witch hunt bad

i'm guilt-logged, laden, bowed down with guilt. and do i feel sorry for myself? unfortunately the answer to that question is HELL YES.

why do i always feel like i've KILLED someone after doing something moderately discourteous? and how do i manage to acknowledge that i'm totally in the wrong and yet feel sorry for myself at the same time? i'm a miracle of modern science. i'm utterly and totally impressed with myself right now. "utterly" is pretty redundant in the context of "totally." i'm impressed with myself for being able to make that non-distinction. i'm an all-around impressive sort of person.

i made a roast beef sandwich and put some fresh basil on it--it was really good.

after finishing adorno's book on the subject of mahler, i'm still not sure precisely what was said. it was a really good translation of some really good writing, and hence almost entirely enjoyable as long as i was able to hold onto the thread--for dear life, like that dude in the labyrinth. i think seriously passionate criticism is awesome. you don't have to agree with the writer, you just have to fall in love with him or her. and adorno wasn't faking it. either that, or his adaptation of an ingenuous critical stance fitted the form of his argument to the point of nullifying the gap between the world of the word and that of its writer (i'm trying to ape his style and totally crappng it up). i mean, it was aesthetic writing. which is a category of writing i'm trying to get into, because i find it less illogical than logic and less irritating than full-on philosophy. i've been reading alice waters' chez panisse cookbook; that falls into the category.

reading in aesthetic terms also gives you a little leeway. were i to read adorno's book as a book of criticism, i'm not sure i could find too much to love in it--he seemed to be involved in the project of extending marxist ideals into the aesthetic forum, which may be doable but i haven't ever seen it happen convincingly (it's more of a graft-versus-host situation, like that on tobias' head, where terms like "late capitalist" get thrown in here and there and all a person really understands from them is a feeling of the unbearable judgmentalness of being a marxist critic [it's not that i don't believe in marxist ideals necessarily; it's just that for me and therefore, i assume, naturally, for everyone ever, they stand outside the flow of language--they have this flavor of absolutism; either something is or isn't, say, late capitalist, and you can discuss whether it is or isn't, but it's like calling it orange, or calling it bad--most people seem happy just to have applied the term more or less correctly, and more than happy to then leave the whole word-object standing around in the bed of some spring rivulet that has drained itself in seconds...until the language of marxist ideals has to some extent transcended itself, it's kind of hard to take it seriously, though marxism itself isn't hard to take seriously {though it'd be easier to do so if the language was more seriously engaged in itself, what with function to some extent following form and all that}]). as always, NOT THAT I KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.

adorno really gets into the practical side of things not being what they seem, or being what they seem only too much, of vernaculars pointing to what they aren't, and stuff like that, and i really liked it--the details are convinved, passionately so. he's taken the time, done the work, fallen in love...or he's a tremendously successful actor. either way it's an awesome book.

and reading that kind of thing makes you get further into your own "work," because it's not to do with judgment, but with experience. adorno's writing, in part, on the experience of seeing mahler in mahler's work, which is, in some small part, not not a smokescreen for seeing himself in mahler's work, and therefore is a detailing of the process of an aesthetic understanding as manifested in a piece of art. the fact that the perspective's so torturous is only helpful in applying it to poetry, because, as far as i seem to be able to understand, the closer you attempt to look at what the hell you're doing in poetry the further what the hell you're doing in poetry recedes, therefore adorno discussing mahler on mahler is probably the best sort of window that i could choose through which to look at my own "process" of "composition." letters to a young poet? i have to ignore that shit. rilke's probably right all over--he's probably righter than the whole shadow-shoe closet of a person with two left feet--he's probably righter than a texan with a gun and a back-tax problem. but what are you going to get out of discussing poetry itself? as a Meatist poet (why not indulge myself in aligning with a poetry movement i've renamed and possibly does not exist?), i try to keep things simple, and what i know is that charles olson was right, and when you're discussing poetry in the simplest manner possible you sound batshit insane. if you don't sound batshit insane, you are making it up. you are lying. that's all there is to it. (again, i have no idea how rilke sounded in letters to a young poet because i've never read them. conventional wisdom says one should, ergo fuck it if i will. it's like rexroth learning "oriental languages" so he could get closer to teachings that he thought would make his spewings about sex more interesting, and then shutting down ginsberg, who was a little punk, and whose spewings about sex actually WERE interesting. a great deal of the previous sentence was extremely unnecessarily harsh.)

i'm not on the side of youth. wallace stevens always seemed to be writing like he was a thousand years old, and i like him better than w.c. williams. i'm just on the side of people doing what they have to, as opposed to what they want to, and if it makes me a puritain i'm kind of okay with that too. because puritainism is, i think, after reading jane eyre however many sixties of times, not about denying pleasure. it's about finding pleasure in what's within you--not sweet, friendly pleasure, but the earth-shattering kind. to say that pleasure's always either good or nice is wrong. to find the velvet thrill in a depression so blank that it nauseates--that's deep red velvet. so puritainism is a connection with everything on a sensual level. to know the color of a tone--to feel sight. and to kill some witches. okay so i don't at all condone that part.