(no subject)

Instead I read:

12. Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Least likely reread of my life, too. Aloud to my wife, whose book club selected it over her objection. My 6th grade teacher made us, which is weird because it's kind of explicitly anti-Christian, but she was Catholic and I guess they let the Pope worry about those details. I didn't hear a word about it again until the Dutch narcissist Julie worked under one summer loaned her a copy. I told her not to read it no matter what she did.

The narcissist said she was a 'Buddhist slash atheist' which I guess fits the book, kind of? It's more of a Vedanta/The-Secret-type-Gnostic/Sports-inspirational hybrid, but it's also pretty much the narcissist manual. Jonathan is special, you see, maybe the most special ever - but the others don't understand him. But he'll show them. And they'll thank him. For he will show the way to perfection. But hahaha he's not a god he's just a gull like us. We too can be like him! It will take many lifetimes but he is patient as well as swell in the other ways. The trick is to realize our body is a thought of ours, as we are a thought of the Great Gull's. You can become anything you want if you just think different (while hoping he doesn't)!

It was actually very Broadway and that's how I played it. Channeling my high school's production of The Rise and Rise of Daniel Rocket.

(no subject)

13. Poems, Hermann Hesse (tr. James Wright)

My first Hesse. Probably liked it much more for having just read the gull book - made me much less ashamed to be gnostic, or semi-gnostic or gnosticurious or whatever I am. Hesse's a simple poet, writing short rhymed stanza lyrics or longer free verse ones about walking and looking and thinking, in the tradition of early Holderlin & early Goethe, and some of the poems were beautiful. Wright chose these particular ones for being on the theme of homesickness, in an unrigorously gnostic sense, which made for a nice unity.

Not that I'm going to go grab Steppenwolf next. I did try reading Siddhartha once, but the god within me was dead of boredom by halfway through.

Hey, that's what Seagull reminded me of: another '60s youth cult book, Stranger in a Strange Land. Which I remember being a bit more awful, even.

Curious phenomenon, having those ex-youth as our teachers, growing up. Not that there weren't also a lot of squares. But the songs back in music class were mostly about peace and drugs and by people on peaceful drugs, I see in hindsight.