The last from India

March 29, 2006 - 11:55 AM penultimate

Okay, I've undergone a complete change of heart in reference to 'Tropic of Cancer', and I don't exactly know why. But today I picked up the book to read the second half, and I laughed myself silly. It's still, I think, much too obscene, but maybe not quite as chock-full o' arrogance as I originally thought. To boot, some of the soapboxes in the last quarter are really beautiful in their fatalistic gloom. I find myself vacillating between completely agreeing with Miller and wanting to challenge him to a boxing match. For some reason he writes like a skinny guy. Maybe I should do a Google image search before engaging in hypothetical fistfights with modernist authors. For sure Hemingway would beat me to a pulp. Joyce was nearly blind, but he had so much hardship in his life I would let him win. I think Steinbeck and Faulkner probably learned martial arts in their sleep, while dreaming about a far East that looked remarkably like their native states. When they woke up, aside from having absorbed some new kata, they probably had functionally envisioned the culture of the Orient without any devices necessitating a book set anywhere but California or Mississippi, respectively. Come on, Minnesota! Where's YOUR warrior-poet? That's the problem with the near-arctic climates. It's hard to get up the gumption to be a warrior-poet when you can't bear the thought of leaving your warm bed.

At any rate, I fly on Saturday morning, and I'm good and ready. I'm walking into a job, some gigs, and my old place. I'm really excited to see my family and friends, and I've got an application pending at the U of M's linguistics department. (If it works out, yeah! Let's get an M.A. If it doesn't, I think I'll plan another trip.) I'm looking forward to hot showers, driving, and earning. I'm sick of mosquitoes, dust, and arguing. And as an added plus, on Sunday I get to reminisce in all my old college haunts (patronizing them each in the cheapest possible way) like the Vittoria in the North End, the South Street diner, Cafe Algiers in Harvard Square, and many others. In fact, perhaps I could chalk up my recent appreciation of 'Tropic of Cancer' to the impending visit to my own sort of Paris; while in Boston I was constantly swimming in a sea of ideas and experiences I could barely get my head above. And then, when discussing philosophy or literature, one needs only appear to have their head above water; or more precisely, to be just a little less confused or a little more adamant than one's conversation partners. I can't even count how many times I pretended to have read crap I'd only seen in a bookstore, only to have a seemingly cogent conversation about it with someone who probably hadn't read it either. Thankfully as school went on my integrity increased (or I grew disgusted with trying to appear smarter than I really am) as well as the crap I'd read. I wish I still had friends there, but true to form, the college friends have split to greener and cheaper pastures. It's my good luck that Karl Doty is going to school at NEC now, or I'd be up a creek! Well, either way, I get a day to think and remember: playing tables Saturday nights at the Saraceno for tips, playing in the subway three to five times a week, rejoicing at the occasional real gig. My brother-in-arms Tom Richards schlepping his trombone to and from parades, in between funk-band cover gigs with Brian Walkley and the All-Nighters. Both of us writing and practicing constantly, eating rice and beans with scallions for dinner, oats and milk for breakfast, reading 'Crime and Punishment', listening to Pat Metheny Group at unreasonable volumes, and walking, walking, walking everywhere. Getting mugged at knifepoint, having crushes on lesbians (how unobservant could I be?), waltzing into Atonal Solfege a half-hour late and sitting down to sightread some Alban Berg, lamenting musical politics when they're not going my way, being unquestioningly left left left wing, listening to Keith Jarrett's Bach at Josh Smith's place for nights on end. Swinging at a playground with Andrew Johnson, singing memorized solos at the top of our lungs. Conversations about God and Art and Language and Creativity with Aaron Shapiro. Wrestling matches with Rushad Eggleston in the hallway. Cowboy Bebop at Emmet Quinn's. Shana and Matt's Dorchester place. And then the countless vaguer associations: the poets at the Lizard Lounge who all seemed to live in Watertown. The Berklee String Department. The people you see only at jazz shows. The onslaught of visitors to our flat in Hemenway street that left the couch full of graffiti and the walls decorated. The MassArt students, the Boston conservatory students. Renting and denting cars. Talking an acquaintance through a bad acid trip, talking a friend out of suicide, talking ourselves into and out of depression. Bikes stolen, rollerblades given to a mango-crazy Lizard Lounge poet. Snow sculptures in Copley Square. Dreaded recording sessions for film-scoring students; arbitrarily making half of them pay. And through it all, the axis of life in one's early twenties: absurd amounts of coffee fed intravenously as often as possible. What a whirlwind, in retrospect. Henry Miller got it all down pretty well in 'Cancer', it's just that his whirlwind gravitates to prostitutes. If it didn't, I'd recommend the book to my folks; if it didn't, I think they'd enjoy it. As it stands, it's got me really amped up to stroll through Boston, not to mention interested about how my last couple of years fit into the whole linear mess of living. Hats off, Henry. I wonder what happened to you?