misdirected affection

Up early this morning. 11am. Days upon days of sloth and pot, good for nothing lay-about lout. Get my act together today. Gonna go to Encore. Gonna do some work.

I’m on Myspace a lot. It’s not so much that I’m addicted to Myspace as I’m addicted to the interwebs. Myspace is just one more thing to do on the interwebs. Anyway, in this young woman’s “Who I’d like to meet” section she writes “henry miller in 1920s paris”. Well, honey, Henry Miller didn’t spend so much time in Paris during the 1920s. Apparently a couple months. With his wife. Most of Miller’s time in Paris that is chronicled in, for example, Tropic of Cancer, was during the 1930s. The Paris that made Miller’s themes so unique was the Paris of the 1930s.

The case could be made that had Miller been in Paris in the 1920s he would have never written the kind of books he did write. Tropic of Cancer is about poverty and a kind of perverted asceticism, irresponsibility, and bed bug ridden malaise. All of Miller’s friends are incompetent, weak, and disgusting in some form or another.

Paris of the 1920s was Hemingway’s Paris. Post war Paris was a very happy city. Everyone had enough money. Everyone had enough food. There was more absinthe than they knew what to do with. All of Hemingway’s friends were talented, famous, and powerful. There were no “gutters running over with sperm”. Hemingway could never have written A Moveable Feast in 1930s Paris.

At least this is my untutored assessment.

resplendent shiny foil, flicker in the night
hands so tight do toil, brave but mundane knight
altogether now we go, along the fields so brown
a wavering malicious beast, looking king a crown

their king a naked head for now, a naked head no cause
a naked head no cause for fright, great metallic jaws!

great metallic jaws descend, upon the party’s line
“seek not your glory now, your king for feast is mine!”

the wavering malicious beast, with middle section gone
draws bows to arms and takes good aim, let loose the arrows fly

clinking off the cold steel jaws, falling back to earth
cold steel jaws no right thing for pursuits pure amorous