The Virgin Soldiers

by Leslie Thomas

Synopsis

they don't stay virgins for long!


Review

time to strip down...

for the British soldiers stationed in late 40s-early 50s Malaya at the Panglin Base on Singapore Island, there is one element that impacts them all: the intense, pervasive heat. clothing becomes unnecessary for these soldiers, a burden, and so those clothes are quickly discarded throughout the day and night. the soldiers are stripped down in other ways as well: young, inexperienced in matters of love and death, their personalities only barely formed, virgins in their lack of experience in war, in the understanding of life itself. there is a sameness to these recruits, a shared lack that gives them a sort of anonymity. trade one out for the other and you'd barely notice a difference. the writing and the story itself are likewise stripped down. this is not a novel of gorgeous prose or of adventure after adventure. The Virgin Soldiers is about life on a sleepy base, one where the war against communist guerillas barely encroaches. it is a book about small moments, ways to amuse yourself when bored and stuck in one place. and so Thomas describes his story's anecdotes with a certain nonchalance, a lack of poetry, using only the occasional splash of vivid imagery to brighten the pages. it made the reading experience an easy and swift one, but a rather forgettable one as well.

time to fuck...

with soldiers who have so much time on their hands and so little to do, in their teens and early 20s, one obsession connects them all: their dicks. the book is frank and highly sexual, but it is not a sexy book. nonchalance balances frankness and so the end result is sexual behavior treated with a lack of heat and drama. whether they are contemplating their various erections in the barracks or getting it on with various Asian whores in a nearby city, reckless passion is rarely present; instead there is a constant and very prosaic horniness, an itch that always needs to be scratched. one of the things I appreciated about this book is Thomas' decision to include the perspective of Phillipa, the 20-year old daughter of a particularly repugnant Sergeant-Major. she dominates the thoughts of many soldiers, including the appealing protagonist Brigg and the admirable Sergeant Driscoll; her vaguely contemptuous disinterest that barely hides a deep well of seething anger in turn dominates the narrative whenever she appears. a fascinating character. I also liked the lack of homophobia in the offhand description of a pair of soldiers in love with each other, and I particularly respected the lack of sexism in the depiction of the whores that Brigg and his buddies return to repeatedly. the author's honesty and lack of issues, his refusal to be judgmental when presenting sexual relations and sexuality in general is really admirable.

time to die...

the base on Singapore Island may be a quiet one, its soldiers bored out of their skulls, but death still comes to call in The Virgin Soldiers. the horrible and tragic death of one of the female characters comes out of nowhere; its suddenness and the careless way it is described to Brigg was like a punch in the gut for both Brigg and me. likewise with the accidental death of a soldier who steps on a mine: a beautiful morning on the beach, young men swimming and playing football, a terrible explosion, body parts everywhere - and then a memory that won't go away for Briggs, or me. those are isolated incidences in the overall story, but death comes in a major way near the end of novel. a bandit attack on a train transporting civilians and soldiers returning from vacation is completely hair-raising. Thomas' decision not to alter the breezy nonchalance of his story nor to escalate his stripped-down prose into something more dramatic made this sequence particularly striking. the mayhem and confusion, the body parts, the moments of cowardice and heroism... all are reported in same casual way in which Thomas describes a bullfrog race a few pages earlier. a commendable show of restraint. and although it was not a particularly memorable experience overall, I would say that the novel is still quite commendable as well. no complaints from this corner.

The Buddha of Suburbia

by Hanif Kureisha

i read this one because of my fondness for the movie My Beautiful Laundrette, which was written by this author. that movie was so generous, its characters so busy, its perspective so uncomplaining about unruly complicated messy awkward life. the book has that same feeling. i have a (too) organized mind and i feel vaguely envious of how Kureishi must see the world, taking in all of the confusion and seeing it as natural, organic, sometimes awful but mainly kinda beautiful. that generosity of spirit is the best thing about this delightful but sometimes rather minor note novel. it is crammed with life. even in suburbia!

the protagonist is casually bi. so am i. this is maybe the only other time i've read of such a protagonist in contemporary literary fiction (the other being The Mysteries of Pittsburgh). beyond sexuality, Karim tries to be open-minded and even-handed; he often fails utterly and holds things against people that he knows he shouldn't. Karim is also a very internal person, yet is surrounded by outgoing people and is part of a dynamic whirl of events, socializing, coming-and-going, people changing, etc. he is a part of different groups while being apart from those groups as well. it was a nice experience to read all about a character who showed me a way of looking at myself.

i should also mention that Karim is a Class A Jerkoff. he makes poor decisions. he is a condescending know-it-all who talks on and on and on. he's such an asshole at times and was quite hard to deal with. at those points it was even harder realizing that i still saw myself in him. ah well. the best character is actually his friend Jamilla ('Jammie') who has a rather adorably pathetic fiance and is a smart, sensible, rather mean-spirited, tough-minded, down-to-earth lady that i would like to marry.

