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I started reading the first chapter of a book that my friend renee gave me called narcissus and goldmund by herman hesse. The description of the back cover reads

Narcissus and Goldmund is the story of a passionate yet uneasy friendship between two men of opposite character. narcissus, an ascetic instructor at a cloister school, has devoted himself soley to scholarly and spiritual pursuits. one of his students is the sensual, restless Goldmund, who is imediately drawn to his teacher’s fierce intellect and sense of discipline. when narcissus persuades the young student that he is not meant for a life of self-denial, Goldmund sets off in pursuit of aesthetic and physical pleasures, a path that leads him to a final, unexpected reunion with Narcissus.

The first chapter really only establishes the two principal characters, and to be honest, when I first was given the book I thought it seemed an awful lot like Sidhartha, the only book by Herman Hesse that I’ve read. I was more excited about the fact that someone had given me a book to borrow (because I really think that giving people books or music or clothes, or letting them borrow those things are some of the nicest small gestures that anyone can do) than about the actual book, but I’ve been thinking about the book and I’m more excited about it.

I’m interested in the book because I like the idea of people having a fairly established world view, or lifestyle, or personality, or personal inclinations, and having those things make people very different from each other, even conflicting with each other, but that such diversity ultimately is what makes people be able to coexist and maybe the world a bit better.

I started thinking about this while I was making a mix cd of bands that were playing in bton this month. I wanted to put a Dave Dean song on it, and all I had was the two dean crew 7″ that he made with his brother. I put the song risk on the cd because I remembered him playing it at shows. The song talks about the safety and routine that can be found even when doing interesting things like playing music and contrasts that with someone who isn’t neccessarily “productive” in terms of making records or zines, but who seems to live life more spontaneously.

I can’t really tell if the song idealizes the romantically reckless lifestyle or if Dave just goes out of his way to vividly and endearingly describe his friend because some of the way she does things are the way that he doesn’t do them and he feels like being aware of those differences is a good thing. These days I’m surrounded by people who I feel like are pretty different from me in terms of personalities, personal capacities, and temperment and who I also find to be terribly aspiring. And I feel like I’ve changed a lot since I’ve known these people, but that awareness of change also brings up the nagging idea that maybe it could be possible to adopt little bits of the things that I like so much in my friends and stuff them into parts of my personality. This is a stupid idea, but it’s also real attractive.

When you start thinking like that, it’s scary because you realize how much you are yourself. I went to ryan’s art show‘s opening and a party afterwards with ryan and a few other friends from bloomington. I kept looking at ryan’s paintings and thought about how he’s the kind of person who has enough of an idea about what he wants to make that he can make these beautiful finished paintings where I feel like a lot of the time I get excited about ideas, but they’re loose and I quickly lose the energy to make much of them. He also has this confidence in his ability to make things that he can re-make things, or set them aside to pick up later, or throw them away entirely until he’s happy with them whereas I’m so excited at making *anything* that I worry that, if left to my own devices, I’d settle a bit too much on the quality. And I think that I’m not like my friend Justin who can get a little drunk and walk around a party with a tape recorder talking to art ladys. Or he can start off a conversation saying how he learned from school how to bullshit and then we can have this nice, quasi-philosophical conversation on the drive home that seems to make some sense, but could all be just for amusement. I don’t mind that, but I worry that I put to much stock in conversations like this, in hearing my self talk, like I put too much finality in the things that I begin to figure out hearing myself talk, or arguing with a friend. And listening to Justin talk, I feel like the conversation is fun and lively, but that he’s got so much going on in his head and that’s the reality of his life, and the things he occupies himself with and not the things that he converses about.

The thing I have to remember though, is that doing the things the way that I do them has worked out pretty well for me. I’m pretty happy, which isn’t to say that I should try to define who I am and stick with it, but I think it’s also reason enough not to embark on a crazy self-improvement regimine. Is proximity to different, challenging people, that make you feel a little self-conscious enough? Do you have to try to throw yourself into their world a little bit? Or are the things that you figure out for yourself the things that count?

howto: picking up a dropped purl stitch

so i’ve recently picked up knitting and the thing that I mess up the most is dropping stitches when purling. This website gives the following instructions for picking up the stitch:

To retrieve a dropped purl stitch, insert the right needle through the loop, and under the strand.

