Dearling Bleaders,
Went out to Governor's Island, Brooklyn's new backyard, last Saturday which happened to be flapper day. Sweet band, great dancing. The day rather fluttered than flapped.
Now it is September and all must snap back. Tonight teaching begins again and I'm kind of delighted. Three hours once a week on poets and philosophy. I'm heading my head into Milton. Where a day makes sense, isn't agonizingly nonsensical, there must be some world view, some philosophy of it all, some skeleton so that all your muscles aren't in a heap on the floor in a wiggly bag of skin, flexing like a puddle of snakes but not quite able to move. The patriarch God of Paradise Lost makes it so all fights that happen in his house are important. The rest of the semester all the poets and philosophers will be out of that house-- all hell, if you'll allow, will have broke loose.
In life it is exceedingly difficult to break loose. It has something to do with the pacing of real life, it is hard to notice what is going on until years later you look back and say, Oh, we were getting to know each other. or Oh, I was starting to learn to think for myself. While while your going through it it is a nearly senseless salad of agony and bliss. Often the bliss is little, like bacon bits.
Go to school my lovelies. If we don't go to school how will we notice how warm September has become? Likewise, out of the father's house we have to choose for ourselves what to lose. The only habits that need to be broken are the ones you do not even know about, which makes it difficult to proceed. Philosophies must be cracked against one another, just as we do. It's middle memory again that matters: books get the pacing down so the rabbit mind of apes like us can visualize some middle-sized plot. Life is a crisis without it and we haven't naturally got it. No wonder you tell yourself such terrible things. If you don't know you are a character in Paradise Lost, you think you are just another upstart losing a fight with your dad. If you do know you are a character in Paradise Lost, it is pretty clear that the action is actually all about you, and how you feel, and how you manage the day.
Don't kill yourself and I shall return to encourage you yet again.
Jennifer
