richard simmons, where are you?

My sister got me this big anthology of modernist poetry and I am losing it. There are same days, actually many of them, long strings of them, months, years it seems like, in which the world makes sense. I nod, because duh, "I get it."

But right now, I don't think I do. Breathing, eating, belching, and moving. That was life and that was okay. It was fucking meaningful. In modernist stuff, however, there is this agony of sorts about the dissolution of meaning, the modernist dillema, if you will, and I start to see the world through these sad eyes too, thinking that everything good is really no good. God, when I am bored sometimes, this stuff resonates with me way more than it should. I have to get outside and move. Right now, that is the solution. Go outside and play. I have not done anything active in the past three days - I have been devoting my energies to conquering a nasty cold, but I have won. The fight is over. I am ready to celebrate, to find something else to read.

It is a little too cold and a little too dark for a long walk. I want to go jogging but hate wearing glasses jogging and lost my contacts in some gay club in DC and did not bring extras.

But okay, here's an alternate cure. Alternative medicine. Forget about the St. Johns Wort. The secret is rock and roll. I did a little run to Borders a short while ago, to get out of the house, and to try to pick up a CityPaper. And okay, so I was driving in the car, my mom's white minivan with the heat on cause it's cold goddamnit, and beause I was moody, not in the mood, flipping through the stations, not in the mood for any crap right now, not this, nor that, not what I want right now, not ever. And I didn't know what I wanted to hear, you know? I just knew what I didn't want to hear. I mean that's life's fucking problem right there - the one big hindrance to a happy life, the thing the modernists were dealing with. They knew what world they didn't want, what was wrong with it all, but couldn't verbalize what they did want. I mean, it's pretty hard to forward a positive vision. Ronald Reagan talked about that "shining city on the hill." And that was fucking genius, that's what we all fucking want. Don't want to hear this bad rock on the radio. Avril Lavigne can go fuck herself. I want the shining city on the hill, goddamnit! The radio was just making me even more pissy that the world (or at least the radio - another problem was that I failed to distinguish between the two) was not in alignment with my vague positive vision of where it should be. Flipping flipping flipping more crap more crap and yes more crap. And then 94.7.

And I melted. The before picture would have been a nasty little crabby male not smiling, not really pleased with the world, let alone in love with it. The after picture is a much prettier sight. Instantly there was a smile, I was singing along to lyrics I wish I knew, fucking beaming behind the wheel of an automobile. Led Zepplin's "House of Holies" was playing on the classic rock station. I found what I was looking for, a soundtrack that seemed appropriate for me to live to. And I quote this Bob Seger line a lot, but that means something, that means that it is fucking true, that the world is meaningful. "Just play that old time rock and roll / it's just the type of music that soothes the soul."