You know you are poor...

when you have to spend 30 minutes wondering if you really need that diet pepsi you want to buy on your break.

Oxford Street

Alain de Botton's latest tweet: It takes a resilient spirit to keep faith with humanity after a walk down Oxford Street.

The uber busy Oxford Street in London

new job, but life is still the same

I figure it is about time I wrote about something other than Thoreau. Not so much b/c no one cares about him or what he has written -- except me -- but because I had to return his journals today as they are on hold for someone else.

Talking about books, I got a job at my local library. I worked there before. This will be over a year and a half since I have worked: 6 months I spent in London where I wasn't allowed to work, and it took me a year once I returned home to the States until I could get a job. That was due in small part to the current economy, but (I will admit) mostly because I had great trouble not playing the early 20's slacker still living at home.

Some thoughts:

David Cameron is a Tory and the new prime minister of Britain. He is the youngest at 44 to hold this role. I believe he is naive, elitist, and despite his somewhat good looking appearance and eloquent speeches entirely wrong for the office. God (if you exist) save Britain!

I want the temperatures to remain in the 50's. I like it now, cool at night, warm during the day.

A british friend sent me a link to an online video service whereby I can watch any British show that is currently playing in Britain for a small fee of about 10 dollars a month. This excites me. I can watch EastEnders again.

I can't pay my loans. I have so many of them. Even with a job, I can't pay them all. And I can't figure out how to lower them because no one service will consolidate all the loans.

I will be in debt for the rest of my life.

I'm looking forward to working in the library again, but I hope it doesn't become too much of my life. I don't want to be consumed with whether all the books have been shelved or patrons complaining about 15 cent fines.

Life is like a mini (or, if you will, a macro) version of hell.

I don't trust doctors. I really like the one I have now but he told me during one appointment that he was going to give me three shots but only told the nurse that I was to get one, which resulted in the nurse not believing me when I related to her that he told me three and her then having to confirm with the doctor before administering the three shots which, in doctor world, meant that I had to wait another 20 minutes in a cold, overly-light, sterile white room staring at fat-intake charts on the wall. He is also my mom and dad's doctor. He tried to convince my mom that she has diabetes, until he realized that he was actually looking at my dad's medical folder. He is young -- about 30 -- doing his rotations and despite the possibility that he could kill me through inattention he is a nice and sympathetic doctor.

I really like tea. Drinking it makes me feel safe, like being covered with a large duvet.

I would like to date a guy who is not married or over the age of 32. British accent is not mandatory but it would certainly add to the illusion.

the 'trick of science'

I witness a beauty in the form or coloring of the clouds which addresses itself to my imagination, for which you account scientifically to my understanding, but do not so account to my imagination. It is what it suggests and is the symbol of that I care for, and if, by any trick of science, you rob it of its symbolicalness, you do me no service and explain nothing...If there is not something mystical in your explanation, something unexplainable to the understanding, some elements of mystery, it is quite insufficient...Just as inadequate to a pure mechanic would be a poet's account of a steam-engine. If we knew all things thus mechanically merely, should we know anything really?
...

We seek too soon to ally the perceptions of the mind to the experience of the hand, to prove our gossamer truths practical, to show their connection with our every-day life (better show their distance from our every-day life), to relate them to the cider-mill and the banking institution. Ah, give me pure mind, pure thought! Let me not be in haste to detect the universal law; let me see more clearly a particular instance of it! Much finer themes I aspire to, which will yield no satisfaction to the vulgar mind, not one sentence for them. Perchance it may convince such that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in their philosophy. Dissolve one nebula, and so destroy the nebular system and hypothesis. Do not seek expressions, seek thoughts to be expressed.

By perseverance you get two views of the same truth.

Thoreau's simple grave in Concord, Mass.

---
pg 101 - 102, The journal Henry David Thoreau, introduction by John R. Stilgoe

thoreau -- leaves

Even the dry leaves are gregarious, and they collect in little heaps in the hollows in the snow, or even on the plane surfaces, driven in flocks by the wind. How like shrinking maidens wrapping their scarfs about them they flutter along!
pg.107, journals

boring life

it's curious how being away from your usual routine and existence for a day and one night makes you, when you get back home, despise everything that you've always known -- like reading inane facebook messages, or looking at the houses and trees that you've seen outside your window since you were 10. I felt this on an even greatest level after coming home from London in '06 and '08. But then you manage to slip back into your same routine and you don't despise the usual but rather become inured to it or even like it again. I think that people who commit the same routine or live in the same place all their lives must not realize their own potential. And I also think that, when looked at your life objectively by being away from it for some time, everything becomes that's you've known becomes deplorable, because you have been "in it" for so long.

moods

Thoreau's cove at Walden Pond

The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth. Pay not too much heed to them. Let not the traveller stop for them. They consist with the fairest weather. By the mood of my mind, I suddenly felt dissuaded from continuing my walk, but I observed at the same instant that the shadow of a cloud was passing over the spot on which I stood, though it was of small extent, which, if it had no connection with my mood, at any rate suggested how transient and little to be regarded that mood was. I kept on, and in a moment the sun shone on my walk within and without.
age 34, July 1851, pg. 63

