clarity

here s how i figure it happened see there s no way he could have asked her being cause of he s just some dumb joe who nobody i know ain t never seen before not never before he turned up on her arm at the diner back in fall and she s leaning on him like she couldn t stand up if he wasn t there to hold her and everything s changed just like that you know like one day she s your best pal from days way back when you were chasing fireflies through those warm summer nights together and suddenly she s gone and moved on without you and there ain t no way you can be a part of it not no way no more so i figure he looks like some dork she thought was cute from up by the college where she s learning to be a nurse and there s no way he ever asked her first and he s there in the diner again ordering her a soda and playing her songs on the jukebox and calling her michelle when we all called her shelley and who calls her that not nobody round here and i never knew that come on eileen was her favourite song and what s the matter man can t she stand up by herself no more so i asked around about this guy this smartass james from college this wiseguy jimmy who s an advertiser in training who plays for the tennis team who everyone calls him fuzzy and what s a guy do to get a nickname like that s what i d like to know so i heard he s in his final year and he s had this girl called tina since high school who she just broke it off with him and everyone knows who tina is she s that kind of girl everybody saw her out total slut like nobody i know ever went with her but everybody knew and she always dressed like you knew she was anyone s for the night and i don t know why he went with her but he s a big enough dork i guess and hell why not if you re getting it from her regular and all and she was goodlooking enough sure she s the finest girl around sure if you like that kind of girl sure but i guess he didn t mind her going with other guys or even i heard other girls or maybe he s too dumb to know i mean she broke up with him and not the other way round so why s he with shelley now and i heard some stories about shell like stuff you could never believe like she s not that sort of girl i ve known her long enough to say for sure that she doesn t do that kind of thing no way like she never let any of the other guys i knew try anything in high school no matter what they tried to say there s just no way so what s she want with a guy like that like he s three years older than her and you know he just wants one thing from her and she doesn t need a guy like that shit hell i can remember when she was on our softball team before the coaches stopped letting all the girls join and she was the only girl left for years before that anyway and she could throw a fast pitch better than any of the guys and one time fat bobby foster just up and asked her out and she laughed right in his face not mean like but just because he was so funny all quiet and nervous and terrified when bobby foster was always the guy who snapped her training bra and i never felt so good to be her friend because the other girls had all left to play with their dolls or put on make up or whatever and she was the only one left but she never changed not even when all the guys started to get interested but they were all just bobby foster all over again and it didn t matter until now she s with some guy and i don t think i know who she is no more but today i was down by the river in the parking lot by the park there and i was drinking jim beam from the bottle with tommy bogbinder just sitting there on the hood of his nova and watching the sun make streaks of light on the water and i saw her there staring out at the same setting sun and she was wearing her jeans and her smart red jumper like that time i saw her in the diner and i thought right then that she was nothing to me no more and she walked across the lot to where we were by the pepsi machine and when she got close i could see the black stains on her face where her mascara had run and she told me he broke up with her and i thought he was a damn moron all along anyway and i said so then i watched her ass move in her jeans while she walked away

	Condensed version, as a service to adeq. readers. (none / 0) (#1)
	by tkatchev on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 04:41:45 AM PST

	fuzzy bra drinking ass jeans move moron -- Peace and much love...

	Why do you hate... (none / 0) (#4)
	by elenchos on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 11:29:54 AM PST

	...art? I do, I do, I do --Bikini Kill

	Correction. (none / 0) (#5)
	by tkatchev on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 11:51:59 AM PST

	The parent post should read: Why do you hate crappy art? -- Peace and much love...