The Rules of Attraction

by Bret Easton Ellis

Ellis is one of those authors that seems to grow in stature as time marches on. i see him on so many Favorite Author lists and i just have to roll my eyes a bit. personally, he'll always be the author i laughed at on a regular basis: hilariously pretentious and embarrassingly convinced that pretension equals depth. American Psycho? sorry, the film version was a better portrait of capitalist consumerism and had the intelligence to re-route the author's misogyny so that it existed solely within the central psycho. Less Than Zero? well, it's very hard for me to muster any empathy for spoiled brats who are unhappy with their oversexed, well-fed lives - and who have the lack of tact to complain about their emptiness. gosh i guess this turned out to be a review of 3 books!

but The Rules of Attraction is something different, something special. its playfulness with narrative and perspective is actually rather brilliant. i'm not sure i've read another novel where fully one-third of the narrative was a jerk-off fabrication by one of the characters (one who isn't a psychotic serial killer, that is). perhaps prior to Rules, Ellis somehow exorcised all that repulsive self-pity that inundanted Zero and then replaced it with malevolent wit. and better yet, he puts his usual snarkiness in the mouths of characters who - although soulless - still genuinely face more life challenges than his prior student portraits.

most surprising of all, the nearly-marginal story of the suicide: bitterly ironic, entirely moving, and wonderfully written. and hey, there's even a teensy little light at the end of the tunnel that didn't feel forced. good job, Ellis. i never thought i'd say that phrase!

A Boy's Own Story

by Edmund White

Edmund White portrays his younger life in a narcotic and poetic style. not exactly the most flattering self-portrait... the protagonist's travails are emotionally affecting yet he remains creepily distanced from the events and people in his own life - in particular from his equally creepy, distant, self-absorbed father. the apple does not fall far from the tree, i suppose. overall, the language is some of the most beautiful, in my experience, of all of gay fiction - rivaling even Giovanni's Room. the prose is sometimes so gorgeous it becomes hypnotic. the man certainly knows how to write!

the episodic nature of the book - in some ways disguised by the circular narrative - is rich with at times dreamy, other times cruelly crystal clear recountings of key moments in this boy's life. i was so impressed by this one that i've forced a couple friends (straight ones) to give it a go. unfortunately, they both found the narrator to be, well... "poisonous" would be an accurate word, although i'm sure stronger, angrier words were used. i suppose i can see that. but the narrator is a character of depth, full of wry introspection and canny circumspection. he lives in a marvelously layered and mysterious world, one where he often turns out to be more predator than prey. the whole thing flows together in a way that is impressively cohesive and memorable. a very individualistic achievement in the Gay Coming of Age subgenre.

plus i've never read a more sinister depiction of a blowjob in my life!

Silently and Very Fast

by Catherynne Valente

hello gorgeous! i am amazed. such a tender story of an AI trying to grow up, such luminous prose, glowing pearls of prose, layers of myth and fable and parable and dreams and dreaming and dreamscapes and science like magic. a tale retold in so many ways, characters like archetypes but real, so real! a child trying to grow up. parents who are brothers and sisters and lovers and children. such yearning! such emotion! such simple emotions, and such complexity. such brilliant clarity. an author perfectly in control of her talent. a weaving, a tapestry, an ancient story and a bright shiny new one. how many ways can a story be told and still feel fresh? Valente seems to know all the ways. and all the words, and all the metaphors, and all the things my own robot mind wishes it could say, to put into words, to make sense of things like life and death and growing up and wanting to be more, so much more, but not knowing what that more really is, can be, could have been, can still be. a tender and wistful dream of a story. it won the Hugo for Best Novella. well-deserved. a good recipe will taste rich and evocative of certain places, but will also be simple. it will focus on showcasing the ingredients. it will all come together in a beautiful kind of simplicity. i like to take my time with such a meal, but it's hard. so delicious! it looks so good and it is good for you too. Silently and Very Fast is an enriching and nourishing experience. warmth and kindness and sadness and a terrible wonderful ambiguity; the sweet breath of life and a darker taste of the unknown. all the important things. beautiful, beautiful! the story makes me want to have AI children of my own. i sigh, a longing sigh but i'm not sure what i'm longing for. see what you do to me? i can barely make my words make sense. i can't even get my sentences right, my metaphors straight. oh it doesn't matter, you are in me now.



plus you can read it for free here.

