"No [one] is an ISLAND"
My apologies to Donne, but this is the 21st Century, after all. We can no longer justify using sexist language. As Auden liked to say: "This will not "DO!" I'm sure in any case that were Donne here now, he certainly would have written "No one is an island." 'Nuff said.
Of course anyone who knows me well will know what I mean by the capitalization above. And it's a too long and crashingly boring story. Suffice it to say that the past few months have been crashingly shitty.
I will be leaving the DC area soon (and it can't be too soon for me!). After losing my younger brother, after having to see my son undergo some major surgery, after losing my job (not my fault, I might add), it's my chance to get out of here and go back to what's left of my family--both my mother and younger sister died years ago--my sister a few months short of her 30th birthday, and now my brother who just turned 50; after all that shit, I have this wonderful opportunity to leave behind the indignity and incivility that is Our Nation's Capitol. Dear readers, do whatever you can to see that you never have to move here. Trust me.
I'm simply writing today because I'm trying to do things that will keep me from doing the task that faces me: having to go through a thirty-year accumulation of books. I suppose it is time to winnow. There's no way I would actually read a number of them again. The good stuff will go with me--like my Belknap-Harvard The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson, and a lot of the poetry, my E. Dickinson books, My Tchaikovsky books, my Alexander the Great books, my Shakespeare, my reference books and the classics. Most of what will go will be contemporary fiction, and some crappy poetry and collections, like the big, fat, 1200 page collection From the Other Side of the Century: A New American Poetry 1960 - 1990, which bears an awful stink. If any of those contained therein are considered good, then we may as well in turn consider civilization dead and throw a wake.
Mr. cat needs to be fed. Talk amongst yourselves until I get back.
Of course anyone who knows me well will know what I mean by the capitalization above. And it's a too long and crashingly boring story. Suffice it to say that the past few months have been crashingly shitty.
I will be leaving the DC area soon (and it can't be too soon for me!). After losing my younger brother, after having to see my son undergo some major surgery, after losing my job (not my fault, I might add), it's my chance to get out of here and go back to what's left of my family--both my mother and younger sister died years ago--my sister a few months short of her 30th birthday, and now my brother who just turned 50; after all that shit, I have this wonderful opportunity to leave behind the indignity and incivility that is Our Nation's Capitol. Dear readers, do whatever you can to see that you never have to move here. Trust me.
I'm simply writing today because I'm trying to do things that will keep me from doing the task that faces me: having to go through a thirty-year accumulation of books. I suppose it is time to winnow. There's no way I would actually read a number of them again. The good stuff will go with me--like my Belknap-Harvard The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson, and a lot of the poetry, my E. Dickinson books, My Tchaikovsky books, my Alexander the Great books, my Shakespeare, my reference books and the classics. Most of what will go will be contemporary fiction, and some crappy poetry and collections, like the big, fat, 1200 page collection From the Other Side of the Century: A New American Poetry 1960 - 1990, which bears an awful stink. If any of those contained therein are considered good, then we may as well in turn consider civilization dead and throw a wake.
Mr. cat needs to be fed. Talk amongst yourselves until I get back.
posted by DMP at 3:07 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home