	Hmmm... (none / 0) (#7)
	by elenchos on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 12:06:51 PM PST

	Maybe somebody needs to show me a better God. And no, you freshmen, please keep your ontological argument to yourself. That's the problem with trying to make improvements in God: you are forced to resort to fiction, which cannont, contrary to some varieties of logic, make God more real. Art, on the other hand, is not harmed in the least by the use of fabrication to spruce it up. It is fabrication, after all. I do, I do, I do --Bikini Kill

	Au contraire. (none / 0) (#9)
	by tkatchev on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 01:05:54 PM PST

	God is the absolute. Unlike you, or art. To hate the absolute is to be an absolute nihilist. Are you therefore and absolute nihilist? Waiting for an aswer with baited breath. -- Peace and much love...

	quibble (none / 0) (#12)
	by nathan on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 01:44:37 PM PST

	It's "bated" breath, as in "abated." To state that you wait with bated breath is to inform your conversor that you are holding your breath. Nathan -- Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

	Yes. (none / 0) (#13)
	by tkatchev on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 01:52:35 PM PST

	Thanks. -- Peace and much love...

	Assuming it has the decency to exist, (none / 0) (#15)
	by elenchos on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 02:05:39 PM PST

	...saving you the embarrasment of having based everything you say on a mere assumption and then having that assumption turn out false. What nihilism is there in hating someone else's imaginary absolute? There are lots of fevered, idealist dreams, like the Thousand Year Reich or the Worker's Paradise, that I hate equally, and all for the same reason: the evil it makes men do while under the spell of this delusionary perfection. You use of "baited [sic] breath" was nearly correct; the idiom was right, you just misspelled Shakespeare's elision of 'abated'. I do, I do, I do --Bikini Kill

	Absolutes cannot be imaginary. (5.00 / 1) (#26)
	by tkatchev on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 10:00:07 PM PST

	If it's imaginary, then it's by definition not absolute. What's your point? -- Peace and much love...

	Oh dear. (none / 0) (#30)
	by elenchos on Mon Feb 4th, 2002 at 12:14:30 AM PST

	You really don't know the ontological argument, in its many splendourous forms, has been well-refuted more than once? Google it, OK? You'll discover that you can't define the "absolute" or the "perfect" or "God" into existence. In other words, yes, you're imagining things. I do, I do, I do --Bikini Kill

	There are... (none / 0) (#33)
	by elenchos on Mon Feb 4th, 2002 at 12:42:12 AM PST

	...many many absolutes, at least in the eyes of many different people. And by doubting the existence of each of their many absolutes, each of these many believers may call me a nihilist. Should pick just your perfect, unprovable invisible thing to love, and draw the scorn of all those others whose perfect thing I have not loved? Looking at the sum total of their contempt, what difference is it to add in yours? I'll stick to my guns: your ideal is as much a plague on peace and happiness as the Moslem ideal, the Nazi ideal, or the Soviet ideal. Incidentally, if there were such a thing as absolute perfection in existence, wouldn't it be easy to notice in contrast to the imperfection of absolutely everything else? Sure, sure, maybe it is there, but it sure is doing an absolutely perfect job of hiding itself. Would the absolute hide, if there were an absolulte? Maybe, but I'm still comfortable doubting it. I do, I do, I do --Bikini Kill

	God is art. (none / 0) (#17)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 05:33:21 PM PST

	Religion is a purely aesthetic experience. It's extraordinarily difficult to communicate this experience in words so that it is felt rather than "understood" in rational, intellectual terms; rational argument never convinced anyone. Uncoincidentally, such communication reads like any other Art Theory.

	this is just a feeling i have (none / 0) (#21)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 07:55:38 PM PST

	Are you claiming that art is the omnipotent, omiscient, transcendent, immanent, illimitable, absolute creator of the universe? I'm claiming the irrational is irrational without regard to category (the belief in an omniscient, transcendent, etc creator of the universe, for example). All irrational beliefs operate at the same level and with identical effect on the "soul". Mythology is religion is humanity, and art is an expression of all that; morality is a particular sense of aesthetics. People are certainly able to worship art, but that doesn't mean that art is in any meaningful sense God. I dont really understand the significance of worship, and "meaningful sense" frankly sounds like typical art theory babble. Language will -- must -- always fail when discussing the irrational.

	let me try again: (none / 0) (#22)
	by nathan on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 08:18:09 PM PST

