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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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part IV: stephen/neo-stephen=?
dear sophistica, xiafoeng (sp?) may be on to something here. seriously. however, given that in modern china, this "have a baby, solve a problem" tactic only works once before you are assigned to reeducation in the fields, i can't see how he...you know, i just thought, if there were seven hundred and fifty million more people in the US (which would make the US population roughly equivalent to that of china), would i ever be able to feel as though i had had an original thought ever? you know, given the remoteness of this possibility in a country with only two-hundred and fifty million people pressing on one from all sides except top and bottom (though sometimes also from top and bottom when one is given the chance, which one might expect would occur more often than it does, especially if one's perceptions have been warped by a lot of late-nite cable television), i don't think so. so maybe moving to the US has given x. the ability to think more clearly than he ever could in china, what with not having to wake up in the morning and unbury himself from the ten or fifteen small children that appeared, magically, overnight, in the tiny, tiny apartment he shared with his wife. and, what should we do about those damned mormons? apparently, they're not going to stay contentedly in utah the way the original plan assumed they would, so i guess there's always plan b, which, sadly, cannot take effect until the second coming. (Which isn't the punchline to a dirty joke, and have i got sex on the brain or what? jesus.) so, about the boys picking up on signals from one another and from us? doesn't happen, really. i mean, how many men have you (and this is not a specific you, but a very, very generalized "you all" that applies to all my homegirls in the crowd tonight) had to hit them over their collective (and not collected) head(s)? i'm guessing that this tactic is necessary for all of them (unless they think that there might be sex involved, in which case they almost always are happy to be the ones doing the head hitting on). (i feel like i should follow every sentence after "dear sophistica" with the patented mayflower, "wait. what?") but then, how to explain your stephen, who was hyper-aware of everything going on around him (to the point that it almost seemed ulterior, motive-wise)? i think your stephen was a special case, my dear, to be handled only by celibate tibetan nuns whose training had been focused for years and years and years on how to best serve the enlightened one (that is, canoe reeves in "little buddha" or even "the matrix" or even "the matrix: reloaded.") the point being that i don't think that most guys even think about what it is that we are doing or saying, or, if they are able to wrench their brains away from beer and football and lawncare or physics and the pride they feel over a mastery of vietnamese and the quest for new car insurance or pottery and glazes and sanskrit or wittgenstein and derrida and continental philosophy, they only do so long enough to think, gah, could women act any more childish? (there should be "rationalization at work" signs all over this paragraph.) okay, any and all of this may apply only to the guys i know. seriously. what's going on in their heads? i've had one in captivity for years, and i am no closer than a rank novice to discerning what it is that makes him rock incessantly and gesture at the lock of his cage in a mournful manner each and every morning. i mean, one would think that they'd learn after a bit that it does no good, wouldn't one? (and, writing that just now made me very sad and i have to go away for a bit, okay?) later: so, neo-stephen hasn't quite the experience stephen did, and, unless stephen had the scary can't-talk-about-it-ever family vibe and the southern "everything is all right, now, honey, isn't it?" mother, i don't know how to compare them. the problem is that if i set the neo-stephen equal to stephen and solve for the neo, that means dividing both sides by stephen, but then they cancel, leaving you with neo=1, and i don't think that's the right answer. and, as always, the back of the book is no help. perhaps it is as pucho might suggest: does not exiz. (his other famous quote that may or may not apply is as follows: "it's a mess, and you could simplify, but i hate to simplify, so i never simplify nothing," which is the most existential thing that ever came out of his mouth and which left me sitting there, mouth hanging open, thinking of how my life might be different if i ran away with a puerto rican mathematics grad student.) i got real far away from the boy subject, didn't i? man, what's wrong with me? so, x is probably the manliest boy i've ever met, and i have asked him lots about the how do you handle it when a man hits on you? and contemplating an answer always shuts him down. shuts him down cold, and then there must be the plying with the indian food to get him up and running again. um. but really, he's mostly harmless. he hasn't even met neo-stephen is what i'm saying. and i don't know that it would matter if--goddamn it, am i talking about neo-stephen again? man, this shit ain't right. so, x is as clueless as they come, and, if given a clue, tends to try to use it in every situation ever, or, failing that, tries never, ever to use it under any circumstances whatsoever. you probably already know this. and, if not, it's just another example of the consciousness of the wild boy-man species. they were all raised by wolves. or women who ran with wolves. or, in x's case, by a librarian. however, your question about whether i am the only conscious one in any given room is apt. sometimes, yes. you know how sometimes you could walk into a pre-professored classroom and look around you and think, elitistly (i made a word!), i am the smartest person in this room? sometimes around the boys, it's that. and you can always tell because when they catch you off-guard and manage to zing one off your forehead, it's all, like, a major triumph to them, and then all the non-vegetarians in the crowd feel like maybe they've brought down some big game, old school/hemingway-style. (and don't even get me started on my "women as the last of the huntable big game" theory.) but then, having said this, i have to wonder how much of me makes a better window than a door, and even though i think that i am a glass darkly, am i really as transparent as half the things that new girl in mayflower's lab wears? i'm sorry, this is all, like, crazy talk. so let there be a whiplash subject change, yeah? this is very much the next day: well, i'm about to go down to the studio and unload what may be the last kiln-load of stuff before classes start. there is still much to do about the show and setting up for the show. like get a tax i.d. number. i mean, if that isn't an uber-adult thing to have, i don't know what is. it's like buying a bathroom rug to match your shower curtain or something. who does this? it's a sure sign of insanity as far as i'm concerned. i also have yet to find out what books i'm supposed to have for my classes starting monday. of course the physics and calculus are continued, so the same moldy oldies are still applicable. but the english? i made the mistake of asking the neo-stephen if he knew what books we are going to cover in class, and about seven books into the list, my little brain just went "fzz" and there was the smell of burning electrical wiring, and then i slumped over into my navratam korma. (mmm. navratam korma.) actually, they were, all but one or two, books that i've read before (fitzgerald's whatever, and hemingway, and faulkner), so i'm not too worried, except for the, you know, worried part. this is short but sweet, i'm sure, but i promise pictures in the next. sublingua
More lies:
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