antiphilosophy,” and followed a link there to a long article which looked interesting, but I read only a little. Then got distracted by something or other, wrote in the diary, posted to the blog, wandered off to Twitter, browsed through some philosophy books, worked a sudoku or two, and so that was yesterday morning. So I did no writing on the HCN, but then, I’m not ready to plunge into the antiphilosophy debate and in fact may never be ready to do that. It could be an interesting novel.

It seems that I have not written anything about antiphilosophy; perhaps I might start with religion versus science, or “philosophy’s rejection of mysticism,” as I posed it to the group last time we met. Indeed, I don’t have time to think about this right now.

{6/20/21} Weight 213.4 at 6:00 am.

Hypnogogic hallucination this morning, someone saying “Cook” over a scratchy PA speaker. There was a dream also, completely forgotten now.

Watched Adaptation with Pablo last night, a mostly great movie starring Nicholas Cage as twins. The last twenty minutes or so got rather preposterous; Pablo says it’s satire. I can see his point, but I thought it a misstep, or perhaps a cheat.

Also watched the commentary on Rabbit-Proof Fence, which lasted maybe half an hour only and was somewhat disappointing in that none of the stars participated.

I’ve been doing some reading yesterday and this morning on antiphilosophy, Rorty, and the like, as “research” for the HCN. Having strong doubts about the feasibility of this novel, I suppose primarily because (a) I don’t know what it’s about, and (b) haven’t thought and worked and tried enough.

Got five hits on my blog this morning, four from Bangladesh and one from India, four being views of my Bleak Philosophy mess of an essay. This is somewhat encouraging. Got 42 views on the 18^th, from 25 visitors. I speculate that Oliver took a second look at the site.

Ordered six books from Thriftbooks.com; one was free and shipping was free. Got a couple by Edward Dahlberg (The Sorrows of Priapus and Confessions), the Portable North American Indian Reader because it was a good, cheap hardcover, Goncharov’s Oblomov, Edith Hamilton: The Greek Way (an old favorite), and the replacement Oxford Guide to the Mind. $27. I waffled about The Portable Reader’s Companion, decided it would just be a lot like the big book of essays that I got rid of recently. Besides, I couldn’t get a list of the contents and have not previously heard of Louis Kronenberg or whatever his name is. Discovered in the OGP that there’s a Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy in ten volumes, but this will never be within my budget.

Judith Moore, who wrote the brilliant and indispensable Fat Girl, reviewed here, died a few years ago. Making it about myself, I wrote on 2/1/21: “No one will find my story inspirational. It is not a story of success. I am still an asshole. I still speak sharply to friends.” That’s what I wrote while reading Judith Moore’s Fat Girl, a memoir I described as “A fabulous, irreplaceable book” on 2/24/19 (link).

Hemlock Club didn’t happen yesterday; Nog cancelled because he’s hanging tarps to keep the sun off his mother’s house, so I cancelled also, seeing no reason to ride two buses in the heat just to meet Pablo at the chicken fingers place and probably spend money at Barnes & Noble for even more books that I don’t need.

Books and more books—that’s my life, and that’s pretty much how I want it, given the constraints of probation and transportation (i.e., poverty). It would be nice to get a novel written, but KM will be my claim to fame, if any.