	I don't believe that believing in God is irrational. When I said that art is in no meaningful sense God, I meant that I considered the conflation of art with God to be true only insofar as one might make the trivial case that all exists in God. For some reason, I'm posting about religion every other post here. I have no idea why. In real life I'm a cynical grad student who's enjoying the simple pleasures of Russel Hoban's Riddley Walker right now. Is all this God business ever a strange feeling. Anyhow, back to the matter at hand. While art might be a means for people to access God in their lives - to express their relationship with God, to seek communion with God, to resist their own limitations and failings so as to make themselves more pleasing to God - art cannot be God. At most, it can be the idea and manifestation of God in a human mind. The art itself, though, is less than the person who made it, and is an artefact, act, or rite rather than even a living being in its own right; if art cannot even be man, how can we say it's God? Nathan PS - note that you don't even have to believe in God for the last paragraph to hold together. I'm not trying to be divisive here. -N -- Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

	tilting at windmills (none / 0) (#31)
	by nathan on Mon Feb 4th, 2002 at 12:20:34 AM PST

	I would like to remind you that, by citing a refutation of the hoary old ontological argument, you have not disproven the existence of God. St. Anselm -- Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

	Dude, (none / 0) (#32)
	by tkatchev on Mon Feb 4th, 2002 at 12:26:49 AM PST

	Your whole existence has been refuted, more than once. Stop stroking your intellectual manhood, it doesn't do you any good. -- Peace and much love...

	good grief (none / 0) (#34)
	by nathan on Mon Feb 4th, 2002 at 12:56:32 AM PST

	I might be working late on a Sunday night, but at least I'm not drunk. Nathan -- Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

	Re: (none / 0) (#35)
	by tkatchev on Mon Feb 4th, 2002 at 01:34:46 AM PST

	You cannot have more than one absolute. That would be a logical fallacy; you, as a fanatical liberalist, should know better than to make such crude logical mistakes. P.S. Yes, those whose of us who are not completely warped yet can sense God's presence without any problem. -- Peace and much love...

	You can if they are imaginary. (none / 0) (#36)
	by elenchos on Mon Feb 4th, 2002 at 12:12:21 PM PST

	This is how the Soviets thought too: they first assumed that everything they supported was already an incontrovertable fact, and then proceeded to deduce from that foundation. All fanatics share this. You keep assuming that your "absolute" as you conceive it, is the absolute. What if you bet on the wrong horse? What if there is no absolute at all? Labeling everyone who doesn't share your blind fanaticism as being "warped" or "nihilist" is not an argument, you know. From watching The Brady Bunch, I learned that a person who calls other people names is really saying something about themselves, and nothing about the person they are insulting. What do you think you are revealing about yourself by all this labeling and name-calling? You reveal something you shouldn't be very proud of, don't you? Think about it. Do you want to be that kind of person? Do you? I do, I do, I do --Bikini Kill

	misnomer? (none / 0) (#18)
	by nathan on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 05:37:34 PM PST

	Are you claiming that art is the omnipotent, omiscient, transcendent, immanent, illimitable, absolute creator of the universe? People are certainly able to worship art, but that doesn't mean that art is in any meaningful sense God. The more I read your inital statement, the less I understand it. Nathan -- Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

	my underlying assumption (none / 0) (#37)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Feb 4th, 2002 at 02:30:22 PM PST

	At most, [art] can be the idea and manifestation of God in a human mind. God is a manifestation in the human mind. God is a an abstraction of Mankind and Mankind's relationship to the rest of the irrational -- as in beyond our ability to discern or explain rationally -- Universe. There's truth in abstractions but abstract entities themselves dont actually exist. They just make communication possible.

	say, (none / 0) (#2)
	by nathan on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 11:10:19 AM PST

	Thanks for registering an account. I enjoyed reading this. Do you know Russel Hoban's Riddley Walker? Nathan -- Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

	Not to mention... (none / 0) (#3)
	by Greg on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 11:28:35 AM PST

	the last chapter of Ulysses by Jimmy Joyce.

	sigh... (none / 0) (#6)
	by nathan on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 11:54:11 AM PST

	What a great book that is. Nathan -- Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

	Can't say I liked it... (none / 0) (#25)
	by gcsb on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 09:02:18 PM PST

	...that much opium can't be good for you. Regards, gcsb. Sig is under re-construction...do not panic.

