subtext

The day school let out I was cleaning out my file cabinet; I filled a large trash can full of old lessons some from 15 years ago. I stupidly dragged the trash can out of my room, thereby pulling my lower back out yet again. However this time I seemed to have managed to pinch a nerve that runs down my leg. I have been incapacitated since then, either by pain which makes it very difficult to walk, or painkillers, which makes it very difficult to think, even more so than normal. I had an MRI of my lower back on Saturday. A procedure I had last year on my head after my stroke. An MRI is a very unpleasant and loud experience, not suitable for any with any smidgin of claustrophobic tendencies. The pain in my leg has forced me to sit a lot, which allows me the excuse to read. In a class on the Essay I took fifteen years ago, the prof made an off hand comment that has stayed with me: “Writing is a leisure activity.” So is reading; one must be of a certain economic class to have the luxury of doing nothing but reading or writing. I think this is one of the reasons for the disdain Americans have for intellectuals: their production, or work, is invisible and resembles doing nothing. So I have done very little so far this summer. I have read about half way through Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation.” Maybe I have read too much weirdness over the last twenty five years, but his ideas don’t really seem all that radical. I found myself underlining stuff that I have read somewhere else. It was the same when a lot of people were going on about the “cool” ideas of The Matrix. It just seemed like a lot of Plato: the Allegory of the Cave and the ideal versus the perceived with a little unacknowledged Hinduism through in for psychedelic fun. I have always seen much of philosophy simply moving between Plato’s big Ideals and Aristotle’s categories. At least western philosophy. From the east I get a Beatles line: “Nothing is real, Strawberry field’s forever.” Speaking of which, irreality that is: I’m also reading Lyotard’s “The Postmodern Condition” (about a third of the way), as well as a Charles Bukowski poetry collection (finished), an anthology of Ancient Egyptian Literature (a find at the UT Press book sale this spring), Dashiell Hammett’s “The Thin Man” (great hard boiled detective novel), Conjunction magazine’s essay issue, and Jack Kerouac’s “The Subterraneans.” I love summer and the time to read what I want. (As Deb mentioned on her list in her last blog). I just wish my leg would stop hurting. The worst part of it is my left foot is numb as if it fell asleep and won’t wake up, kind of the opposite of Neo in “The Matrix” who wakes up a lot, but never falls asleep. OOOOh I’m gettin’ deep. But then one can drown on the surface of the ocean as easily as 1000 feet under, can’t one?