The Book of Lost Things

by John Connolly

Fugue state, formally Dissociative Fugue... usually involves unplanned travel or wandering, and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity. Fugues are usually precipitated by a stressful episode.
 
in world war 2-era england, young David loses his mother after a lingering illness and begins to experience strange dissociative episodes, often involving the sounds of books whispering to him and usually ending with him falling into unconsciousness. soon enough, his father finds a new wife named Rose - a nurse at his mother's hospice - and David finds himself with a stepmother and an infant half-brother. David is deeply unhappy with this development. after the new family moves out of london to Rose's country home in order to escape german bombers, David realizes a shadowy, crooked figure has sinister designs on him and his brother. one night, after a particularly bad argument with his folks, David hears his mother's voice calling him. following that voice, he crawls into a hole within a sunken garden - just as a german bomber also falls from the sky and crashes into that garden. he emerges into a sinister fantasyland. his quest: Find and Rescue His Mother. his nemesis: The Crooked Man.
 
John Connolly is best known as a respected writer of an excellent detective series. his strengths have been widely reported: gorgeously dark and lush descriptive skills, a sensitive portrayal of private eye Charlie Parker - an unusually tormented protagonist (tragic even for a genre noted for its sad, sad heroes), and a unsettling ability to mix the prosaic with the supernatural to startling effect. in this book, Connolly takes each of those gifts and streamlines them in a way that is appropriate for the reader of young adult or even children's literature - although this novel is very clearly an Adult Fairy Tale. the result is pleasingly distinctive. there are many scenes that are striking in their psychosocial nuance, their foreboding atmosphere, their ability to evoke that wonderfully shivery feeling of fearful anticipation. my favorite passage happens early on: David's daunting entry into the strange fantasy world... an eerie vignette that is a model of careful, suspenseful writing, featuring unearthly quiet, child-like flowers, a a taciturn Woodsman, the smoking remains of the german bomber, bleeding trees, a house in the woods with a Giger-like exterior, and a gathering of evil wolfish beings.
 
Dionysian imitatio, a literary method of imitation conceived as the practice of emulating, adaptating, reworking and enriching a source text by an earlier author.
 
 Book of Lost Things is a book of mythopoeic templates - revisited, revised, regurgitated, remixed, and reimagined. we have an entire company of Big Bad Wolves, reconfigured as ambitious wolf-men, born of a grotesquely slutty Little Red Hood and sprung from the nightmares of a juvenile king... a perhaps not-so-Wicked Stepmother... a malevolent and terrifying Sleeping Beauty... Childe Roland, transformed as a brave gay soldier in search of his long-lost lover... trolls and harpies and a savage, hungry Beast... a young girl's spirit in a glass jar... and our villain, a gleeful child-thief, a striker of dark bargains, a Rumpelstiltskin, an old old devil: The Crooked Man.

the use of revisionism is, sadly, not always successful. a comic interlude with the socialist Seven Dwarves and an obese, monstrous Snow White is depressingly unfunny and a little desperate (at least to this reader). and a long part near the end, depicting various torture chambers and examples of The Crooked Man's terrible villainy seems to be merely an excuse for Connolly to indulge himself with a gloatingly vicious array of sadistic tableau. both sequences were eye-rolling and sigh-inducing.

but those are aberrations; despite them, Connolly more than succeeds in creating delightful and intriguing reinterprations of figures from fairy and folk tale. even better, David's character is a slow-burning but dynamic one, changing in bits and starts from boy to man with each new encounter. he is a realistically flawed protagonist as well as a brave and endearing little hero.