	Thanks (none / 0) (#27)
	by Dupree Drug Store on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 10:38:33 PM PST

	I haven't read anything by Russell Hoban. I have read Ulysses, of course. Besides the punctuation, the above passage owes more to Don DeLillo, although it would be difficult to explain how. Some people might even consider that a slur against his books, which are generally well punctuated with commas and full stops.

	you're welcome (none / 0) (#29)
	by nathan on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 11:01:55 PM PST

	Hoban isn't a stream-of-consciousness writer, but his Riddley Walker does use a sort of amazing oral-tradition English that's unlike anything else I've ever read. Anyway, whatever works; and some of the art in the passage posted is that, well-crafted as it is, it shows no chisel-marks. It's amazing fun to read. Nathan -- Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

	Dear Sir (none / 0) (#8)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 12:57:16 PM PST

	I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

	I admit it. I am smitten. (none / 0) (#10)
	by RobotSlave on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 01:32:32 PM PST

	I don't suppose you'd mind having groupies, would you? The sort who crouch at the foot of the podium while you read and bat their eyelashes at you? But I wouldn't stalk you. Stalkers are creepy. © 2002, RobotSlave. You may not reproduce this material, in whole or in part, without written permission of the owner.

	The wonders of modern technology. (none / 0) (#11)
	by tkatchev on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 01:35:14 PM PST

	Don't fall for it! It's a fake! It's probably a g**k with a hyperactive Pearl script. -- Peace and much love...

	You didn't read it, did you? (none / 0) (#14)
	by RobotSlave on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 01:59:29 PM PST

	Nor the other two comments written by Mr. or Ms. Store. Little geeks with pearl interpreters do not write scripts that write prose superior to that of their authors. There may be some sort of soft-ware thingamajig involved that strips out the punctuation, but I prefer to believe it's all lovingly hand-crafted. Swoon. © 2002, RobotSlave. You may not reproduce this material, in whole or in part, without written permission of the owner.

	oral tradition (none / 0) (#16)
	by nathan on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 02:34:24 PM PST

	nobody i know ever went with her but everybody knew and she always dressed like you knew she was anyone s for the night... This kind of thing is what really turned me on to Infinite Jest - you realize that Don Gately, despite being blue-collar and inarticulate, is more alive and clear-seeing than some of the jabbering idiots in rehab with him who have more formal education. Wallace pulls it off without having the slightest bit of the intellectual's disgusting patronizing "glorification of the ordinary man." Instead of that, he shows that any kind of person can be completely aware and alive, and that lots of intellectuals are frantically evading reality as hard as they can. Anyway, kudos, Dupree Drug Store. If you post it, I'll read it. If you publish it, I'll buy it, and read it (although it's not exactly easy going.) Good luck. Nathan -- Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

	For heaven's sake... (none / 0) (#19)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 06:15:52 PM PST

	I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharans and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. How about that! No punctuation at all. Experiments in literature, unlike experiments in physics, don't gain kudos by being repeatable!

	now, Ulyssen to me, bud (none / 0) (#20)
	by nathan on Sun Feb 3rd, 2002 at 06:58:06 PM PST

	I like Mr or Ms Store's voice, not lack of punctuation. A writer is obliged to consider stylistic devices that contribute to the effect he wishes to achieve, and that's where it ends, excepting the occasional case where a writer discovers an interesting device without being able to masterfully use it. Do you think I'm impressed by some trivial stunt like taking the punctuation out? I'm impressed by the writing. So what if Joyce has already written stream-of-consciousness works? Mr or Ms Store can too. You might as well say that Tennyson was wrong to write blank verse because Shakespeare had two hundred and fifty years previously. Nathan -- Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.