Please don't ask what follows an unconditional surrender because let me tell you, there's not much lurking in this wake. It's devoid, a void, a great emptiness, so much that I can't even bring myself to page through Bill Holm's Music of Failure, always an anodyne, and barring that, what's left?
But just when you think you've found it, something comes along to prove once and for all that there's nothing new in this old world. In this case, while nature might abhor a vacuum, Therevada Buddhists revere it, mine it for mysterious absolution, try and to find within the darkness the heart of eternity. Which is not to say they're nihilistic. On the contrary, they chock-fill emptiness with information.
Even Donald "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" Rumsfeld is getting on board, but I am so much weaker. I simply must repace the hole left by mediation with something other than meditation. Anything small and stackable would do.
Try a week of this and get back to me
Maybe I'm drunk, but I'm awfully damn proud of myself for facing myself this far. I'm pleased as punch I'm brave enough to look myself in the eyes and confront whatever sublime flecks of noiseless introspection are lurking in the irises. Of course the only thing I saw was a tangled mess, a loose bundle of sensations that would have made Hume blush, a bird's nest of various motives only loosely acquainted. In fact they barely speak to each other. Sure there's an annual Christmas card, but beyond nothing but promises.
And no matter what the seemingly well-informed staff at Home Video will tell you, the only movie I, in fact, actually saw was American Splendor, and once again I'm left affectless and uninspired. Harvey Pekar is the comic Wall Drug, or Delillo's most photographed barn in America. He's a joke David Letterman played on us a long time ago and promptly forgot about while speeding down the Merritt Parkway at 25 miles over the limit. No, there's not much to recommend this film, except to say that I guess it's better than most. But is that enough any more, or are we expectant?
