Threads: an implanted desire for Facebook 2013, emerging from the ground of the collective psyche like cicadas.1
Re-reading Saul Bellow. “If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.” Half deepening neurosis; half better than ever—I know that feeling.
I re-read a defensive angry, probably correct email I wrote close to 8 years ago to an old collaborator. I was shocked at my eloquence—and my self-assuredness—but back in those days I used to write real physical letters regularly, along with long emails. Now I would probably write something short and dismiss it or just ignore the person completely.
I still get into trouble with people today, but I was even more rhetorically pugilistic when I was younger. I guess I was convinced that I was right about a lot of things—or I had convinced myself that having read a lot of books and having a certain amount of romantic ardor was the same thing as possessing truth. I did have some kind of youthful wisdom, I saw some things clearly… but my perspective was very one-sided, top-heavy, self-confirming.
Herzog was a book I loved when I was in my early 20s (and I still like it so far). I don't think I understood, then, however, that it was a comedy.2 Herzog is A Romantic… a vain, heterodox, combative, over-sexed romantic.
Laughing at Herzog is laughing at myself—which I didn’t do ten years ago.
Today I read novels just to get a sense of alternate modes of time, or experience of time, phenomenology of time, and time moves slowly. I like reading novels because it