Week Two

To flollow through with what I set up last week, William Blake easily defeated me. I had him in a headlock, but he escaped and tricked me into sweeping his chimney by using reverse psychology and saying how much fun it would be. It so wasn't.

The readings this week have been great. I'm really attracted to the world of murky, mystical mist Colridge creates in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Water, and the ocean in particular, is great for exploring psychology and symbolism -- it's all deep and layered with endless fathoms of secrets.

In December I drove to Norman to see my girlfriend, and I took the backroads because it was rush hour. It was cold and windy, and it was drizzling really hard and at all kinds of strange angles. Clouds were tearing around wildly, and the fog was so dense that it was impossible to see more than a few feet. I was listening to the second half of Super Black Market Clash, which consists of soft but heavy, bizzarre dub songs, with lots of thumping noises and trinkling noises, and the music gave my head the texture of the air outside.

Anyway, the point is that I became obsessed with the idea that the sky had turned into the ocean and I was going to run into a huge grey whale that had run aground on the country road. The concept made me feel all drunk and giddy. I really want to write something about that dementia I felt, and the certainty I pretended to feel that a whale was beached on the road just past my threshold of vision, twenty or so feet in front of me. I really want to write something about that, as you can probably tell by the overwrought way I just described it.

Shelley's "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" was awesome as well. I love his concept of intellectual beauty as the part of us humans that is somehow greater than human. I also love how he doesn't spell out for us what exactly he means by "Intellectual Beauty," just like I love how Coleridge lets us guess about why the mariner shoots the albatross.

Adam out!