You’re drafting this on the back of a printed-out OED definition and etymology of the word “presume.” This is by chance but you have to wonder why you knowingly, on some level, but mostly unconsciously, bypassed the word “universe.” Nevermind, this pointless, circular analysis is not why are came here. You came here to put together thoughts that have been tossing around in your head like seeds in a tin can. You want to connect how Watts’ Hope is why our world is different now, why you can use Dad’s health insurance for five years longer, with the disaster and heartache and emotional shipwreck of Haiti–why you feel obligation and helplessness in equal measure. Why maybe it feels like the world will end. And how long can this cultural preoccupation with apocalypse go on before it happens to us or we let it happen to us or we do it to ourselves as the ultimate and maybe inevitable apotheosis or manifestation of this mass obsession? Sometimes you use words not because it’s the right word, but because you don’t know what other word to use. You want to write about your mother maybe dying. “How this makes you feel.” All the memories of her that you begin to drudge up–the decent ones, the ones you wouldn’t mind sharing with strangers, even the strangers who read what you write on the fundamental assumption of oversharing, which is what this blog is–are of your youth, specifically pre-high school. When the “family” was divided more distinctly into “sides” and you knew which one you wanted to be on. It was the right side and you felt good about that, very secure in that unequivocal knowledge. Hatred and your meaningful silences are not as simple anymore.
Found this scribbled on the back of an 8-page OED printout. I must have been distracted in the library. Around January or so.
