September 4, 2021

Getting as much done as I can before DJ comes in the van and sweeps us to Folly Beach. Foggy morning. I’ve left few enough errands that I should be done in time, standing on the porch with my gear, ready to begin. 

O phones from the road to tell me my comments about the Parish Profile angered “many,” though “I have your back. I absolutely have your back.” He noticed, as I did, that my plaint about people thinking with hurt feelings was answered by a flood of hurt feelings, and not one actual application to the argument. People do get furious at me. It always takes me by surprise. I think of reasons: I continue to be playful after others have begun to take things seriously; my style in pamphleteering is very 18th Century, very Tom Paine, and what to me is the triumphant revelation of reason is to others arrogance; I’m direct, and do not take the circling route of tattling and innuendo that seems to be the choice of the South; I’m told that others find me intimidating, and though that is hilarious to myself, I hear it often enough to believe it to be a factor; my patience with deliberate or indelible stupidity is small; I do not think that the way a person feels is always a useful tool in determining true and false; my rhetoric is generally better than my opponent’s, which enrages people who think they are right even if their arguments fails, or that their sentiments should be honored simply because they’re theirs. But, as observed, the counterblast is so feeble in this it won’t cause the self-reflection it might otherwise have. I read my essay over and wonder how it can be disagreed with: I suppose that’s the arrogance people see in me.

Watched Godzilla versus King Kong until early in the morning. I was as happy as a ten-year-old.