Memento mori, a Latin phrase translated as "Remember your mortality", "Remember you must die" or "Remember you will die"... it names a genre of artistic work which varies widely, but which all share the same purpose: to remind people of their own mortality.

the novel's extended endings were a brilliant surprise. to avoid spoilers, i'll just say that i was entirely taken aback by the meaning of The Book of Lost Things itself. and - even more memorably, more intensely - the closing pages' no-nonsense illustration of the potential and/or inherent tragedy of human life in general... and the idea of that tragedy - no matter how intimate - somehow not really being that tragic at all - just simply a part of the greater cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

i hate to end a review with a tv show reference... but if you have ever seen the last 10 minutes or so of Six Feet Under's final episode - a wondrously sad, wistful, yet somehow uplifting experience - you will know exactly what i mean. the ending of this rather fantastic book is equally moving.

The Wasp Factory

by Iain Banks



a gentle coming-of-age tale set in rustic scotland, depicting the charming misadventures of a precocious lad and his idiosyncratic older brother as they struggle to understand themselves and each other.

this is some hard stuff, and by "hard" i mean Hard Like the Marquis de Sade Is Hard. do not read this if you cannot stomach graphic depictions of animal torture. do not read this if you cannot stomach the murder of children. this one was hard for me to read at times, and i read some pretty terrible things.

but this is actually not a bleak book. perhaps because of the narrator: young Frank is a sadistic creature but his perspective is often self-deprecatingly wry or amusingly pedantic. he may be an affectless sociopath who channels his monstrous emotions into bizarre rituals and vicious traps, but hey - he is also a sensitively-wrought kid with many problems. what makes the book such a unique affair is the tension between the horrors illustrated and the traditional vehicle in which they are expressed: it is in many ways a kind of Young Adult novel, albeit one chock-full of grotesquerie. one in which the protagonist struggles to move beyond his outsider status, to connect with others, to understand his distant father and his, er, 'problematic' older brother. Frank's cruelties exist side-by-side with a cold-blooded version of typical teenage angst, angst that is built around familial relations, gender, and simply finding a place in the world. the ending resolves some truly dreadful plotlines in a truly dreadful manner, but also parallels the typically transformative Young Adult ending in which the hero comes to understand himself and so is able to move forward with his life. clever, Banks, very clever!

the narrative is designed as a chinese box of layered (and revolting) mysteries, but it is also designed as a more subtle trap for the unsuspecting reader: look at you, you just found some sympathy for a remorseless little psycho! the personal problems that he has to struggle with ARE pretty heavy for a kid to deal with, right? and you felt a bit of happiness at his eventual self-discovery, didn't you? well, you should be ashamed, sicko!

the writing is clean, clear, precise and the tone is surprisingly upbeat. the protagonist's thoughts have a quiet yearning and naiveté to them that makes even his most horrific plans and rationalizations seem almost understated, almost innocent. the deadpan humor also relieves some of the viciousness of the very dark activities portrayed. the dissection of gender was fascinating! and the use of the wasp factory itself moves beyond that of a torture maze, becoming a metaphor and a parallel for the fates of each of the characters. overall, a disturbing but very enriching experience.

this is a pretty unique book. if you like it, you may want to search out jack vance's Bad Ronald, which is also dryly and ironically concerned with the deadly fantasy life of a youthful, psychotic outsider.

Absolute Beginners

by Colin MacInnes



Absolute Beginners is remarkable - a dream of a novel. It is fast-paced, sweet-tempered, open-hearted, a golden book in many ways – a paean to youth, to a future brimming with possibility, to a present that is lived vibrantly and joyfully. It is also about selling out, junkies, prostitution, and race wars. How can this be? I suppose it is all about point of view, and the protagonist’s perspective is the embodiment of Live Now and Love It. This is one of those rare novels that make the reader feel even more alive by reading it. The enthusiasm of its narrator was equaled by my enthusiasm of the world that MacInnes plunges us into headfirst. It depicts, it mocks, it leaps forward, it grabs your hand and carries you along.

I was young once, gosh, just a decade or so ago. or more. I lived a life full of punks, hippies, goths, ravers, djs, fags, dykes, trans girls & guys, straight guys who made out with other guys and straight girls who were angry and ardent feminists, vegetarians and vegans, girls who stripped for cash in dives and guys who waved their hard-ons for free in print, fighters and peacemakers, guys who carved symbols on their bodies and girls who dressed like vampire princesses; we lived in junked-out flats filled with too many people, we shared clothes and went on road trips and had neverending parties and made protests against the government and danced all night and consumed amazing amounts of booze and drugs and sex and live music. I read Absolute Beginners during that period, and one of the best things about this novel was that it felt completely real and true to me, despite the difference in social scenes that were separated by decades, by an ocean. It showed the true diversity available to people in their late teens, in their 20s; it illustrated – and so nonchalantly – values that were not just held dear, but were unspoken, values that defied the middle class and that were simply assumed to be shared by everyone we knew. To read oneself and one’s peers in a novel written in 1958 is something special, something wonderfully moving to contemplate, even many years later.

