:: Modes of Fretting ::

:: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 ::

Tuesday.

Spent the weekend in the land of my birth. Mostly I read Martin Amis' memoir Experience and felt a peculiar multi-pronged nostalgia: for college and its combination of "intellectual industry" and "acute irresponsibility" (Discontent), and for a huge sprawling ancestral home. I don't know where I got this idea - it must have been Dead Babies or Success.

So I decided that in addition to my sister's family living "over the ridge," it will henceforth be said that the neighbors' land which borders our backyard will be known as "the dell," and that the bit of rusty iron fencing by the back room (the one that looks like something out of Zork) will now be known as "the back garden." Nobody else seemed to understand what I was talking about, but curiously enough I didn't care.

And Monday I sat at the lake house my parents borrowed for the day and read and thought about the end of the summer and the beginning of fall. I also swam for the first time this season (excellent timing, I know). And I had an avuncular chat with my nephew. Tried to come up with a haiku for the day but could not.

All in all, a good weekend. And all in all, a useless blog.

:: aaron t 5:54 PM [+] ::
...

Friday Night.

Despite the ridiculous humidity - summer's last feeble attempt to fuck me up? - I am still feeling autumnal.

What I mean by this is that I feel tender. Able to touch and be touched. I can believe that my recent amorous dalliance, which managed not to manifest romantically until it was already over, will not have left me pining indefinitely. I can believe that she is not the only one (simple, really, as she seems to be the second or maybe third only one I've encountered thus far), and that the things I like so much in her are a) qualities which I too possess, and b) qualities which other women also possess.

At the same time I never want to give up. I will stand my ground and wait for her to work out her "conflict of interest" and find me. My continued program of denial and refusal to acknowledge other, actual romantic possibilities will stand as testimony to the strength of my emotions for her. And my work and art will be a beacon, a lighthouse, signalling to the right ship to come rescue the imprisoned lightkeeper.

This is autumn: the simultaneous awareneness of the world's contradictions. Melancholy: the truest emotional state. Jarmusch: "It is a sad and wonderful world." Basho: Even in Kyoto--/hearing the cuckoo's cry/I long for Kyoto.
:: aaron t 11:29 PM [+] ::
...

Labor Day Weekend

Noontime, and already the work ethic has gone out the window. Though for accuracy's sake I should point out that I woke up with no work ethic. As always.

Labor Day Weekend. The spiritual, if not calendrical, beginning of autumn, my favorite season. Why? Dunno. School starts; air cools down; clothes come on; brain clears up. An old friend once said that winter is the most honest season, and I like autumn because it approaches that sparse honesty: the air has, like an 80s song, a hint of potential in it.

If you buy the argument that certain seasons have distinct moods, then it's only a short jump to the idea that each season has particular music that goes along with it. Right? This is summer music (but then so is this; this is decidedly spring music; winter; and as for fall... well, suffice to say that most of my favorite music is in some way autumnal.

I'd really like to explicate further, but it's time to go home now.

:: aaron t 12:12 PM [+] ::
...

Lunchtime Rant.

I live in one of the more serious college towns in America, in a neighborhood more or less in between two of the larger, more irritating universities. One of them I work at. And today is the day all the freshmen arrive.

Actually, I can't think of anything else to say.
:: aaron t 12:53 PM [+] ::
...

Buddhism.

The Four Noble Truths:

All life is suffering.

Desire is the root of suffering.

The elimination of desire is the elimination of suffering.

Follow the eightfold path.

Yep. It's been one of those days.
:: aaron t 6:03 PM [+] ::
...

It feels like a sugar crash. I feel like writing a song but Marc Almond beat me to it. I can rarely pinpoint the source of this frequent feeling. I like my job well enough. I've paid all the most pressing bills and I have food for lunch AND enough money to go grocery shopping tomorrow night after work. I had a good weekend. In short, nothing in particular can really be said to be wrong.

So why do I feel like this?

---

:: aaron t 8:35 PM [+] ::
...

"All my friends are married, every Tom and Dick and Harry..."

Oh, Tom. Truer words never spoken.

But really, it wasn't as bad as all that. The ceremony was mercifully short, and as I stood around in the sun waiting for it I managed to strike a perverse balance between thinking about my own lovelife and trying to muster up some genuine feeling of Occasion. The solemnizer - a jovial sort of Boston Irish guy - made a good joke about how, since he's a District Court judge, he ordinarily gets to hand out sentences up to two years, but was pleased on this day to hand down two life sentences. I think I thought this funny in a way most people didn't.

Anyway, I spent the rest of the time hanging out in the smoking corner with a few people I hadn't seen since college, and I had a great time. I had forgotten how much I liked some of these people; how truly sincere and intelligent (and cute) they were. As Eric and I talked about the application of morals and ethics to professional industries, and as Theo told me sincerely that she wanted to hear my music sometime, I felt a gratifying swell of familiarity that has stayed with me, and that I hope stays with me.

And of course - thank god it wasn't my day.

(This post was actually written Sunday morning.)

---

:: aaron t 7:06 PM [+] ::
...

Friday Night

While waiting on the street for Aaron M this evening, I had another feeling. I was watching the people walking around Davis Square and I felt a strange sort of oneness with my surroundings: I live here. They live here. We live here. I tried to write it down but by the time I fumbled up with a bank receipt (having left my notebook on the bedroom floor) I started to think it sounded stupid.

It sounded stupid because it is.

Later I was driving Aaron M. home through Harvard Square, and as I was turning left onto Memorial Drive from JFK, about ten jackasses walked in front of my car. Specifically: they stood in front of the stopped line of cars, LOOKED at me turning (with my turn signal flashing like a- well, like a turn signal), and THEN, after seeing my car begin to move, they began crossing.

I had to inform them at high volume what idiots they were.
:: aaron t 11:34 PM [+] ::
...

Sometimes I am randomly struck with a nameless, sourceless optimism. I don't understand it nor do I trust it. Today it came to me while walking down the hall to the bathroom. I was humming "Handsome Devil" and suddenly I felt like Things Could Happen. It was only a minor tremor on the Mood Scale, squelched quickly by the "Out of Order" sign on the bathroom, and I have since settled back into a mildly pleasant Friday mood.

I am in fact not looking forward to the weekend. Apart from the possibility of good live music tonight, I have to spend tomorrow at a wedding. And you know how I feel about that.
:: aaron t 12:17 PM [+] ::
...

Well, the blog is now sort of page 2 of "my web site". Such as it is. I guess this would be a good time to introduce myself. My name is Aaron. I live in Cambridge, MA, in the shadow of Veritas. I'm 27 and midway through a degree in Archives Management. My current goal in life is to finish my degree and flee this city of yuppies, blue laws, and inflated rents.

I guess that's all for now.
:: aaron t 5:35 PM [+] ::
...

We seem to be having a Workless Day... am amused that findyourspot.com thinks I should live in Danbury, CT. (Also on the list were Amherst, MA; Northampton, MA; Brattleboro, VT; and Cambridge, MA. The latter two I have done or am doing my time in; the former two I have already rejected).
:: aaron t 1:51 PM [+] ::
...