Saturday, June 4, 2011

Can't seem to slow my mind down and focus..

I'm kind of jumping from one thing to another today.  I think it is a saturday thing.  Went for a run to try to break it.  Didn't really do the trick.  At copious amounts of chocolate.  Talked to an old friend.  Played chess on-line and against my computer.  Ate more food.  Listened to a lot of Neil Young.  Picked up my guitar for the first time in months and felt, like I did on my bike yesterday bringing it into the shop, incredibly rusty and out of shape.  So many things to work on, and so little focus to just work on them one by one, at least right now.  Of course, tomorrow night, around six or so, just when I'll have to prepare for the week, I'll fall into a zen like state of perfect concentration.  Should probably just unplug the internet from my life completely.  I'm not sure it adds anything. 

I'm reading three or four books at once.  Not always a good idea.  One is

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

Another is
 Look at the Harlequins!

 A third is now:

Shakey: Neil Young's Biography

 And of course, why not:

All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, Book 1)


What else could I start?  Well, the Pinker is verbose.  Sorry.  It has moments of sheer brilliance, which I expected, but it needs to be cut down a bit.  There's just a lot of duplicate ideas for no apparent reason.  I liked the Blank Slate and even The Language Instinct, much better.  

Nabakov.  Brilliant writer, especially when he's getting fractured and kind of losing his mind while he's writing it all out, because you, as the reader, can emphathize with him and, when he's on point, sort of lose your mind in the safe space between the pages.  Unfortunately, he's only really on point for about two chapters here.  The rest is kind of egomanacial.  Sort of the point, too, yeah, but still.  I'm a chapter away from finishing, and can't seem to do it.  Neil Young biography is very good, and completely unedited.  Like getting a cargo ship full of neil young anecdotes.  For the true fans only, and even then, heavy handed.  Okay, Cormac, listen: I'm sorry, but I can barely read this stuff without holding back a lot of doubt.  Perhaps I'll age into it.  Perhaps not.  I know I should, but that reason is no longer enough.

So, I'm in the process of trying to kill off these books while, simultaneously, getting totally bored with them all.  I don't generally read more than one book at a time.  It just isn't the way I work.  I like to really rip into a book and let it become who I am for a month or so.  I'm extremely malleable in that way, which is why reading usually provides me a great release.  Not lately.  Not lately, I say.  Today is June 4, 2011.  Hard to believe how fast time moves under our feet.  I wish I believed in God.  I wished I believed in high level order.  Platonic ideals.  I wish I could have tremendous thick textured faith.  I wish.  Today lasts forever.  And then, it doesn't.  Welcome.

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