What lifts Absolute Beginners above the idea that life for the young and unencumbered can be a great time, a fun carnival, is its complete awareness that this is also rather an illusion, and a crushingly temporary one at that. So many wonderful things can happen, so much excitement – and yet the world around this world still exists to be fought against. For me and my friends, that world to rail against did not just include asshole yuppies who came to our neighborhoods from time to time, it included police brutality, the WTO, the wars abroad. In Absolute Beginners, that world above includes race warfare. "Race" is clearly interwoven throughout the narrative, and yet it is one of so many things that the narrator is aware of, just one facet of the world that the narrator comments on... the reader could almost lose sight of it. But race and racism are there the entire time and slowly but surely become the whole point; by the end, the reader and the protagonist see how fragile a life full of living can be when the world is singling out his peers for destruction, and those peers are turning to him for alliance. The protagonist chooses, and chooses well. But it marks an ending of sorts, an ending of an attitude and a lifestyle, and the beginning of an understanding that no matter what he and his peers have built, he lives in the world still, as does everyone, and that world is one of both wonder and horror.

The Catcher in the Rye

by J.D. Salinger



journal entry

today i am 15 years old. everything is all bullshit, as usual. i can't believe how fucked everything is around me. like i'm surrounded by zombies. i can't talk to any of my so-called friends, i can't talk to jamie, i can't talk to my parents. who would bother listening anyway. i cannot wait to leave orange county! this place makes me fucking sick. everyone is a hypocrite. everything is so goddamn bright and shiny and sunny and meaningless. FUCK, life is so full of crap.

there is one good thing in my life though. just read this book Catcher in the Rye. blown away! i don't know how a book written decades ago could say exactly what i would say. it is like the author was reading my thoughts and put it all down in this book. things i didn't even realize i felt were right there on the page! I LOVED IT. i think this is my favorite novel of all time. which is not saying a whole lot because there is a ton of pretentious bullshit out there and i bet mrs. durham will force us to read it all. man i hate that bitch.


journal entry

today i am 20 years old. life is great as usual. just enjoyed my wednesday morning wake-and-bake session with j-p, the sun is shining, the san diego weather is beautiful, and tonight i'm off to rob & gregg's to destroy them at bullshit. love that game! gregg says that joelle will be there (yes!) but she'll probably bring that prick pete with her. one of these days i'm going to lose it and kick his ass. "i'm in a band"...fuck you, pete! i will never spin your records.

all i have on the agenda today is to go to the gym and then off to keracik's american lit class. it is not a bad class, although it is nowhere close to gender studies with halberstam. or davidoff's survey of modern postmodernism last semester. now that was a class! it blew my mind. so many things to think about. the reading in american lit has been okay. but we've been assigned to read Catcher in the Rye and it is terrible. can't believe i ever liked this book. caulfield is a whiny little bitch. the book has no depth. there is literally nothing going on with the narrative, style, theme, characterization, it is just one rote cliché after another. he thinks he is such a rebel-without-a-cause but in reality he is just another tired representation of rootless, stereotypical masculinity and gender essentialism. completely inane and without meaning. i think my essay will use some acker-style postmodernist techniques to show how simplistic this trite "classic" truly is. i'm going to deconstruct the shit out of this novel, baby!


journal entry

today i am 25 years old. another gray, drizzly san francisco morning. i wish christopher would wake up, i really need to talk to him after all that shit last night. notes on my pillow, really?? time to grow up dude, i will never "complete you". well actually i'm glad he's still asleep, my throat is too sore to get into it right now with him. plus Food Not Bombs is happening this morning and i have to get the kitchen ready. john is probably hard at work already, typical over-achieving behavior. i bet the wisconsin kids are still crashing on our living room floor. it's time for them to leave! they've seen The Vindictives at every single Epicenter or Gilman show now and it is time for them to hit the road. or learn to take a shower. this apartment is not the world's crashpad!

