email --
hey
from: kiphooker@ 3.3.2002 - 2.44 am: No worse for fortune
In July of 1969 three
men fell off the face of the earth. They returned a week later with
moon rocks and one of them now does informercials. It's an expanding
universe. As for myself I have not fell off the earth. Newton
has
made that very hard to do. Einstien did not help much either.
Falling off the earth is even harder than falling in love. I did the
latter. You might remember her. She was at my Christmas party.
We have been together for a
year now and there are plans for doing this longer and even making of point
of using this to our tax advantage. I like these plans. They are
not all my own. She gave me a ring and proposed. I won't say
much more a/b her than that now b/c more can always be said later . . . but
she is so magnanimouse and spectacular . . . she knows more a/b theoretical
physics than me and for a lark spends her expendable credits in philosophy
classes. She is beautiful as well . . . this hurts nothing in an
expanding universe.
In my expanding universe there has not been much to fill
the ether. I no longer work for the man. Now I work in research
and development for an atm company. I do not know how much
longer this arrangement can last. As for city lights that has turned
to a bust. And not the good kind of bust. I sent them the rest
of my book and never heard another word. I sent a query to another
house . . . they asked for a synopsis . . . I sent a proposal and they have
solicited. After they have read the manuscript and decided to publish
I will be the fucking shit and your concern and "giving a damn"
will be more warranted. I look forward to this.
I have started to roll my own cigarettes. By this method I save
almost a hundred dollars a moth. If I quit I could save another 24.
I do not plan of saving that further amount. I am also listening to a
lot of Quasi and Tricky. I don't think I have ever thanked you proper
for introducing me to independent music. Thank you so much . . . I
feel like such a nuveau riche mentioning things like that . . . but the
music you started me on has brought such pleasure. :)
It was strange finding your mail electronic last night. I received the
post you mailed to my parents but did not want to write you until I had
secured a publishing deal and would not feel so awkward confronting the city
lights debacle. You have made this difficult by e-mailing me and there
is not a thing Newton or Albert can now do. It was strange to hear
from you b/c Amy is down and stopped by yesterday. We sat around
drinking absinthe and
talking. There is something amazing a/b Amy. That something is
that regardless the miles or years we can always continue right where we
left. I like that.
Tonight Amy and I went to a karaoke bar. I am now
home. That is how I am writing you. You are now in Nashville.
Bronco lives there as well. It sounds like a grand place. I
recently read a book a/b Dostoevsky in Paris. That sounds as if it were a
grand place as well. I would like to visit them both.
This is all I have to say right now. I hope to say
more later. I hope to hear more later. I am sure you will be
helpful in this endeavor.
yours by virtue of this binary cipher
to: kiphooker@ monday march 11, 2002...i feel old. i know that's not true. its not like 23 is the end of the road, but that i've settled, stopped, frozen in inactivity. like this apartment is my retirement home and instead of shuffleboard i organize mp3s of bands i liked in college. maybe if i had a real job, left the house more often, i would feel better. i wouldn't be better though and that's the thing that keeps me home. to be better. ___ always asks what do you want to do? i answer be with you. he doesn't think that's a real thing to do. i agree but always pretend to be offended. what else is there to do? in nashville, to me means him and waiting for his school to finish and for US to start someday somewhere lese. he says go back to school, but school is the crutch he's using to pretend like something is happening in his life. i came and went from grad school and it left in me in debt and sad about living, about smartness. like smartness is some commodity the univ of chicago sold me and i don't know how to use it. lee says start a zine, get involved. i don't know about that stuff. i never got along comfortably in the scene i see no reason it should start now in this city. i say, i'll get a job in an away city maybe in publishing. i'd like to do copy editing at a magazine. i know i can't write, but my reading skills are excellent. i used to fill these empty hours with books i never got to in school but i'm not into it. picking them out is so hard, i never know what the right book is. people is the only thing i'm good at and there's no one around. all i do is email my far off friends and tell them stories about this place, trying to make it out to be happy, exciting times. its no better for anyone else though my college friends are frozen in their undergrad worlds: marriage, friends, school. how can we be so young and have given up already? is there anything else? i wish i could start drinking, but that was chicago for me and so much fun, now it seems a waste. i remember having fun. now. during these moments i've always turned to a song. reciting the words that give hope, or reaffirm despair. thus the mp3s, the search for the perfect song. why does music always have to be alone?
here i am in the never change continuum. easy does it, down the road. the bluegrass songs on the radio are so sad but sound so happy, i need for things to fit together...what about electricity, inspiration, the tender moment? how has this passed me by? is this what getting old is? before there was always someone to believe in, to prod and pretend achievement now all those protégés have gone on. i'm happy you're happy. girls and boys make all these things ok. you can forgive the devil for the right woman. I don't care if your book ever gets published. the commodity of your book is unimportant. write another one and publish that. you must have learned something in the years between. you should put your guns to good use, do so by whatever means you are comfortable with that is meant to be something nice, that says. you have done enough one your own. my advice to you has always been ill gotten...thanks for being a friend...
from kiphooker@ 3.26.02:Fourscore and seven cigarettes ago
Maybe it's not a crisis of identity.
Perhaps it is one of conclusion. You
live your days of dreams and expectations as fevers. You redeem these
dreams
and fevers and are issued life. Life is outside the lunchboxes and their
sanctions. It is wholly new and not as promised. It is not
direction. It
is the same to day the same tomorrow differing only in the maybe bill and
dinner distinction. Distractions are no good. Distractions are
curses.
They are symptoms. Books are no good. They pinpoint highlights and
expunge
breathing. Aging is no good. Aging means you can't do it again.
And what
you can do again you have done before. There are no more firsts.
There are
no more commencements. You are reaching the outside of the target
audience.
Instead of rejecting the culture, the culture will soon be rejecting you.
The inevitable is of course the indelible. And it's steaming on an
undeterable track. So what if Hemingway was in his late twenties when the
sun was the only thing rising for Jake. So what if Henry Miller was in his
fourties when he was living and writing the Tropics. So what if most of
the
backstreet boys are older than us. Plenty fucking what. There is to
much
passion and appalling beauty of this world for it to be whittled and
distilled down to 23 . . . 24 . . . 25 years. A hundred years could not
soak
it up. A thousand years would not begin to spill. Sure our bodies
will
creak wan. But we have not worn them so yet, and will not for many more
years than we have so far known. It is being fitted for dour thoughts that
is the ill. It is auditioning for sour thoughts that is the error.
That is
the holocaust of lesser celebration. That is the misfortune of our age.
And
I won't have any part of it. Neither should you.
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