"A traveller!"

from the journals of Thoreau

A traveller! I love his title. A traveller is to be reverenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of our life. Going from ----- to -----; it is the history of every one of us.
age 33, June 1851, pg. 58

-----

Why should pensiveness be a kin to sadness? There is a certain fertile sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek. It is positively joyful to me. It saves my life from being trivial.
age 34, August 1851, pg. 66

----

And why should I speak to my friends? for how rarely is it that I am I; and are they, then, they?
age 34, August 1851, pg. 67

Henry David Thoreau central

This blog is probably going to become Henry David Thoreau central for the time being. I am reading his newly published -- abridged -- journals. Although they are abridged, they are the greatest compilation of his journals to date. And he has so many nuggets of interesting thoughts and observations that I feel I have to write them down somewhere.

In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is only another name for tameness. It is the untamed, uncivilized, free, and wild thinking in Hamlet, in the Iliad, and in all the scriptures and mythologies that delights us...A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvellous[sic], ambrosial and fertile, as a fungus or a lichen...The fault of our books and other deeds is that they are too humane, I want something speaking in some measure to the condition of muskrats and skunk-cabbage as well as of men, -- not merely to a pining and complaining coterie of philanthropists.
pg. 43, November 1850, age 33

---

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
pg. 42, November 1850, age 33

a separation from life

I'm starting to think that people who kill themselves are courageous.

To say, FUCK OFF, this world sucks and I don't want anything more to do with it.

It's a good thing I have an avid interest in theatre and books and people (usually ones I don't know -- people are always better when you are far away from them). Otherwise, I may consider off-ing myself. However, I wish I had more REAL things in my life, that made me happy.

Or, I think as Henry David Thoreau does when he wrote in his journal that The most positive life that history notices has been a constant retiring out of life, a wiping one's hands of it, seeing how mean it is, and having nothing to do with it. A bleak but sometimes comforting thought.

SWAN LAKE

Ushered at the Benedum today for SWAN LAKE, my favorite (really, only) ballet that I like. I had about 6 hours of sleep which for many would suffice but I can't function on less than 8. Got up at 7:00, just as it was getting light. But I was excited to see this ballet again, after having seen it at the Royal Opera House in London.

It was a student matinee so there were lots of kids. It's always great having school children. They are always better behaved than you might think they would be, and seem genuinely thrilled by everything they see. We get both private and inner city schools. The ballet mistress and master were there, and the artistic director, sitting in my section. They come to every ballet performance.

This is a clip from the American Ballet Theatre production of SWAN LAKE, a production that I hold dear. I've watched many ballet performances on tape before, but none that lives up to this.

At one point the woman who plays Odette/Odile has to do 32 fouettes, which are essentially 32 turns. It is very difficult and not every ballerina can do it. Not only does Gillian Murphy do it in this production but she is the only one who has ever added extra turns to the combination. This starts just at 3:00 on this video.

for every good there is a bad

I feel myself get weaker and sadder. I try to move on, I try to find a job, I try to hope that something better will come along. I haven't felt the need to write like this in some time. Though I've felt sad for what feels like forever. Every time I write something or feel like this I remember a former friend of mine telling me -- when I would write him these things -- that I should see a therapist. That cold, decisive, practical advice would hit me like a fist. I lack emotional fulfillment; I look for it ever where.

I just move on. I go to cafe's and drink tea. I scour job advertisements. I read literature. I watch British comedy shows and old American shows like Buffy that I never watched when they were on.

I have some sort of juvenile wish to be in a safe place where I cannot be harmed and where people are happy. And I HATE this, because it makes me weak, this wish. I will be in a therapist office one day and he (I dislike women, so it will be a he) will say that I did not have a safe place growing up and that now I am unable to function in this normal unsafe world because I want only good things. And then I will feel even more that I will always feel unsafe and will always wish for something that I do not have.

People are mean to me. They talk about me behind their backs. I wouldn't believe this if a good friend or two didn't tell me. I don't understand why people would say things, mean things, about me, especially when I have not wronged them. Probably they do it because they lack self-esteem or something, they are threatened by me, but I cannot relate how sad this makes me, that I am surrounded by people like this. I may be too sensitive but that is because I am an emotional person. I think it would be very difficult to be an emotional person and not be sensitive. The two seem inextricably linked. For every good there is a bad.

"Who besides me will ever read these letters?"

Sometimes I believe that God wants to try me, both now and later on. I must become good through my own efforts, without examples and without good advice. Then later on I shall be all the stronger. Who besides me will ever read these letters? From whom but myself shall I get comfort? As I need comforting often, I frequently feel weak, and dissatisfied with myself; my shortcomings are too great. I know this, and every day I try to improve myself, again and again.
Anne Frank, pg.41

real life

Me: Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a warped Jane Austen novel.

Mike: Very warped

a snapshot

10:30 at night. Lights off. The window behind my futon open, a cool breeze drifting in. I'm laying on my futon, four large pillows behind me, a huge comforter wrapped around me, Cadbury milk chocolate opened beside me, a diet pepsi in my hand, and the second season of the British comedy The Vicar of Dibley on the telly in front of me.