Insert left needle from front to back, and lift stitch gently over strand.

The strand thusbecomes a stitch facing the wrong way.

Slip needle into loop and slip stitch to correct position for purling.

leaders dictating political dialogue

when ryan and i spoke at the punk town meeting at pix fest last summer, one of the arguments that i made was that the danger of George W. Bush was that he shifted the language and way of speaking and thinking about politics from one that was rational and considerate to one that was unilateral and ignorant. Right now I’m listening to some radio documentary on stabalizing the conflicts in Venezuala. The commentator spoke about how the Venezualan leader, Chavez, has a very aggressive and confrontational way of public speaking. She notes that in terms of how the media addresses contentious issues was affected by this. They would choose speakers, and even counterpoint speakers that mimicked this aggressive speaking style, so the entire political dialogue shifted a little. This is exactly what I feel has been going on in the US as well. The president and the way he talks has influenced other in his party, the media, and the response from the left and even radicals.

the radio program is here, i think

as much as you try to plan …

there’s always that one thing that makes things that much more difficult. i accepted that i was going to get back from tour really early in the morning. i accepted that i was going to set two alarms and roll out of bed wearing the same clothes that i’ve been wearing for the last twelve days and go to work after only two hours of sleep. but, as i walked out the front door, i realized it was raining and that riding my bike to work would only result in getting soaked. it was an automatic, wet walk the few blocks to work and a day that stayed gray and was made only barely functional by caffeine. i had talked to people optimistically about having to work this day, but have the next day off, but what is actually in store is 3 days of work in a row, and no amount of answering e-mail or listening to internet radio is going to make that more bearable.

it’s strange to come back to bloomington but instead of running into friends excited to ask you about tour or tell you what they’ve been up to, to be grogilly staring into a computer monitor. still, the wet trudge to work brought some comfort in the familiarity of the sidewalk cracks and aging schoolyard, the bright paint of the bike project doors and the stupid apartment buildings.

bday party in louisville

i went to louisville for mike and billy’s drag birthday party with madeline and hannah. it was good to get out of town, though perhaps inopportune timing given that there’s a ton of stuff to get done for tour. it was nice to hang out with the louisville kids and to dress like a woman. madeline did far better dressing as a man, despite the last minuteness of her getup. transformed by an emporer cutoff t-shirt, a hyperrealist hat, and a thin, pencilled on mustache, the casualness with which she dropped dudish one-liners was crazy. when she played, as “mad dog”, it was amazing, alternating between dudish song descriptions like “this song is about my car” and her usual amazing playing. the part of the uncle murder ballad #2 where she sings “never shoot at moving things, just feels good in my hand, makes me feel more threatening makes me feel like a man,” made her burst into giggles which was real funny and nice. the party was marked by some akward dancing from me, some crazy sexy dancing from jamie, corey, and shakes, and some even crazier sexy dancing from a cadre of teenaged burlesque girls, and these girls who showed up from nowhere dressed in this amazing hip-hop thug getup. i drove madeline’s car back fast up i-65 and got to work two hours late, seemingly without consequence. i feel groggy now.

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i decided to walk up 7th street to work today. it seems like i always ride up 6th these days. maybe the change today happened because i was walking and 6th is less hilly and more fun to ride a bike on, or maybe, feeling better about other things, my subconscious didn’t need to direct me to walk one block closer, hoping for a chance meeting at an intersection.

i walked up the hill towards the elementary school. “walk faster,” i said out loud, my words freezing as they exited my mouth. i did walk faster, shivering, as if the cold were a bully waiting to pummel me from behind some bushes on the way to school.

heating problems

the heating guy from airtech came today. seemed to be in a rush. one thing that he noticed was that the thermostat was wired wrong so that the air conditioning was coming on along with the heat, so they were working against each other, not heating very efficiently. he said that the furnace would also need a thorough cleaning and that he would talk with the land lord to schedule that. I mentioned the duct problems to the heating guy and he said that they could check that out and give an estimate when they came to clean the furnace.