Musings of the Annular

it has been a tumultuous few weeks here in the larson camp.   between opening a big old show at CSC and creating a psycho-reality for myself that is utterly nonnegotiable and debilitating, i feel like a failed piece of saran wrap trying to be stretched over a casserole dish, ripped in the middle, slowly collapsing into a small sticky heap ready to be discarded out of knowing 

frustration with a sense of ‘doesn’t this always fucking happen with this two-bit stretchy piece of shit plastic?’

but, mind you, that this is not reality. not the reality that i know i’m living in. i've since punched a ticket for a harrowing journey into my head, there to ponder annular dialectics, ontological rubix cubes, and a 'stomach level sadness' that exists there.  this is the lovely and radiant anti-truth i’ve created for myself, due in part and with many thanks to Infinite Jest, a (from the back cover) ‘…gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the pursuit of happiness in America.’  well who doesn’t want that?  i sure do.  i've talked about this book previously in it's infantile stages of reading, but now as i reach the, oh let's say, the 40% mark at round about page 360, i need to freeze this frame and take a breath before i let this Jetsonian treadmill like whirl out of control, leaving me helpless but for a plea to stop this crazy thing.  

'How do trite things get to be trite?  Why is the truth not usually uninteresting but anti-interesting?'

i told my friend with whom i'm concurrently reading this book, 'what's hard for me is that i think [david foster wallace] despises all of his characters.' and she corrected me and said that 'no, only in that he may despise himself and see himself for who he is.'  the characters are naked, translucent facets of himself; authentic and arrestingly honest and become, for any engaged reader, facets of my/oneself .  i am hal,  orin,  pemulis, James O. but more accurately, i see myself hovering over this book, encompassing and embracing its whole context.  i see my thoughts expressed with such acuity and precision that it just often pisses me off, like that anger you get when you bite into a moist brownie whose taste transcends compliments and praise and just makes you get angry 'fuck you, that's a delicious treat'.  its infuriating how he's exposing me like a frat boy hazing me, making me run naked through the commons trailing behind me a roll of toilet paper set afire and attached directly to my ass 'figure it out, larson! run! run!'  it's infuriating exposing my surroundings  as a cyclical exercise of addiction and competition and entertainment.  and what plans does he lay out for escape?  professional sports, terrorism, suicide, weed, psilocybin, DMZ ( 'the Yale U. of Ivy League acid') or live a life of trite little cliches, One Day At A Time, Hang In There, Fake It Till You Make It.  

[that , up there, right what you just read, *needed* to happen.]

but like i said supra-supra-, this is a reality i've created for myself.  this is not the new way, the new leaf i've turned over, but a temporary insanity that i'm choosing to commit to until an opportunity of escape presents itself (that, for the love of g.,) doesn't include the aforementioned options.  this, too, shall pass. 

the last thing, that i always forget: it's hilarious.  i laugh, out loud, every day reading this book.  what joy it gives me

in other news, i'm 99% positive i'm attending Sasquatch this year, which i couldn't be more excited for.  camping, seattle, and a whole megaton of bands that i'm gonna be aching to see.
job still in limbo.
but, at the end of the day?  i'm happy.  very, very, happy.