Loose Cans

This feels good. Really, really good. Good isn't the word. Intestine-twisting, sphincter-tightening good. "Rectum?" "Damn near killed 'im!"

Got two essays back today. The first, a merry romp through Whitman's meadow, a rather ordinary piece on the connection between Leaves of Grass and the rather hoary, bloviating preface to the 1855 edition (which I grew so tired of that I devoted a big paragraph to ripping apart), entitled "The Lizard King" because I really couldn't think of anything else (you know, Jim Morrison's line, "I am the lizard king. I can do anything." Morrison is totally an heir to Whitman) was for Matterson, the department head.

78.

Comments short and nearly illegible: "Very good work, mature, well-focused and informed; I'd like to see a bit more on [illegible] Whitman's use of epic and of epic centred in the self (space? [meaning he knew there wasn't room])." He recommends a few more sources dealing with Whitman's rejection of the Homeric and forging of a genuine American epic tradition in "Song of Myself." That's it. A quiet A+.

But then The Alchemist. The play on which I did a presentation on which bombed phenomenally--Amanda Piesse (O thou most beloved among lecturers--she's a stupendous reader) was like, Um, no, that's actually completely wrong, you have no idea what Alchemy is about. So I went back and learned alchemy. I went to Early English Books Online, bless it, dredged up the 15th-16th century monographs of Nicholas Flamel and other alchemists, read my ass off (more research than I've ever done in my life), and then proceeded to write, in the course of about a night, the most tortured, painful, ofttimes wild, comma-saturated paper I have ever composed. By 1am, I was just about screaming, throwing things across the apartment. I went bonkers. Haven't hated writing so much since the My Odyssey assignment in 10th grade, where I sat down to write a story without the slightest notion of how to do so. Just didn't know what I was doing. I was making this mortifying flail at her pet subject (science in Elizabethan/Jacobean England), and was wiping out in front of my favorite lecturer.

85.

Eighty-mother-fuckin'-five.

I didn't even know you could GET that grade. "Stunning piece of writing, Sam; knowledgeable, well-researched, well-supported, thoughtful, and comfortable enough with its material to be elegant, witty, imaginative and intertextual [there was a ton of Shakespeare and Joyce involved--the line "Mammon, Epicure, utter glutton, fattened, is flattened" won the comment, "You really HAVE been reading Ulysses"] at the same time. It was a pleasure--and a privilege--to read this."

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

Unfortunately I now have to go impale myself on a paper on Who brings Camelot down?, my answer to which is a whinging, "I don't KNOW! Stop asking me! Leave me alone!"

Words. A whole hell of a lot of words. 5008 words. Nineteen pages. Handed it in yesterday. Told my tutor about it today: It's a monster, I said. How many, she asked. Five thousand, I replied. "Fucking hell!"

Wrote it in two days--and it's goddamn concise, probably the most readable paper I've written in a long time. It's tight as a ballerina's butt.

Wrote it amid reams of xeroxes strewn across the living room, covering every sitting surface--Sadie was remarkably forbearing. I decided to forgo the first title I came up with, which frankly felt most appropriate: "The Fucking Pope Is Dead and My Knob Creek Is Gone What the Fuck Do You Want From Me." "Shaolin Shadowboxing and the Wu-Tang Sword," the first line of Enter the Wu-Tang, while very apropos, was a bit esoteric. "O-Tay!" was right out. Finally settled on "HONKY-TONK: Black is the New Black." It works.

But it wasn't all fun and games. There was pain, too, great pain. It was supposed to be a paper on three diaspora peoples--black English, black Americans and Jewish Americans. The Beastie Boys and Matisyahu were to form the bridge from Hip-Hop. I wrote this thing, originally, so that I could talk about the damn Jews. The basic question was, if you can't beat 'em, and you can't join 'em, what can you do? The Jews would have completed the structure: dub poetry is the expression of the black English people's aggressive attitude towards the Man, Hip-Hop is passive-aggressive, and the Jews are just passive. But at about midnight, having finally finished the ten-page section on Hip-Hop, I had to admit that, at 1600 words over the limit, this was getting a little long. With great reluctance, I cut it off. Talk about guilt (what, incimadentally, is the Yiddish for Guilt? I can't believe I don't know this). I actually felt terrible about it. I couldn't cut us out of the introduction--at least pay lip service--but I had to yank us from the thesis, and replace us with the following footnote: "The Jews, over this Jew’s complaint, saw that this essay was far too long already, and rather than make a fuss, insisted that no, I shouldn’t worry about them, really, they’re fine, they’ll just sit here in the dark."

I think I will finish this paper yet, though. I'm pretty pissed. But it's good. I mean, when I realized around word 1200 that there was no earthly way this thing was staying under budget, I more or less gave up on trying to save myself. I officially abdicated with this line: "1968 can also be described as the year America, and with it most of the world, completely lost its shit."

Oy. On to the next one. Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. That one's even more dangerous--it's like a medieval comic book.

The Pope is dead and Neil Young has a brain aneurysm. The latter deserves it.

I am at a cybercafe because I am so utterly in essay mode that I could not go on without knowing exactly who it was put the all-white "legends of Rock" on their cans for Rock's preposterous "50th anniversary." It turns out it was Miller Brewing Company. Jackasses. I needed it for a parenthetical statement. Just can't go on not knowing something I should know. I am in my slippers and pajamas. Not having the internet in my apartment is going to be more difficult than I thought.

Went back to work last night. Felt great. They only have lobo open on Saturday nights now, and they're closing it for good in a few weeks. Expect a teary eulogy.