April 16, 2015

Bird-flute-y morning after an intermittently turbulent night. Began getting muscle spasms in my chest at the end of choir. Transferred to my legs in deep night. I walked around, stretching, trying to prevent a full onslaught, and I did. Puzzling at what should cause it, having recollection of drinking at least as much as usual.
   
The trash can in the kitchen bears witness to a catastrophic experiment in baking.
   
In my dream I was relating to an audience the time I was Elton John’s roommate, and he kept painting on the walls, often huge portraits of himself, which I took to be a strategy to get me out of the house so he could have it to himself. I was proud that it didn’t work.
   
Sweet Catalan writer in my class yesterday, expressing the same grief and frustration with “the market” as I have. It’s gratifying to hear it outside one’s one head, belaying the fear that one might have made it up or that it might apply to oneself alone. One faces the possibility of being a failure in life for reasons wholly unconnected to one’s actual achievements. The Gatekeepers prevent great achievement, and there is no other way to say it, no way to soften it. Some greatness gets through, and one always hopes to join that trickle amid the flood of mediocrity and the gush of just plain awful. No class teaches you this– nor should it. It is a horror and it is wrong, but like poverty and war it is one of those things which can be universally lamented without a clear idea what to do about it. I myself am too small. And haven’t enough of the Lord’s approbation.