School

[Madeleine Maudlin]

And eternal reward Hereafter*.  *Big plus*.  *Encouraging.  Terrific how
things work out in the end for the right people.  The only thing needs
affirming down *here*, is Jesus.

"Boo!  Hiss!  Down in front!"

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dave, what you said really "hits home" for me. I graduated high school and
> promptly decided I wanted nothing to do with Academia, drunk on Whitman no
> doubt, and somewhat on fire with Blakean Notions and prone to Pynchonian
> Paranoia. I spent a bit of time homeless, consuming large amounts of
> marijuana, ended up in jail (for said marijuana), began working on various
> organic farms... finally, at 23 I can say that I am looking to continue my
> education in the formal sense (continuing my "true" and personal Education
> was never a question) and will start school in the fall. One of the folks
> on the farm here, upon seeing what I read (I believe it was Frank Kermode
> at the time) insisted very strongly, under threat of mock-violence, that I
> needed to go back to school. I suppose he saw a bit of himself in me...
> If it's any hope my Aunt recently acquired her nursing degree at age 54,
> having no previous college credit or anything like that... best not to give
> up hope, though I do not know, or I know only very little, when it comes to
> that feeling of the Crushing Burden of years...
>
> As for Borges, Keith, I am tempted to wax poetic and say something along
> the lines that what I dig about Borges is he seems to write what has
> already been written... or no, like his Pierre Menard,  Borges writes
> fragments of Homer, Second Century Gnostic exegesis, imbues writers who
> wrote centuries before him with strictly Borgesian qualities... but really
> I love Borges because he was one of the first writers I read that made me
> feel *intoxicated* simply by encountering them and in turn encountering
> myself. I recall coming home from the library, I must have been 16 or 17,
> walking through the Nature Preserve nearby and, having never been
> intoxicated on even a drop of beer in my life, feeling *high.*
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 10:20 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 1:20 AM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Having graduated about five years ago I cannot say I learned anything
>> from
>> > High School...
>>
>> ... having graduated a long, long time ago, from a high school even
>> closer down the street now than it was when I went there, I learned,
>> stay in school as long as possible afterward (which I DIDN'T do, so
>> ...) ...
>>
>> .. I woke up shaking thinking this this morning: do @ LEAST something
>> worth doing, maybe something yo actually enjoy, even, each and every
>> day (if not each and every second). DON'T live every day as if it
>> might be yr last (i.e., rifling through Kubler-Ross's stages of dying
>> as if they're a Rolodex, or an animation flipbook), but as if yr gonna
>> have to relive it on yr deathbed.  This, I suppose, is my take on
>> Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, not so much as to affirm whatever the
>> hell it is you do, but to do whatever it is you can affirm in the end
>> (I'm Catholic, but I also can't help but think that "do unto others"
>> is, pace Gilles Deleuze, the kind of logic that makes sadists out of
>> masochists, so ...).
>>
>> Do what I say, not what I do.  I make mistakes so y'all don't have to.
>>  Trust me, y'all don't want to end up like me, much less like how I'm
>> going to end up, so ...
>>
>
>
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