i woke up early this morning and thumbed through A Catcher in the Rye. i remember hating this book in college for some reason. probably wasn't po-mo enough for me. or "challenging". feh. what a pretentious idiot i was. this is a beautiful book. it changed my life as a kid, i'm not sure how i would have survived orange county without it. just re-reading parts of it brought back all that old angst about all the fucked-up shit in the world that kids have to deal with. i'm not sure there is another book as insightful or as meaningful. or funny! that part with the clipping-of-the-toenails is hilarious. ackley is such a douche. this book is the foundation of every zine that i have ever loved. a perfect novel. it is so...."human", i guess.


journal entry

today i am 30 years old. man my head hurts...so hungover! my birthday party last night was awesome. even got to spend some time on the turntables (thanks kraddy for actually relinquishing a tiny bit of control for once). i must have made out with a half-dozen people. sadly, no real action. i think last night's party will be the last big party i will ever throw. things have got to change. no more partying like the world is about to end, i still have my entire life ahead of me! tomorrow i am going to go into AIG and hand in my notice. i am not an entertainment insurance underwriter, that is not me. fuck them. if erika can get me that job working with homeless kids at Hospitality House, than i am set. although moving from the biggest room in the flat to the water heater closet will be no fun. i'm 30 years old now for chrissakes! still, i've got to do something meaningful with my life. it cannot all be about booze, drugs, hooking up, and paying everyone's rent when they're broke. things have got to change.

i cracked open A Catcher in the Rye yesterday before the party and read some of my favorite parts. what an inspiration! seriously, that is a classic novel. it is packed with meaning. i'm twice caulfield's age but i still somehow connect with him in a very direct way. my life is going to change and the attitude expressed in that book is at the heart of that change. i love you, holden caulfied. it's not too late for me to learn from you, to find some meaning in life.


journal entry

today i am 35 years old. another intense, sad, but deeply fulfilling week has passed. every day something meaningful happens, something so emotional and real. sometimes i find myself just losing it in a fetal position because of the things i've seen. working with people who are drug addicted or who have been abused or who are dying is HEAVY. but it is also beautiful. it's hard to believe i am dealing with all of that and supporting my folks too. thank God i have good friends to talk to about these things. anyway. so now marcy wants to have a kid. i just don't know how i feel about that. this is such a fucked up world, do we really want to bring new life into it? i dunno. it seems....selfish, somehow. she should just quit her job with the d.a.'s office and get back to her roots in the public defender's office instead. does she think that having a child with me will bring more meaning into her life? my life has meaning enough already. and i really am not sure i can handle that responsibility on top of everything else.

i skimmed A Catcher in the Rye yesterday, after an awkward talk with marcy about having a baby. it was not an inspiring read. caulfield is so full of misplaced angst! i'm not sure i even understand him anymore. why is he so pissed off? he's seen nothing of the world and what the world can actually do to people. i want to like him, i want to re-capture that feeling of affection i had for him, but now his contempt and his anger just seem so meaningless, so naive. he really does not have it so bad. there is so much worse out there. i don't know how i would handle a kid like that. i hate to say it, but i constantly rolled my eyes when reading it. oh the emotional self-absorption of youth! just you wait, caulfield. it sure gets a hell of a lot more complicated once you grow up.


journal entry

today i am 40 years old. when did i become a boss? it is like i woke up one day, mysteriously transformed into an old man. am i really a "leader"? what does that even mean? sometimes i feel like i am just faking it all and someone is going to figure it out and blow the whistle on me. last week i made a huge play on the Council, i had all my ducks in a row, and all the votes came in just as i had planned. everyone has their own agenda and the way to get things done is simply to recognize and engage with that disappointing fact. some folks got up and started clapping and then the whole room joined in, even council members who voted against my motion - feh, phonies. the experience was sort of amazing but it also made me feel very odd, almost disconnected from myself. is this who i am now, a public policy figure, a community advocate, a mayoral appointee? ugh, i can't stand the mayor. i don't feel like me. there is accomplishment there, and some satisfaction...but i am missing something, something visceral, something real. sweet Jesus, is this what a mid-life crisis feels like? it is a weird feeling, like i know everything that i need to know about the world, about the people around me, how everything connects, but yet i still feel like i know so little about life. oh, such angst, mark. surely you've outgrown this?

i've started re-reading A Catcher in the Rye. it's so strange, during different parts, i felt like crying. a wonderful and moving novel. i feel like i really understand holden, like he is my guide, my son, my brother, my friend...myself. i think of him and i know that change in the world and changing myself can still happen. it just has to happen. that's life after all, right?